The Far Reaches

  “Get on the beach any way you can!” Josh yelled, then lowered the riddled ramp. He saw Sergeant Pinkerton lead the charge, only to disappear beneath the waves. Others went in behind him, most of them finding their footing, Pinkerton apparently having had the bad luck of stepping into a hole. Thrusting their rifles over their heads and wading toward the distant shore, not many of them survived more than a few seconds. The next marines across the ramp went into the water, then curved around to use the landing craft for cover. They began pushing the boat toward the beach, step by step.

  Josh was aware that he was wounded, maybe mortally, but he’d have to worry about that later. He started to go down the ramp but then was startled to see several marines slogging back toward the reef. “Where are you men going?” he demanded.

  “Back to the troopships, sir,” one of them called. “We lost our rifles.”

  “Turn around,” Josh ordered. “Take a weapon from the dead and start fighting.”

  Dutifully, they turned around, only to disappear moments later when a stitch of machine-gun fire laced through them. A flurry of bullets was tossed Josh’s way, too. What sounded like a swarm of hornets buzzed past his ears, and Josh knew it was time to follow his own advice and get to the beach. He leapt off the ramp and fell, apparently into the same hole Pinkerton had found. He came up swimming, bumping into bodies every time he lifted his arms. When his feet finally found bottom, he discovered he was walking on dead marines. He couldn’t take a step without stepping on one. Josh picked up a rifle in the shallows and ran to the seawall and threw him-self down. He was heartened to see a dozen or so marines were also there. One of them, sitting with his back against the wall, looked over and nonchalantly asked, “Can I have that rifle, sir? I lost mine. Do you know you’ve been shot in the arm? Your side’s all bloody, too.”

  “I’ll trade you for your K-bar,” Josh said, then made the switch, buckling the sheath on his belt and drawing out the knife. “Who’s in charge?”

  The boy scratched up under his helmet. “Nobody, I guess. Except for you, I ain’t seen no officers or gunnies on this beach yet. They gonna send some boats to take us back to the troopships?”

  “Nobody’s going to send any boats to take you anywhere,” Josh growled. “You’re here to stay.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that,” the marine answered. “I don’t think them navy guns killed a one of them bastards. And didn’t nobody know about that damned reef?”

  A Japanese officer, screaming and waving a sword, suddenly appeared at the top of the seawall. A marine rose up and tackled him, and they both landed heavily on the sand. The marine’s K-bar won the short argument that ensued. “Why’d he do that?” the marine wondered as he wiped his bloody knife on the officer’s shirt. “He’s got to know he’s gonna get killed.”

  “He knew it. They all know it, every one,” Josh explained. “That’s why they’re fighting so hard.”

  “What should we do, sir?”

  Josh gave the question some thought and decided what he needed was a working radio to report his observations. “Keep fighting,” he told the marines. “I’m going to see if I can find a radio.”

  A dozen yards down the beach he instead found a lieutenant, his helmet inexplicably on backward, squatting behind the seawall in front of another knot of survivors. “All right, men,” Josh heard him say, “we’re going up and over. These bastards can’t stop us.”

  Before Josh could say a cautionary word, the lieutenant climbed up on the seawall and looked over his shoulder at his men. “Follow me!” he yelled just as a furious swath of bullets struck him. Spurts of blood leapt out of him and he fell backward onto the beach. His men dragged his lifeless body, his face shattered, his helmet still on backward, and placed him sitting up against the seawall. His head fell forward, as if he’d decided to take a siesta.

  “What outfit?” Josh asked in near despair.

  “We’re none of us from the same one, sir,” a corporal answered.

  “Any gunnies around?”

  “No, sir. Just us pissants.”

  A nearby Japanese machine gun opened up, and Josh had to raise his voice to be heard. “Anybody know where I can find a radio?” When no one responded, Josh said, “All right, listen up. The Japs are right over there. What you’ve got to do is start using your rifles. I know it’s hard to put your head above this seawall, but you either start shooting at them or you’re going to be overrun.”

