WW1/WW2 Creative Historians Short Story
Reflection
Short story
By Quinn Deffenbaugh
The battle against Japan would become much easier after we capture this island, that’s what our corporal told us as we boarded the LVT. The weather was bad, so bad that our LVT might flip without help from the Japanese guns. This would be my first landing; I cling to my M-1 as if it were the only thing that was keeping me alive. The pack of medical equipment is heavy on my back, as if it knew that it would soon be emptied on the men whose blood spilled on the black sand of this island. The LVT jumps under me as it starts for the coast, it’s brow cuts the choppy sea in it’s rush to get to the coast. The commanders had informed us that the Japs would be shooting at us from the moment that we were in range, yet the LVTs ahead of us are untouched; not a shot has been fired. We cross the firing range line of the Japanese guns without incident and continue on to the island. The LVTs ahead of us hit the island and are met by silence. The metal, slick from the sea spry, crunches softly into the black sand, bringing with it more marines. The sand sucks at my feet as I make my way towards the others. The heavy pack forces me deeper into the sand as I try to make it off the beach. The landing is now filled with marines, and our armor starts to arrive. As soon as the tanks and halftracks touch the sand they begin to sink. Yet the Japanese continue to remain silent, we know that it is dangerous to assume anything about our enemy, but we can’t help hoping that the bombardment killed all of the soldiers defending the island. I am now with the vanguard and can almost touch the edge of the beach. While before it was hope that all the japs were dead, now it is anxiety that they are waiting for us. Something catches my eye up ahead, it looks to be a machinegun position that was destroyed by the bombardment, but there is something wrong with it. Then a binding fear takes hold in my body, the position is underground and was covered before the shell destroyed it. I begin to shout out a warning, but it is cut short by a tremendous noise. The earth seems to have disappeared in front of us, replaced by a wall of fire. Men fall like wheat before the scythe, their flesh torn and ripped by thousands of bullets. The wounded’s cries are drowned by the incessant machinegun fire. My body flings itself down without command, I crush into the moist sand, cold moments before, now warm with blood. There is a man moaning beside me, a bullet has passed through his lungs. There is pleading in his eyes as he stares at the Red Cross on my shoulder. I can’t save this man. I look to my left and there is another marine shot through the knee, he is bleeding out from his femoral artery. I crawl towards him, but am halted by a tank that has gotten itself out of the sand and is blazing a path for us with its flamethrower. As soon as it passes I begin to crawl again, but when I reach the wounded marine, he is dead. More tanks and marines with flamethrowers begin to clear the area. As soon as the barrage slows I begin to search for wounded. I find a man who is shot in the shoulder; he will survive without my help. Another cries for me, he is gut shot, with the bullet stuck in his stomach, I give him a shot of morphine and another of penicillin, then I cut through the bullet hole and remove the bullet, throwing a bandage on it and move on. We have secured the beach, although it was costly. More than a thousand men have fallen just on the beach; I have almost run out of medical supplies and ammunition.
Darkness descends over our position, bringing with it true fear. On the beach, marines are mentally prepared to spit in death’s face. But during the night, the enemy uses the cover of darkness to slit throats and shoot the sleeping. It is one thing to die on the beach fighting; it is another entirely to die sleeping. A few of the new recruits are gathered in a circle around a lantern. Being new myself, and not knowing any others, I join them. As I get closer, I start to recognize some of the faces from the beach. On the far side of the group is a scrawny boy; he looks like a scarecrow, his eyes sunk into his skull, his face is featureless and emotionless. He has been thrown into shock by what he saw on the beach. The man nearest to me, who has his back to me, is a giant of man, with a large burn mark on the back of his neck and head. I saw this man with a flamethrower burning a machine gun nest with such vigor and enthusiasm that he burned his whole tank on just a handful of men. The last man in the group is the oldest, he looks as if he were at least 25, he seems to be keeping to himself while still engaging in the conversation.
“Hey you, medic, get over here.”
The big man beckons me over, I oblige eagerly.
“This here is Little Jimmy, over there is Mathew, and I’m John.”
