The Million-Dollar Wound

color of brown wrapping paper. Many in the first wave weren’t even carrying rifles; they had big mats in their little hands, rushing through the grass lugging those mats, screaming like hopped-up madmen, as were those coming up behind them with rifles in hand, firing past their mat-bearing brethren. Some had machine guns, chattering like a child’s toy gun, but there was nothing childish about the bullets they were spitting at us, kissing the sand through the cloth of the sandbags nearby. There was mortar fire, too, ours and theirs-ours was landing amongst them, scattering them in the air like tenpins; where theirs was landing I couldn’t say. Not near us, thank God.

Barney and I were side by side, firing our M-1s; D’Angelo, too.

We were cutting the Japs down like weeds, like they were the very kunai grass into whose spiky golden sea their bodies sank as our bullets hit the mark.

There was a moment when D’Angelo was firing and Barney and I both were pausing to reload our rifles, the barrels of which were red hot.

“What are those things those little bastards are hauling?” he asked.

“Mats,” I said. “I think they plan to throw ’em over the barb wire, so the ones behind ’em can crawl over it and on top of us.”

Then we were firing again, and they kept coming, shouting “Banzai,” screaming, “Die, Maline!” They kept coming and we kept shooting and they kept dropping, disappearing, into the golden grass. A second wave tried; a third. We cut them down.

A kid named Smith-or was it Jones? — in the foxhole next to us, took a bullet in the head, in his forehead under his helmet. No mosquito bite, that. He tumbled over dead. I saw men die before, but never one so young. Seventeen, he must’ve been. Barney never saw a man die before, and turned away and puked on the spot.

Then he wiped off his face and started firing again.

When it was over, most of their dead remained hidden in the kunai; you could see the impression the bodies made, where they went in, but not the bodies, for the most part. A few were visible- those who’d gotten the closest to us, a few from the first wave, their mats spread out before them like offerings to their emperor or their gods or whatever. They seemed so small, rag dolls flung into the weeds by a spoiled child.

As the days wore on, they grew larger, puffing and swelling in that brutal tropical sun. A stench swept the area like a foul wind. But we got used to it. All of it. Dead, rotting flesh and kids like Jones (or was it Smith?) catching the one with his name on it and falling over dead, eyes blank as an idiot’s gaze. Blanker.

The next attack came on the night of the following day. Shortly before 3:00 a.m. the sky lit just above us with a pale green glow-Jap flares-and coming up the hill in the darkness was the sound of chattering machine gun, mortar fire, and “Banzai!” It was an eerie moonlight replay of the previous attack, and we cut them down like so much cordwood.

Days stretched into a week; we ate K rations, smoked (me, too), talked about good food and bad women, took demeaning shits in the woods with flies swarming around our asses as we did the deed, turned into pitiful lowlife creatures who stank from the sweat of humidity and heat and killing. Even the rains, which came out of nowhere, like the Japs, didn’t improve matters; it merely left us soaked and soaking in muddy foxholes. It made our K rations mildew-it didn’t affect the canned Spam, but the chewing gum and biscuits just somehow weren’t the same.

After two weeks they moved us off the line.

Back at Henderson Field, some Army infantry-the Americal Division-watched us troop in, looking like something the cat dragged in, I’m sure.

“How long you guys been on the Island?” a fresh-faced kid asked.

“Got a smoke?” I asked him.

The afternoon after we came off the line, the war took to the sea and to the sky. Like standing-room-only customers, we watched the show from the edge of the coconut palms lining Red Beach-Barney and me and just about everybody else from Henderson Field, Marine and Army alike. We could see them out there, battle wagons and cruisers and destroyers, from both sides, blasting away at each other with their big guns. Even from the shore the sounds of the sea war were deafening. Still, it seemed oddly abstract-like tiny ships, movie miniatures, battling out there on the horizon.

The air show seemed more real, and was certainly more exciting. Our Marine Grummans fought dogfight after dogfight with Jap Zeros and Zekes; dozens of the Jap planes went down, and not one pilot bailed out. Suicide was in their blood. I knew that from the banzai charges.

Whenever a Jap plane went spiraling into the sea, trailing smoke like drunken skywriters, the boys would whoop and cheer, like the crowd at one of Barney’s fights. I never found myself doing that, cheering the battle I mean, and I noticed Barney didn’t either. Maybe it was because we were older than most. Even at a distance this didn’t seem like a game to us, or remotely fun.

The sea battle brought that home, finally. As we all watched silently while an American cruiser spewed smoke, burning orange against the sky, an obscene midafternoon sunset, Barney looked at me with those puppy- dog eyes gone wet in that battered puss of his and said, “Everybody’s watching like it’s a football game or a movie or something. Don’t they know nice guys are getting blown up out there?”

“They know,” I said, noting the wave of silence that had just washed up over the beach.

Before long, oil-splotched, water-soaked sailors were being brought ashore by rescue boats, among them the PT boats stationed on nearby Tulagi. The plywood torpedo boats bore an oddly cheerful insignia: a cartoon of a mosquito riding a torpedo, drawn by Walt Disney, so it was said. This Hollywood touch seemed perfect to me when I recognized the commander of the boat, who at the moment was helping usher a dazed seaman from the boat onto the narrow shore of Red Beach; his crew was helping similarly dazed, drenched, sometimes wounded gobs.

We were all moving out of the front row of trees to lend a hand, and I moved toward the familiar face.

“Lieutenant Montgomery,” I said, saluting.

His smoothly handsome face streaked with grease, Montgomery didn’t return the salute, his hands full. I could tell he didn’t recognize me.

But he did say, “Lend a hand, would you, Private?”

I did, and as we unloaded the boat, pointing the soaked human cargo toward Henderson Field, other Marines pitching in to walk them there, Montgomery paused to look at me hard and say, “Don’t I know you?”

I managed a smile. “I’m Nate Heller.”

“The detective, yes. What in God’s name are you doing here? You’re easily past thirty-five, I should think.”

“So are you. I got drunk and woke up the next morning in the Marines. What’s your excuse?”

He smiled; even grease-streaked and in wartime, it was the sort of sophisticated, vaguely intellectual smile that had typecast him as British in the movies, even though he was as American as the next guy.

He didn’t answer my question, but posed his own: “You know what we’d be doing right now, if we hadn’t got noble and enlisted?”

“No, sir, I don’t.”

“Testifying to a grand jury, or getting ready to.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Bioff/Nitti affair has really hit the fan, back home.”

“No kidding. I wish they’d subpoena me back there.”

“No such luck,” he smiled. Looking past me, he said, “Isn’t that Barney Ross, the boxer?”

“No,” I said. “That’s Barney Ross, the raggedy-ass Marine.”

“Like to meet him sometime.”

“Maybe you will. It’s a small world, you know.”

“Too goddamn, these days. Got to shove off.”

We shook hands, and he climbed on board, and I turned back toward the beach, where Barney was guiding a wet, groggy sailor toward the airfield.

“Wasn’t that Robert Montgomery you were earbangin’ over there? The actor?”

“Nope,” I said. “That was Lieutenant j.g. Henry Montgomery, the PT boat commander.”