Or maybe what kept the peace was pogey bait.
The Army boys were Hershey-bar rich; we Marines had souvenirs up the wazoo to swap ’em. The bartering was intense and as all-pervasive as combat: Hershey bars and Butterfingers and Baby Ruths were traded for samurai swords and battle flags and Nip helmets. The Army had plenty of cigars and cigs, too-I swapped a rising sun battle flag for a couple cartons of Chesterfields and a quart of whiskey.
“Got any advice for somebody who was never in combat before?” an Army private asked me, after we swapped for something or other.
“Ever hear the expression ‘watch your ass’?”
“Sure.”
“It’s got a special meaning in combat. See, the Japs know us Americans don’t shit where we eat-we don’t like to take a crap, or even take a leak, in or near our foxhole. So at dawn, when you get out of your hole to go looking for a bush to squat behind, stay low-that’s when the snipers are really on the lookout for you. It’s the most dangerous goddamn time of day.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it, kid.”
“Say, uh-are you feeling all right?”
“Never better. I’m in the pink.”
“Okay,” he said, smiling nervously. And went on his way.
But I wasn’t in the pink. I was in the yellow, from the Atabrine tablets, despite which I had a fever. Goddamn malaria, no doubt.
“Check in at sick bay,” Barney said.
“I already did,” I said.
“And?”
“I’m only running a hundred and one degrees. And I can walk.”
“So you’ll be going back on the line with the rest of us.”
“I guess so.”
I guessed right. Late that afternoon we were moving past the native village, Kukum, to the dock complex we’d built there, a pontoon bridge having been thrown across the broad Matanikau days before. Some of the natives looked on-dark men in loincloths and the occasional scrap of discarded Marine clothing, faces tattooed, ears slit and hobbling with ornaments, frizzled hair standing eight inches and reddened by (so I was told) lime juice of all things, carrying captured Jap weapons: knives, bayonets, rifles. Several of them saluted me; I saluted back. What the hell. They were on our side.
On the sandbar nearby, as a grim reminder to the hidden enemy holding the river’s west bank, lay the charred and/or water-logged remains of several Jap tanks, dropped dead in their tracks like great beasts gone suddenly extinct. A dead Jap soldier, bloating up, bobbled on the water as we crossed the pontoon bridge.
“One of Tojo’s men who made good,” the skipper commented, nodding toward the corpse as we passed. The skipper was Captain O. K. LeBlanc-we all liked him, but he was a hard-nosed fucker.
We pushed through the humid, pest-ridden jungle a few hundred yards and dug in for the night; digging foxholes through the roots of small trees and deep-tendriled weeds and brush was no picnic in the park. All I could think about was how nice it would be to be back in Chicago-indoors.
Barney was bitching about his knee-in that and other joints he had some arthritis setting in, and this sodden hellhole wasn’t helping. He had to do all his shoveling without the bracing of a foot on the spade, and that made it tough; I told him not to worry about it-I could carry his weight, where the digging was concerned.
“Shit,” he said, “you’re half dead as it is. Your fever must be up to a hundred and three by now.”
“You’re the one’s delirious,” I said. “Just take it easy-I’ll do the goddamn digging.”
The next morning, after cold K rations, the skipper got the platoon together and asked for a patrol to go scout up ahead. The patrol was to pinpoint the Japs’ positions for the Army regiment that was coming up and taking over within hours.
I have to say, here, one thing: the number-one Marine Corps rule is Never volunteer.
Barney volunteered.
“You dumb schmuck,” I whispered to him.
“Fine, Private Heller,” the skipper said. Whether he heard what I really said, or truly misunderstood me, I’ll never know.
Whatever the case, his “fine” meant I was on the fucking patrol, too.
So was D’Angelo, and a big dockworker from Frisco named Heavy Watkins; also a short kid from Denver named Fremont and a Jersey boy we called Whitey, both of ’em right out of high school. There was also a big Indian guy named Monawk. I don’t know where he was from or what he did for a living before the war.
And soon the seven of us were stalking into the daytime darkness of a jungle held by Japs.
We didn’t crawl on our bellies, but we stayed low. Low enough for the bugs and scorpions to crawl on our clothes; low enough for kunai grass to cut us. The liana vines, with their nasty little fishhook barbs, reached down to try to hang us. There was no way to move quietly through underbrush and overgrowth like this and I kept thinking about that 1st Marine’s advice about trip wires, knowing any given step could be the end.
“Hey, Ross,” D’Angelo called out, in a harsh whisper. “Those bastards are real close.”
We all looked over at him; the good-looking Italian kid from the South Side was bending down, holding a turd in the palm of his hand, like his hand was a bun and it was a sausage.
“It’s still warm,” he said, very seriously.
Barney and I exchanged glances, wondering if this kid had been on the Island too long, already.
Then, as we started pressing forward, D’Angelo said, in an effort to build support for his case, “It has to be Japanese. It smells Japanese.”
Now we knew he was going Asiatic on us.
That was when we heard the machine gun.
It was nearby, but not aimed at us.
We settled in behind various fat-trunked trees or logs uprooted from artillery shelling, a man or two behind each; Barney and me together behind a massive tree.
“Who the hell’s he shooting at?” I whispered.
“We’re the only Americans this far forward on this side of the river,” Barney whispered back.
“Well, he doesn’t seem to be shooting at us.”
The sound of it was growing louder, though.
A smile cracked my face. “He’s fishing. He’s sweeping the woods in a three-quarter circle, hoping to hit something.”
“It’s getting louder.”
“I know,” I said, and took a grenade off my belt.
When it seemed to me the machine-gunning had grown loud enough, I pulled the pin and leaned out and pitched.
There was an explosion and a scream, followed by silence.
We pushed on.
For a couple more hours, trudging through the dank jungle, the sun beginning to beat mercilessly down through the trees on us, we patrolled. We saw no more Japs.
Another guy from the platoon, Robbins, found us around four o’clock.
“Take another half hour,” he said, “and then you’re supposed to report back to the skipper.” And he headed on back.
We were just starting back when Monawk nudged my arm.
“Look,” he said.
It was the first thing he’d ever said to me.
But it was a worthwhile comment: he was pointing to the advance patrol of Japs, at least double our number, moving toward us through the jungle.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” I said to Barney.
He waved back toward Heavy, Fremont, and Whitey, who were over to our right. Just parallel to the Jap patrol.
Who spotted them.
And opened up a machine gun on them.
Bullets danced across Whitey’s chest and as if in response Whitey did a little dance himself and dropped into the brush, blood splurting out of his chest wounds like three or four men spitting tobacco. We ran to him, keeping low; the Japs hadn’t seen us yet, and Whitey had fallen out of their sight.
Heavy, Monawk, and Fremont were right there with Whitey, too. I didn’t know what the hell had become of D’Angelo.
“I’ll be damned,” Whitey breathed. “I’m still alive.”
“You got the million-dollar wound, kid,” I said, smiling at him, reassuring him. “You’ll go home for sure.”