Little Jimmy continues to stare at the lantern without acknowledging my presence. Matt however, shakes my hand. John has a very strong southern accent. When I ask him where he’s from, he answers “Georgia” and offers me a cigarette. John seems to be the leader of this group, even though Mathew is older than any one.
“You see that bigass mountain? That there probably has about a million chinks sittin’ on it, just watchin’ us, getting ready to shoot us up.”
“Yeh, and your giant ass is gonna make a pretty nice target.” Little Jimmy mutters under his breath without looking up from the lantern.
Suddenly, a gunshot rings through the camp, followed by uninterpretable yelling. We sprint in the direction of the shot. All of us have drawn weapons, but when we arrive they are not needed. A single Japanese soldier has snuck into the camp and sliced the throat of a Navajo code talker. The gunshot was the other code talker shooting the assailant. The commanders told us that at night the Japanese would attack us with banzai attacks. And that we should prepare for 50 or more to attack, not a single soldier. Throughout the night there were more attacks, someone would call out for a marine and then shoot them, or they would take a pack or two from the front of the latrines.
The morning comes cold and windy, and brings with it more fighting. We are pushing south on this dreadful smatter of sulfur, towards Airfield 1. The bad weather has made it difficult to get more tanks and soldiers onto the island. The rain has made the ash into a sticky mess, making it hard for us to make our way forward. Matt struggles alongside me. Little Jimmy and John are joking a couple yards away. Matt looks at the ground in disgust.
“What is this? We can’t fight and run in this, we will be cut down before we can do anything.”
He has a fair point. We have to capture an airfield today and even the light rain makes it miserable. Through the rain I start to see a runway, a long strip of flat rock, out of place on the island. Slowly, the rest of the airstrip becomes visible to us. By now we are painfully aware that the apparent lack of soldiers defending the airfield is deceptive. We move in amongst the hangers; at the end of the airfield we begin to enter the hangers, which is where we expect the Japanese defenders to be hiding. While there is some fighting in the hangers, only a few marines fall. As we begin to clear the last hanger Little Jimmy and I stay outside. Little Jimmy takes out a pack of cigarettes and offers me one, I decline and he takes one for himself. John yells something and I look back into the hanger, it’s nothing important. I hear an loud smack and I turn back to Jimmy. He is lying face up on the ground, with half of his mouth blown off. Before this can sink in, a sharp crack echoes through the airfield. The sniper must have been very far away, however I still search the surrounding hills for the shooter. The rest of the platoon rush out of their hangers to see what the shot was. Upon their arrival they see Jimmy writhing in a growing pool of his own blood. John grabs me by my shoulders and forces me down, so that I am face to face with Jimmy.
“Fix him!” John cries at me, tears welling in his eyes.
“I can’t, I can give him some drugs to make it easier, but I can’t fix him.”
I try to remain as calm as possible, even though inside my whole body screams at me to run as far and as fast as I can. I take out a syringe of morphine and inject him with a double lethal dose. I don’t inform the squad of what I’m doing; I feel it’s best if they don’t know that I’m the one who has killed Jimmy. Slowly, ever so slowly, Jimmy’s face relaxes, as the light leaves his eyes.
Tonight, there is none of the joking and laughter that there was yesterday. Jimmy is dead, and we lost many men on a first assault on Mt Suribachi. As if to add to our miseries, the rain, which has been light so far, begins to come harder, turning the already messy ash into a glue-like substance that makes movement almost impossible. During the night I am continuously woken by lights fired from battleships off the coast. The lights are to let us see the night attacks; despite this we lose about 10 more men tonight.
It is hard to tell when the morning begins, however that problem is solved by a corporal shooting three rounds into the sky. Breakfast is simple rations and water, with a hint of sulfur. Moral was already low before the corporal tells us that we are being moved to assault Mt. Suribachi. A halftrack takes us to our lines to the south. We will have to assault the mountain on foot, without armor. Because of the weather, command has had a hard time getting fuel to us. The final preparations are being made, ammo is distributed, prayers are said, and letters are written. When all of this is finished, we are finally ready.
