“Gotta make another trip,” he said, and scrambled back out.
I’d just taken my own.45 out of its holster when the mortar fire started in; I ducked down into the hole. The shells were landing close. White-hot shrapnel was flying, but it missed us.
It didn’t miss Barney. He was on his way back to us with the rest of the grenades as the burning shrapnel ate into his side, his arm, his leg.
“Bastards, bastard, bastards!” he was screaming.
He stumbled back to the hole and I pulled him down in and put rough dressings on the wounds. The mortar barrage kept pounding on, and on. Like my feverish head. And everybody else but Barney in the goddamn hole was sleeping. That’s war for you-you end up envying guys who passed out.
Then the shelling stopped.
We waited for the lull to explode away; half an hour slipped by, and the lull continued. Darkness blanketed us, now. We’d be hard for the Japs to find at night. But hard for anybody else to find, either.
“How are Fremont and Watkins?” I asked Barney.
“Watkins is conscious, or anyway he was. Fremont’s got his finger in his stomach trying to stop the flow of blood.”
“Jesus.”
“Poor bastard doesn’t stand a chance.”
“I wonder if any of us do.”
“I thought the infantry or B Company would’ve come to the rescue by now.”
“There was a chance of that, till it got dark. They sure as hell won’t try to advance at night.”
He shook his head. “Poor Whitey’s still lyin’ where the boys dropped him. Dead by now. Poor bastard.”
“Only difference between us and him is that we’re already in a hole.”
The mosquitoes were feasting on us, crawling in our hair. Barney was chewing some snuff to keep his thirst at bay-he’d given his water to the wounded men-and I was having a smoke, shaking, sweat dripping down my forehead in a salty waterfall. The fever seemed to keep me from getting hungry, that was something, anyway. But Christ I was thirsty, Jesus I could use some water.
It began to rain.
“Thanks for small favors,” I told the sky.
Barney and I each had a shelter half along, and we covered the two shell holes with the camouflage tenting, or anyway Barney did. I was too weak even for that. The rain seemed to rouse the wounded men and boys to the point of being able to move themselves. We huddled together. As the shelter half collected water, I stuck my head out and tilted the tenting over and drank from its edge; Barney did, too, guzzling at it greedily. We drained the water into a canteen and passed it around to the wounded. Monawk was in especially bad shape, now, conscious, but moaning like a dying man.
The hole stayed fairly dry, but Barney and I would occasionally stick our heads out into the refreshing cloudburst; so did D’Angelo, who seemed in better shape than the others. Thirsty again, I drank from puddles near the edge of the hole.
Heavier and heavier, the rain came down, turning from blessing into curse; the shelter half began to leak, water running in along its sides, the earthen floor of our home turning into a muddy mess. I was starting to chill, now, hugging myself, shivering.
Barney was rubbing his knee.
“Nice weather for arthritis,” I said.
“Ain’t it.”
Then, like all tropical downpours, this one ended as abruptly as it began. We sat under the shelter half, pigs in a wallow, listening to fat droplets finding their way down off the trees above, landing on the tenting like bird droppings.
The wounded, except for D’Angelo, were sleeping, or whatever it was they were doing. I was smoking. I lit one up for D’Angelo and passed it to him; he nodded thanks and sat quietly smoking. My chills had stopped. I felt the fever taking hold again, but by now that seemed only natural. I couldn’t remember what it was like not to have a fever.
“I wonder if I’ll ever see Cathy again,” Barney said.
Did I mention Barney married his pretty blond showgirl just before we left San Diego? Well, he did. She was a gentile, so they had a civil ceremony. I stood up for him. He was writing her General Delivery, Hollywood, almost daily. But he hadn’t got any mail from her, yet.
“Still not a single one,” he said. “My God, d’you suppose maybe she was in an accident, knocked over by a hit-and-run driver or something?”
“She’s fine. Service mail’s always snafued, you know that.”
He kept rubbing his knee, a little pile of grenades next to him. “If by some miracle I stay alive and get back to the States, back to Cathy, I swear the first thing I’ll do is kiss the ground, and never leave the good old U.S.A. again.”
The U.S.A. That sounded so far away.
It was.
“Ma and Ida and my brothers and my ghetto pals,” he was muttering. “I’m never going to see ’em again, am I? Rabbi Stein’ll read a funeral service over me, but who’ll say
I wanted to comfort him, tell him not to give up, but the fever wouldn’t let me. I was having my own thoughts, now.
“Funny thing is,” he said, “I got into this to fight the Nazis, not Japs… I’m a Jew.”
“No kidding,” I managed.
“So are you.”
I couldn’t find a wisecrack; maybe one wasn’t called for. Anyway, I wasn’t up to it. I saw my father. He was sitting at the kitchen table with my gun in his hand. He lifted it to his head and I said, “Stop!”
Then Barney’s hand was over my mouth; he was shaking, wild-eyed. His.45 was in his other hand. We were still under the shelter half. D’Angelo was awake, alert, automatic in hand; the two Army boys were too, similarly armed. Not Monawk-he was slumped, breathing hard.
His mouth right on my ear, Barney whispered: “You passed out. Be quiet. Japs.”
We could hear them walking, twigs snapping, brush rustling. They couldn’t have been more than thirty yards away.
Barney took his hand off my mouth, just as I was getting my.45 off my hip.
Then Monawk awoke, in pain, and screamed.
Barney clasped a hand over the Indian’s mouth, but it was too late.
A machine gun opened up.
D’Angelo dove for Monawk as if to strangle him, but Barney pulled him off.
The machine gun chattered on, swinging in an arc.
That meant they’d heard us, but hadn’t spotted us.
“Bastard’s gonna get us killed,” D’Angelo whispered harshly. Monawk, barely conscious, was confused, to say the least; then his eyes shut as he slipped away again.
Soon mortar shells began to land all around, and bullets zinged at us, as machine guns swept the area. It’s all pretty hazy after that; images floating in a fever dream; one of the soldiers takes a hit in the arm but sucks in his howl and doesn’t give us away; a slug creases Barney’s ankle; bullets flying everywhere; Monawk starts to scream again, but then is quiet, a bullet with his name on it finds its way home.
More clearly, I remember: Barney, flat on his belly in the hole, starting to pitch grenades.
That was safe-it wouldn’t give our position away; the enemy couldn’t tell where the grenades were coming from, in this darkness. He must’ve thrown a couple dozen.
The sun was rising; I was burning up. They’d be coming any minute, climbing over the log, flowing over the edge of the hole,
A mortar shell hit, nearby, rocking the earth.
