The Old Breed

Chapter 53

Hill 60, Okinawa

May 9th, 1945

The sun fell rapidly that night, one moment the sky bright, the next darkness. It didn't give us much of a chance to really settle and dig in. The necessary foxholes were dug though, whether day or nighttime, the thuds of digging shovels breaking the silence intermittently. At least I was back up and moving by this point, the pain fading to a dull soreness. Sergeant Nelson had voluntold me to be Smiley's foxhole partner, forcing me away from my usual partner, Lanky. That didn't bode well with me.

Because of my shoulder injury, Smiley ended having to do most of the digging, while I tried to pitch in wherever possible, probably just getting in his way. We got lucky, finishing our foxhole before nightfall. I made Smiley take first watch, as the pain had sapped my strength, making me real tired. Smiley took the job like he did every other, without smile or complaint. He just did it because he was told to do it, whether he liked it or not. That was good at least. The kid could follow orders.

A star shell exploded in the air above, duly illuminating the hellish landscape around us. I took in the muddy knolls and niches, scary in the day, terrifying now in the night. Any vegetation this hill once had was gone now, churned up under the frequent artillery attacks which had occurred before we'd gotten here, attacks that had completely chewed up the ground into a deep, thick mud. The hill was pockmarked with craters and the small lips of foxholes. Some of the craters came from the big guns of the Navy, shell holes big enough to fit twenty men. Others had come from howitzers dug in less than a mile back from Hill 60, brought up after hours of struggle, our artillerymen wrestling the heavy guns through the mud to keep up with our advance. With how slow we gained each yard, they probably didn't have to move the guns that far each day, if they even moved them.

Further up the hill to my right, a Sherman tank was burning, the bright flames blinding against the dark sky, the inky black smoke melting into the night. Pops said the tank was destroyed by sappers, basically human kamikazes, who had gone up next to the tank and blown off their satchel charges. Neither the tank crew nor the sappers survived. A few twisted, gnarled remains of trees stood rising out of the mud like ghostly fingers rising from the black ground, the leaves gone, only blackened trunks. The sight sent shivers down my spine.

The star shell illuminated the rain that poured down, reflecting off the thousands of fat drops that splattered against us. I pulled my poncho tighter around me, shivered again, this time from the cold, the rain freezing. It had been raining for hours straight now, for the first hour a lighter rain, which had been annoying at the time. Now I would gladly take that rain back compared to this. This was a storm. The good part of our foxhole was that the walls blocked a lot of the wind, even though that wasn't useful to me right now as I had to stand partially exposed because it was my watch, though the hole unfortunately could do nothing about this rain. Because of the length of this downpour, the bottom of our foxhole had already filled with several inches of water. I tried shifting my feet several times, but it was useless, everything soaked. I looked down at my boots, thought of how terrible my feet must be under the leather. Without doubt, my feet, after consecutive days in the mud and rain, were probably atrocious, suffering from what we all called "jungle rot."
Next to me, the Smiley shifted around, pulling his helmet lower down onto his head. He shook with the chills of a fever. I didn't know exactly when the sickness had hit him, but I'd begun to notice it after a quick dinner of K-rats, which was just after 1800. Doing most of the work on our foxhole hadn't helped Smiley either, the kid visibly shaking as he finally put his shovel down. Nelson had noticed by this point too, and sent Smiley to a corpsman. When Smiley got back, he confirmed he'd gotten a fever, the doc telling him to try and stick out the night, see if it would get better. No one could have expected the intensity of this storm. I bet the freezing rain was doing wonders for Smiley. Poor kid.