Mt. Suribachi rises above us like an ominous, foreboding giant, a deadly and dangerous force. We know that all this will gain us is pain and sorrow, but we also know that we must capture this section of the island. Throughout our engagement here, we have been fired upon constantly by Suribachi’s guns. These have already killed hundreds of marines and will kill hundreds more if we don’t take them out. As we advance towards the mountain, the Japanese break their now customary silence, and fire on us from the moment that we are in range. Because of the bombardment, vegetation is nonexistent on the island; however, it did leave shell holes that we can take cover in. The wounded are too many to count; I am surrounded by men who are crying for me, their voices swirling around me, driving me insane. As the body count rises we are no closer to the mountain. It is almost impossible to make our way forward, as it is slowed by the adhesive-like ash, and the rain of death from Suribachi. Two Corsairs scream over us, one explodes into fire and crashes into a marine position ahead of us, the other delivers its payload and peels away. The radio of a code talker next to us crackles to life and begins speaking in the Navajo code. The code talker listens for a minute, then shouts to us,
“Howlin’ Mad Smith just gave us tanks!”
“What’s the ETA?”
He flashes his fingers to indicate 10 minutes. The prospect of waiting 10 minutes for armor is daunting at best, but it gives us something to cling to as we see our comrades fall all around us. My thoughts are cut short by a body flung into the shell hole, his legs blown off by a shell. As soon as he lands he screams, an animal scream, reserved for young animals who are at the end. As I begin to bandage his leg, I notice that he is much younger than all the other marines; he can’t be more than 14. I can’t imagine what his mother is thinking; he should be in school, kissing girls, not killing people 1,000 miles from home. I can’t send him home in a body bag; I begin to work feverishly to save this boy. Just as I finish, a Japanese machine gun cuts his head in half. I collapse, his blood and brains covering me; I can’t believe that a boy that young could die that way, and in so much pain. Another man slides into our hole, this one very much alive and kicking, his rifle blazing before he is even on his feet. He lands next to me, I look him over for wounds and his name catches my eye, “Hays”. I look at his face and see pure determination in it. Here is a man who won’t stop until the battle is won and Japan is a burning pile of ashes and stone. But I also see pain that has been shoved into his subconscious, pain that will come out in negative ways later in his life, but for now he will be invaluable to the war effort. Hays jumps out of the hole and moves on.
A rumbling behind us brings with it the saviors of the day, our armor. The Shermans roll by us, absorbing all the heat of battle. The tanks allow us to move forward towards the mountain. Where at first we were exposed and in perfect view, now we are able to take cover behind the tanks and be relatively safe. The Japanese machine guns are useless against the heavy armor, the only thing that can defend against our relentless push forward are Surbachi’s big guns. Despite the fact that Suribachi has many of these, the tanks make good time to the base of the mountain, once they can’t go any further, they turn their cannons against Suribachi and provide cover for us. The explosions rattle me to the core as we begin to climb Mt Suribachi, their incessant rumbling making it hard to find footing on the unforgiving sulfur. As we get farther up, we begin to find caves puncturing the mountain. The farther we climb the more we find that the caves are the Japs way of moving around the mountain. We get fired on from the front by machine guns and from the behind by rifle men. The wounded pile upon each other making it difficult to determine who needs treatment and who doesn’t. The Navajo code talker, who earlier gave us the news of tanks, now relays the orders for a quarter of our forces to enter the caves and engage the defenders inside the mountain. The corporals decide that the bottom quarter of our forces should enter the cave closest to them. Unfortunately, Matt and I are in the bottom of the group, so we have to enter the caves. The next cave is about 10 yards to the right of us. Matt and I, and about 20 others take positions around the cave; two marines stand on either side, and throw a grenade into it. After the blast we hear moaning from the cave. Knowing that there will be defenders as soon as we set foot in the cave, we enter cautiously. The grenade has killed three Japs, and wounded two more. The wounded are dispatched quietly with knives, and the dead are thrown out of the cave onto the surface of the mountain. The caves are wet, with an inch of water on the floor; the smell of sulfur is overpowering, burning my nostrils and throat. As we progress farther into the caves, more and more marines break off into other caves, eventually leaving Matt and I together. The sunless cavern leaves everything to be imaged, the occasional gunshot or two only adds to the nightmare that we seem to be living in. The walls seem to be excreting their own light, a soft yet cold light. However unwelcoming it is, the light gives us view of our surroundings for the first time, we are in a very narrow corridor that makes a sharp right, around the corner seems to be the source of the light.