  “Sir, we ain’t never gonna take this island,” the corporal said. “Ain’t they gonna come and get us?”

  “You boys keep asking me that,” Josh replied. “The answer is no. You’re either going to take this island or you’re going to die on it. Those are your choices. Now, you boys get to shooting. Throw a few grenades. Mix it up. That’s an order. I’m going to go find a radio and see if I can’t get us some help. Savvy?”

  The marines savvied and turned toward the seawall. A few of them bobbed up and fired, and there were angry Japanese screams as their bullets struck home. They also began throwing grenades, and a machine gun no more than ten yards away was silenced. A young marine grinned at him. “Like that, sir?” he asked.

  To Josh’s surprise, it was the young marine who’d drunk the water and gotten sick on the Clayton. ‘Just like that,” Josh said, patting the boy on the back. “Keep up the good work, Randy. I know your mother would be proud of you.”

  Josh headed down the beach at a low crouch, the hot sun beating on him. When he heard the crunch of boots in the sand, he thought the young marine had decided to follow him, but when he turned, he discovered it was actually a small Japanese soldier chasing after him with a long, bayonet-tipped rifle.

  Josh was an expert at this kind of infighting and almost nonchalantly stepped aside, grabbed the rifle at its handgrip, pulled it forward until the young Japanese was off balance, and then buried his K-bar in the man’s innards, feeling a flood of hot blood around his hand. Twisting it, he pulled out the knife and let go of the rifle. The Japanese marine gave Josh a pitiful look, then quietly fell. Josh, surprised at the regret he felt for killing the young man, considered telling him he was brave—but then something hot hit Josh in the back of his neck. He slapped at it, thinking he’d been stung by a bee. It was, however, something hard that had lodged beneath his skin. He plucked out the thing, which proved to be a black and bloody bullet. It had struck him after being spent, possessing only enough energy to wound him. He considered for a moment putting it in his pocket as a good luck charm but decided there was nothing but bad luck to be found on this beach today. He flicked it into the sand, then went on, dodging past burning amtracs with marines hanging lifelessly from them. Everywhere in the lagoon were numerous floating men, their faces immersed in the rancid sea. Only a marine here and there had made it to the seawall, where they crouched, confused and spent, silently raising their faces in helpless supplication as Josh sprinted past.

  6

  Bosun Ready O’Neal slogged out of the water and fell onto the beach. He was a bit shaken but unscratched—a bit of luck for sartain. When Ready had discovered Captain Thurlow was no longer on the troopship, he’d figured out what his skipper had probably done. To find him, Ready had come in with a bunch of engineers who’d been sent to defuse a line of underwater mines near the reef that fronted Red Beach Two. After motoring in as close as possible, the engineers had jumped into the water. Ready followed, ducking machine-gun bullets, and swam around until the lead engineer announced that, as far as he could tell, none of the mines were armed. “Guess the Japs got in too much of a hurry,” he concluded before being struck in the head by a bullet.

  The engineers swam back to their boat, pulling their dead sergeant with them. After a moment of indecision, Ready decided to strike out on his own for shore. His captain was surely there, and there he had to go. He swam steadily, an occasional bullet plinking nearby, until he arrived at a long pier jutting perpendicular from the beach. Ready had taken off his shoes before going into the wa
ter, so after crawling ashore beneath the pier, he took a dead marine’s boots that looked like they would fit. Since he’d also taken off his shirt, he put on the dead man’s utility shirt as well, then plopped aboard his helmet, too. Finally prepared, Ready clambered from the protection of the pier and set off down the beach, hoping to find Captain Thurlow. Before long, he came upon three live marines squatting beside a dozen dead ones. “Any of you seen a Coast Guard captain?” Ready asked politely.

  The three marines stared at him. “No, sir!” one of them chirped. “Do you have orders for us, sir?”

  Ready was surprised at the response. “I don’t have any orders. I just want to find my captain.”

  “All the officers we’ve seen on this beach are dead, sir,” the marine answered, “except for yourself, of course.”

