The Old Breed

Chapter 36

Pavuvu

March, 1945

February and March seemed to take forever to go, the only big news we got was that in early March, U.S. GIs had crossed over the Rhine and were now in Nazi Germany. I felt happy for them, knew that even though it would be terribly costly for them, their war would probably soon be over. We weren't as lucky. We could only keep training for the upcoming battle that, although we didn't know where it would take place, we knew was coming. You could tell it was getting close by the way the officers yelled, the quickening pace of drills, the rifle ranges suddenly more congested with anxious infantrymen trying to rack up their skills. On the tenth of March, we received news of that our bombers had firebombed Tokyo. This led to cheers and war cries first, but as the full story began to unfold being the firebombing, the cheers could only fade to somber silence. We'd used napalm incendiaries because the houses in Tokyo were all paper and wood, meaning that the flames would have an enormous effect against the city. The firebombs had wiped out almost sixteen square miles of the city, and had been dropped in a densely populated area of Tokyo. Scuttlebutt had it that at least 50,000 were dead and the toll was rising everyday. Some said it could have even been as high as 100,000 deaths. I refused to believe that such destruction and horror was possible. Later I'd find out the prediction of almost 100,000 deaths was accurate. Holy fuck.

Pavuvu was never good for drilling, the island barely big enough to hold battalion drills, let alone leave room for the entire rest of the division. More often we worked in company or platoon exercises, still always running into other units, which always led to unnecessary bickering. Through the months, all though us veterans tried, we started growing closer to some of the new recruits. We never tried to, knew that that would just bring pain later on, when some of these men would die. Remeis was the nicest of all the new recruits, always seemed to volunteer his help for us whenever possible. I couldn't tell if that was a ploy to earn niceties points with us, or if he was genuinely helpful. If it was the former case, it worked.

The heat only picked up as the long weeks dragged by, and soon we looked like we'd just come through a battle with the amount of sweat stains and tears on our uniforms. There were always jobs for us to do, cleaning out oil drums - which we did a much more careful job of, remembering the water on Peleliu - and the ever present hated job of picking up the rotting coconuts.

Every afternoon, almost as if on a schedule, the rain would come, leaving the dirt all muddy and everything soaked. Since there was never any bathwater or showers, we came to depend on these rain showers, no matter how much we loathed them. Since you never knew when the rain would stop or start, some of us carried bars of soap with us all the time. When the rain would eventually come, we'd strip where we were at, lather up, and let the rain clean us off. The downside of this was that you never knew when the rain would stop, often times stopping and leaving an unfortunate Marine still completely lathered up to curse and yell at the sky. It happened to me once, and it sure put me in a sour mood the rest of the day, not helped by the fact that the squad kidded me about it for the rest of the day and the next day.

Sometime in February, we began to receive reports of another island that V Amphibious Corps, which consisted of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Marine Divisions, were taking. The first thing we had heard was the grisly cost those boys were enduring, thousands upon thousands in the first month alone. The island they were taking was small, another island like Peleliu, small but horribly tough. It was one of the first on actual Japanese territory, an accomplishment like no other to us. The island was called Iwo Jima.

At some point in March, before we knew it, the orders came again: load up onto the ships. We were back on the same ship, back in the same quarters, the inevitable Playboy pictures still on the walls, the same musty smells, and the small bunks. As we set sail, we did as we normally did, played cards, talked about home, listened to all the rumors of where we could be heading. Us veterans did little talking of home, none of us trying to know too much about each other, knew, as said before, that it would only lead to more pain when we would die, which we figured was an absolute certainty. The replacements kept pushing on us their inevitable questions: What's it like? Were you scared? How many Japs have you killed? We always answered the same: War is hell, everyone's scared, and I can't count anymore. The only four that I could clearly remember where the three guys in the cave and the guy I'd sniped after Jeremy had died. I didn't know how many other times I'd fired and maybe hit a Jap with a lucky shot. There was no way to count who you had hit after the banzai charges on Cape Gloucester.

We could not get the landings of Peleliu out of our heads, couldn't get any of Peleliu out of our heads, knew that as we grew closer to Japan, it would likely only get worse.

We weren't wrong.

"Pipe down, boys! Listen to the captain!"

The captain, Captain Francis Brand, was a solidly built man, barrel chested, muscular. The kind of man who looked like he could kill Japs just by crushing their heads in. He stepped up onto a low platform, which was set in front of a set of large maps plastered to the outer wall of the superstructure of the ship.

We were out on the open top deck of the ship, sitting in small bleachers set around a low platform that the captain was now standing upon. It was late afternoon now, and Captain Brand promised us chow after this. The wind was lightly blowing, the smell of the ocean ever present. There was a lot of rumblings about what the captain wanted to say, the biggest rumor being that it was about our destination. The captain wasted no time in confirming that.

"It's time I let you in on where we're going."

He took a long pointer and directed it at the center map, the biggest. It showed a large island, weirdly shaped, stretched out, a large arrowhead-looking landmass at the bottom, and a long blob at the top.

"This island here is the island of Okinawa. This ain't no Peleliu. This is an entire damned country. Sixty miles from top to bottom, almost a dozen across. We are now entering Japanese territory, and believe me, the Nips know that too! They will fight long, hard, and tough to make sure you do not take this island. But by God, we will! We will land down here, in the middle of the island. There are several airfields near the landing zones, but our main objective is not to take them. The 6th Marine Division will take Yontan Airfield directly to the left of us, and the 7th Infantry Division will take Kadena Airfield to the right of us. We'll be the buttresses between the two. We'll be pushing right to the eastern coast of the island. We'll land near the city of Hagushi, take it over as we move forward. XXIV Corps, the 7th and 96th Infantry Divisions, will push southwest towards the capital city of Shuri, and the 6th Marines will push Northeast, all the way to here, at Cape Hedo, the farthest point of Okinawa to the north."

"The doggies will be here?" someone shouted from the crowd, earning a few snickers from the men. Brand stared at him coolly. "Yes they will. And they're gonna have it as rough as the rest of us. Now, they ain't no Marines-" the guys let out cheers but some of us seasoned veterans stayed quiet, knew that even the spirit of the Corps could not save us all. "But they'll get the job done... maybe." There were more cheers, and even the captain let a smile slip. His face hardened though, and he put his hands behind his back, stood up straighter.

"This will not be an easy fight boys. They are predicting it could be days, weeks, before we see the other side of Okinawa. The Nips will throw every last bit of hatred at you in any form they can. They will find ways to kill you as you've never been killed before, will find ways to leave the fields red with blood. These are a hardened enemy we are facing. Not a Disney cartoon, not some fake-ass propaganda shit your girlfriends see at the movies. No, these are mad Nips with weapons. And they can put a bullet through you as easily as you can put one through them. Do not let your guard down, keep a bullet always in the chamber, and follow your orders."

He turned around, seemed ready to walk off the platform. He turned back around suddenly, stared at us again.

"One more thing. Good ol' intelligence says that we're looking at a probable eighty-five percent casualty rate just taking the beaches. Have a happy evening."

Needless to say, there wasn't any cheering walking away from that debriefing.

Eighty-five percent.

Holy shit.