I am in front of Matt so I round the corner first; what I see makes me stop in my tracks. There are five Japanese soldiers and two marines, the marines are stripped and hanging from the ceiling by their hands, their bodies bloodied beyond recognition. Two of the Japanese have rifles and are guarding the entrance, two more have bloody knives and are standing by the prisoners, the last is sitting on a stool, watching the process. I freeze; I can’t believe what I am seeing. I want to kill all of them, but my arms won’t raise my rifle. Matt’s M-3 bursts to life, it’s barrel spitting fire at the two guards. The leader jumps to his feet, his side arm in hand; the two interrogators also draw side arms. Matt has run out of ammo. The two guards lie dead, but the others are untouched. The leader raises his pistol, smiling, and fires, the shot seems to blind me, and rings through the cavern. Matt falls, a bloody hole in his head. I drop to my knees, the sulfur water splashes into me eyes. Strength surges through my body, I can fix Matt, I have to fix Matt. I feverishly use everything I can reach to restore Matt, he can’t be dead, I was talking to him moments before. I look up in time to see the leader turn his gun on me. I only feel the impacts, my body is already numb. If I didn’t pause, Matt could still be alive. Through my darkening vision I see the two interrogators walk to me, as if they were spiders, creeping upon pry caught in their web. As they near me, I see them pause and raise their revolvers, but before they can shoot, they are engulfed in flame. A massive foot is planted by my head and the man torches the commander. Through the haze I see a burn mark on the back of the man’s head.
I awake in a soft white bed, in a cold metal room. I look around, I am in a hospital on a ship. The other beds are full, some have men, some have bodies. There is a nurse giving the man next to me a drink, when she is finished she turns to me. She’s a pretty girl, small, yet seasoned for her age.
“Oh, you’re awake!” she exclaims.
“Yeh, where are we?”
“On the USS Washington.”
“Washington? What is today?”
“February 25.”
I have slept for three days. My stomach aches, from both lack of food and the bullets. Then, what happened in the caves comes rushing back like a downpour of pain. The bloody prisoners, and the smile of the commander as he executed me and Matt. Matt who might be alive if I hadn’t frozen, Matt who defended me with his life. The beckoning of sleep becomes too much to resist, I sink into the inky blackness.
When I awake again, the metal walls of the ship have been replaced by off-white plaster walls. The rows of wounded have been removed, with a single man taking their places. His face is distorted by the clinging fog of sleep, but as it wears off I can start to make out the features of his face. The man sees my eyes flutter open and moves next to me.
“Luke? Son, are you awake?”
The face is no longer muddied, it is the face of my childhood, it is a face of strength and of endurance; it is the face of my father.
“Luke? Son, are you awake?”
“Yeh dad, I am.”
“Luke, did you know a man named Mathew? He wrote letters to his wife and son about you, and now they want to meet you, and ask you about him.”
My chest tightens, strangling my heart. Matt’s family will ask me about their dead provider, and what can I tell them? I can’t tell his son that he is dead because of me, I can’t tell his wife that he was executed while I didn’t fire a shot. The creaking of the door plucks me from my thoughts. I am expecting to see a small child and woman, however, I am surprised by the hospital bed that is being pushed through the doorway. The man on the bed is restrained, but is unmoving. The bed turns to me and I see a face that seems to drain the light from the world. It is the face of a dead man come life. Matt stares back at me with a dead, blank, stare.