  That was when Ready realized he had taken the clothes off a dead marine officer. He wondered what his rank was and surreptitiously glanced at his collar. He was astonished to discover that he was a major and that, based on his reading of his name tape, his name was Deer.

  “Sir, if we stay here, we’ll get killed, for sartain,” one of the marines said urgently.

  Ready lit up like a bonfire when he heard the marine’s brogue. “Where are you from, boy, and what’s your name?”

  “North Carolina Outer Banks. Hatteras Island. I’m Frank Tucker.”

  “I knew a Bill Tucker,” Ready said. “He came down to Killakeet to stomp clams from time to time.”

  “Bill’s my brother.”

  Ready felt like hugging the marine. He’d found a neighbor! Then he decided it wouldn’t be seemly for a major to go around hugging enlisted men, even neighborly ones. “The Tucker family were always good fishermen,” he said, with the reserve he felt appropriate to his new rank.

  The marine named Tucker, even if he was from the Outer Banks, didn’t seem to be in the mood for reminiscing. “Major, there don’t seem to be no-body in front of us,” he advised. “I think the Japs figure they’ve killed everybody on this particular stretch of beach, and they have, pretty much. That’s why we’ve been kind of sitting here, real quiet-like, hoping not to call attention to ourselves.”

  Ready nodded. “That makes sense.”

  One of the other marines gave Ready a semi-salute as if fearful of doing the wrong thing. “I’m Private Sampson, sir. New Jersey.”

  Ready semi-saluted him back. “Well, Private Sampson, what do you think we should do?”

  “I guess we ought to invade this island, sir. That’s what they sent us here to do. Do you think it would be all right if we got off this beach and killed us a few Japs?”

  “I guess so,” Ready answered after a short second of thought.

  The marine who hadn’t introduced himself picked up a rifle out of the sand and handed it to Ready “Just give us the word, sir,” he said, then added shyly, “My name’s Private Garcia. I’m from McAllen, Texas. My daddy swam the Rio Grande, and look where it got me.”

  “A far piece from Texas,” Ready agreed. Then, though he was thoroughly frightened, he said, “Let’s go,” and led the way across the seawall. No bullets greeted them, but there was an awful din not far away. After going forward for a while, he stopped at a shattered palm tree to regain his courage, then moved to the next one. Tucker, Sampson, and Garcia stayed close behind, their fingers on the triggers of their M-l rifles. Sampson suddenly went down on one knee and fired into the top of a palm tree, and a Japanese soldier fell from it, landing hard on his back. When Ready ran over to him, the man looked up with a fierce expression, which then softened and, just before he died, turned childlike. The marines ran up and fell down beside Ready just as bullets ripped the air above their heads. “I think we found the Japs, sir,” Garcia apprised him.

  Ready supposed they had, and maybe something more. He thought he’d seen something unlikely, so unlikely it couldn’t be real. He crawled forward and then up on a little mound of sand. Sure enough, his eyes hadn’t been deceiving him. There, not more than fifty yards away, were a half-dozen Japanese officers, all tricked out in gold-braided dress uniforms and brandishing gleaming silvery swords. Standing outside a palm log bunker, they looked for all the world as if they were dressed up for a parade. When the trio of marines crawled up, Ready ducked back down behind the little dune. “Anybody know where I might find a radio?” he asked.

  “There was one on a dead boy back there,” Tucker said. “I’ll go get it.”

  Tucker was as good as his word and was soon back carrying a pack radio. Ready halfway didn’t expect it to work, but when he fired it up and said cautiously, “Uh, this is, uh, Major Deer. Anybody hear me?” there was an instant response.

  “Loud and clear, Major. Who did you say you were?”

  “Major Deer. I’m about fifty yards inland of Red Beach Three. Can you put me in touch with somebody what’s got some big guns, like artillery and such?”

  Within seconds, Ready found himself talking to a sailor aboard the destroyer Ringgold. Ready described the Japanese officers who were still standing in the open and where he thought they were.

  “I think I know where that is,” the Ringgold sailor said. “You want an airburst?”

  “Sure thing!” Ready answered.