By Quinn Deffenbaugh
The battle against Japan would become much easier after we capture this island, that’s what our corporal told us as we boarded the LVT. The weather was bad, so bad that our LVT might flip without help from the Japanese guns. This would be my first landing; I cling to my M-1 as if it were the only thing that was keeping me alive. The pack of medical equipment is heavy on my back, as if it knew that it would soon be emptied on the men whose blood spilled on the black sand of this island. The LVT jumps under me as it starts for the coast, it’s brow cuts the choppy sea in it’s rush to get to the coast. The commanders had informed us that the Japs would be shooting at us from the moment that we were in range, yet the LVTs ahead of us are untouched; not a shot has been fired. We cross the firing range line of the Japanese guns without incident and continue on to the island. The LVTs ahead of us hit the island and are met by silence. The metal, slick from the sea spry, crunches softly into the black sand, bringing with it more marines. The sand sucks at my feet as I make my way towards the others. The heavy pack forces me deeper into the sand as I try to make it off the beach. The landing is now filled with marines, and our armor starts to arrive. As soon as the tanks and halftracks touch the sand they begin to sink. Yet the Japanese continue to remain silent, we know that it is dangerous to assume anything about our enemy, but we can’t help hoping that the bombardment killed all of the soldiers defending the island. I am now with the vanguard and can almost touch the edge of the beach. While before it was hope that all the japs were dead, now it is anxiety that they are waiting for us. Something catches my eye up ahead, it looks to be a machinegun position that was destroyed by the bombardment, but there is something wrong with it. Then a binding fear takes hold in my body, the position is underground and was covered before the shell destroyed it. I begin to shout out a warning, but it is cut short by a tremendous noise. The earth seems to have disappeared in front of us, replaced by a wall of fire. Men fall like wheat before the scythe, their flesh torn and ripped by thousands of bullets. The wounded’s cries are drowned by the incessant machinegun fire. My body flings itself down without command, I crush into the moist sand, cold moments before, now warm with blood. There is a man moaning beside me, a bullet has passed through his lungs. There is pleading in his eyes as he stares at the Red Cross on my shoulder. I can’t save this man. I look to my left and there is another marine shot through the knee, he is bleeding out from his femoral artery. I crawl towards him, but am halted by a tank that has gotten itself out of the sand and is blazing a path for us with its flamethrower. As soon as it passes I begin to crawl again, but when I reach the wounded marine, he is dead. More tanks and marines with flamethrowers begin to clear the area. As soon as the barrage slows I begin to search for wounded. I find a man who is shot in the shoulder; he will survive without my help. Another cries for me, he is gut shot, with the bullet stuck in his stomach, I give him a shot of morphine and another of penicillin, then I cut through the bullet hole and remove the bullet, throwing a bandage on it and move on. We have secured the beach, although it was costly. More than a thousand men have fallen just on the beach; I have almost run out of medical supplies and ammunition.
Darkness descends over our position, bringing with it true fear. On the beach, marines are mentally prepared to spit in death’s face. But during the night, the enemy uses the cover of darkness to slit throats and shoot the sleeping. It is one thing to die on the beach fighting; it is another entirely to die sleeping. A few of the new recruits are gathered in a circle around a lantern. Being new myself, and not knowing any others, I join them. As I get closer, I start to recognize some of the faces from the beach. On the far side of the group is a scrawny boy; he looks like a scarecrow, his eyes sunk into his skull, his face is featureless and emotionless. He has been thrown into shock by what he saw on the beach. The man nearest to me, who has his back to me, is a giant of man, with a large burn mark on the back of his neck and head. I saw this man with a flamethrower burning a machine gun nest with such vigor and enthusiasm that he burned his whole tank on just a handful of men. The last man in the group is the oldest, he looks as if he were at least 25, he seems to be keeping to himself while still engaging in the conversation.
“Hey you, medic, get over here.”
The big man beckons me over, I oblige eagerly.
“This here is Little Jimmy, over there is Mathew, and I’m John.”
Little Jimmy continues to stare at the lantern without acknowledging my presence. Matt however, shakes my hand. John has a very strong southern accent. When I ask him where he’s from, he answers “Georgia” and offers me a cigarette. John seems to be the leader of this group, even though Mathew is older than any one.
“You see that bigass mountain? That there probably has about a million chinks sittin’ on it, just watchin’ us, getting ready to shoot us up.”
“Yeh, and your giant ass is gonna make a pretty nice target.” Little Jimmy mutters under his breath without looking up from the lantern.
Suddenly, a gunshot rings through the camp, followed by uninterpretable yelling. We sprint in the direction of the shot. All of us have drawn weapons, but when we arrive they are not needed. A single Japanese soldier has snuck into the camp and sliced the throat of a Navajo code talker. The gunshot was the other code talker shooting the assailant. The commanders told us that at night the Japanese would attack us with banzai attacks. And that we should prepare for 50 or more to attack, not a single soldier. Throughout the night there were more attacks, someone would call out for a marine and then shoot them, or they would take a pack or two from the front of the latrines.
The morning comes cold and windy, and brings with it more fighting. We are pushing south on this dreadful smatter of sulfur, towards Airfield 1. The bad weather has made it difficult to get more tanks and soldiers onto the island. The rain has made the ash into a sticky mess, making it hard for us to make our way forward. Matt struggles alongside me. Little Jimmy and John are joking a couple yards away. Matt looks at the ground in disgust.
“What is this? We can’t fight and run in this, we will be cut down before we can do anything.”
He has a fair point. We have to capture an airfield today and even the light rain makes it miserable. Through the rain I start to see a runway, a long strip of flat rock, out of place on the island. Slowly, the rest of the airstrip becomes visible to us. By now we are painfully aware that the apparent lack of soldiers defending the airfield is deceptive. We move in amongst the hangers; at the end of the airfield we begin to enter the hangers, which is where we expect the Japanese defenders to be hiding. While there is some fighting in the hangers, only a few marines fall. As we begin to clear the last hanger Little Jimmy and I stay outside. Little Jimmy takes out a pack of cigarettes and offers me one, I decline and he takes one for himself. John yells something and I look back into the hanger, it’s nothing important. I hear an loud smack and I turn back to Jimmy. He is lying face up on the ground, with half of his mouth blown off. Before this can sink in, a sharp crack echoes through the airfield. The sniper must have been very far away, however I still search the surrounding hills for the shooter. The rest of the platoon rush out of their hangers to see what the shot was. Upon their arrival they see Jimmy writhing in a growing pool of his own blood. John grabs me by my shoulders and forces me down, so that I am face to face with Jimmy.
“Fix him!” John cries at me, tears welling in his eyes.
“I can’t, I can give him some drugs to make it easier, but I can’t fix him.”
I try to remain as calm as possible, even though inside my whole body screams at me to run as far and as fast as I can. I take out a syringe of morphine and inject him with a double lethal dose. I don’t inform the squad of what I’m doing; I feel it’s best if they don’t know that I’m the one who has killed Jimmy. Slowly, ever so slowly, Jimmy’s face relaxes, as the light leaves his eyes.
Tonight, there is none of the joking and laughter that there was yesterday. Jimmy is dead, and we lost many men on a first assault on Mt Suribachi. As if to add to our miseries, the rain, which has been light so far, begins to come harder, turning the already messy ash into a glue-like substance that makes movement almost impossible. During the night I am continuously woken by lights fired from battleships off the coast. The lights are to let us see the night attacks; despite this we lose about 10 more men tonight.
It is hard to tell when the morning begins, however that problem is solved by a corporal shooting three rounds into the sky. Breakfast is simple rations and water, with a hint of sulfur. Moral was already low before the corporal tells us that we are being moved to assault Mt. Suribachi. A halftrack takes us to our lines to the south. We will have to assault the mountain on foot, without armor. Because of the weather, command has had a hard time getting fuel to us. The final preparations are being made, ammo is distributed, prayers are said, and letters are written. When all of this is finished, we are finally ready.
Mt. Suribachi rises above us like an ominous, foreboding giant, a deadly and dangerous force. We know that all this will gain us is pain and sorrow, but we also know that we must capture this section of the island. Throughout our engagement here, we have been fired upon constantly by Suribachi’s guns. These have already killed hundreds of marines and will kill hundreds more if we don’t take them out. As we advance towards the mountain, the Japanese break their now customary silence, and fire on us from the moment that we are in range. Because of the bombardment, vegetation is nonexistent on the island; however, it did leave shell holes that we can take cover in. The wounded are too many to count; I am surrounded by men who are crying for me, their voices swirling around me, driving me insane. As the body count rises we are no closer to the mountain. It is almost impossible to make our way forward, as it is slowed by the adhesive-like ash, and the rain of death from Suribachi. Two Corsairs scream over us, one explodes into fire and crashes into a marine position ahead of us, the other delivers its payload and peels away. The radio of a code talker next to us crackles to life and begins speaking in the Navajo code. The code talker listens for a minute, then shouts to us,
“Howlin’ Mad Smith just gave us tanks!”