  A few minutes later, Ready heard a series of distant thuds behind him followed by whistling screams overhead. The rounds from the destroyer proved to be long, but they burst high off the ground where Ready could see them. He told the sailor on the other end of his radio connection to shorten the next ones up a bit. The Japanese officers had looked over their shoulders with some surprise at the airbursts. One of them had subsequently walked inside the bunker, but the others apparently said something to him, and he walked back out. They were all looking around, as if wondering what to do. They didn’t have to wonder long. Six more shells from the Ringgold came whistling in, this time bursting directly over them with massive boils of smoke and shrapnel. When the smoke cleared, all six Japanese officers were down.

  “Let’s go get their swords!” Tucker yelled, and before Ready could stop them, the three marines were up and running. He cautiously followed. The Japanese officers proved to be horribly shredded, their blood and guts splattered all over everything, and even the marines didn’t have the heart to pick up their swords. With the stink of cordite still hanging heavy in the air, Ready ducked inside the bunker to see what was what. It proved empty of people but filled with maps and books and filing cabinets. On a table was a topographical map of Betio atoll. There were Japanese symbols all over it with arrows pointing this way and that. Tucker came up alongside. “What do you make of it, sir?”

  Ready was a bit awestruck. “I think we just killed the officers in charge of this place,” he said in amazement.

  “So we done good?”

  Ready supposed they had.

  Outside the bunker, he called the Ringgold sailor. “Who did you say you was again, sir?” the voice asked.

  “Major Deer,” Ready answered, checking his name tape again just to be certain.

  “ ‘Sir, beg pardon, but your name is Reed,” Sampson pointed out as gently as possible, and Ready realized he’d been looking at the name upside down. Sheepishly, he turned off the radio and looked at the three marines who were looking back at him.

  “I just noticed you’re wearing sailor pants,” Tucker said.

  “It’s because they fit,” Ready answered.

  Tucker opened his mouth to say something else, but all of a sudden, a dozen Imperial marines appeared from behind the bunker and began to scream bloody murder over the bodies of their officers. They were clearly not pleased with the situation, and all Ready and the three marines could do was run for their lives.

  So that was what they did.

  7

  At sea, there was a big explosion, and Josh saw a Higgins boat upended by a direct hit from a big artillery round. Nasty smoke boiled from a wound in its side, and then a dozen men crawled overboard, stood on the reef for a moment as if uncertain wh
at to do, and then fell, cut down by an unseen machine gun. Josh finally came upon a marine fiddling with a pack radio. “Does it work?” he asked.

  “No, sir,” the radio operator answered. “It got wet coming in.”

  “Follow me,” Josh said. “Bring the radio.”

  “What for? It’s no good.”

  “Maybe we can fix it. Come on.”

  The marine reluctantly picked up the waterlogged radio and emulated Josh’s low dash behind the seawall. It was tricky going because of all the dead marines. It was easier just to step on them, though Josh felt like apologizing each time he did it. Then Josh found what he was looking for, another radio operator, this one looking disconsolately at his battered set. Josh fell down beside him. “Does it work?”

  “No, sir, and I don’t know why,” the second operator said, eyeing Josh’s collar and his rank. “I kept it dry coming in.” He raised his canteen. “You know where I can get some water? I can’t keep this puke down, and I’m dry as dust.”

  “Get that radio working and I’ll call for water.”

  The radio operator shrugged. “I’m a little short of spare parts.”

  The first radio operator arrived and laid his radio down beside the other one. “See if you can make one out of two,” Josh told them. “And keep yourself alive if you can. We’ve got some important calls to make.”

  Fifty yards on, Josh finally found a live officer, a tall major with a fiery red mustache who was squatting in the sand and pondering a map. Crouched around him was a mixed group of exhausted amtrac drivers and riflemen. When Josh hailed the major, the man looked up and blinked. A Coast Guard captain in ship’s khakis and brown shoes, armed only with a bloody K-bar, was apparently the last person he’d expected to encounter on the atoll of Betio. Josh quickly introduced himself, and the major said, “I’m Major Ryan, sir. Do you know you’ve been shot?”