“What’s the ETA?”
He flashes his fingers to indicate 10 minutes. The prospect of waiting 10 minutes for armor is daunting at best, but it gives us something to cling to as we see our comrades fall all around us. My thoughts are cut short by a body flung into the shell hole, his legs blown off by a shell. As soon as he lands he screams, an animal scream, reserved for young animals who are at the end. As I begin to bandage his leg, I notice that he is much younger than all the other marines; he can’t be more than 14. I can’t imagine what his mother is thinking; he should be in school, kissing girls, not killing people 1,000 miles from home. I can’t send him home in a body bag; I begin to work feverishly to save this boy. Just as I finish, a Japanese machine gun cuts his head in half. I collapse, his blood and brains covering me; I can’t believe that a boy that young could die that way, and in so much pain. Another man slides into our hole, this one very much alive and kicking, his rifle blazing before he is even on his feet. He lands next to me, I look him over for wounds and his name catches my eye, “Hays”. I look at his face and see pure determination in it. Here is a man who won’t stop until the battle is won and Japan is a burning pile of ashes and stone. But I also see pain that has been shoved into his subconscious, pain that will come out in negative ways later in his life, but for now he will be invaluable to the war effort. Hays jumps out of the hole and moves on.
A rumbling behind us brings with it the saviors of the day, our armor. The Shermans roll by us, absorbing all the heat of battle. The tanks allow us to move forward towards the mountain. Where at first we were exposed and in perfect view, now we are able to take cover behind the tanks and be relatively safe. The Japanese machine guns are useless against the heavy armor, the only thing that can defend against our relentless push forward are Surbachi’s big guns. Despite the fact that Suribachi has many of these, the tanks make good time to the base of the mountain, once they can’t go any further, they turn their cannons against Suribachi and provide cover for us. The explosions rattle me to the core as we begin to climb Mt Suribachi, their incessant rumbling making it hard to find footing on the unforgiving sulfur. As we get farther up, we begin to find caves puncturing the mountain. The farther we climb the more we find that the caves are the Japs way of moving around the mountain. We get fired on from the front by machine guns and from the behind by rifle men. The wounded pile upon each other making it difficult to determine who needs treatment and who doesn’t. The Navajo code talker, who earlier gave us the news of tanks, now relays the orders for a quarter of our forces to enter the caves and engage the defenders inside the mountain. The corporals decide that the bottom quarter of our forces should enter the cave closest to them. Unfortunately, Matt and I are in the bottom of the group, so we have to enter the caves. The next cave is about 10 yards to the right of us. Matt and I, and about 20 others take positions around the cave; two marines stand on either side, and throw a grenade into it. After the blast we hear moaning from the cave. Knowing that there will be defenders as soon as we set foot in the cave, we enter cautiously. The grenade has killed three Japs, and wounded two more. The wounded are dispatched quietly with knives, and the dead are thrown out of the cave onto the surface of the mountain. The caves are wet, with an inch of water on the floor; the smell of sulfur is overpowering, burning my nostrils and throat. As we progress farther into the caves, more and more marines break off into other caves, eventually leaving Matt and I together. The sunless cavern leaves everything to be imaged, the occasional gunshot or two only adds to the nightmare that we seem to be living in. The walls seem to be excreting their own light, a soft yet cold light. However unwelcoming it is, the light gives us view of our surroundings for the first time, we are in a very narrow corridor that makes a sharp right, around the corner seems to be the source of the light.
I am in front of Matt so I round the corner first; what I see makes me stop in my tracks. There are five Japanese soldiers and two marines, the marines are stripped and hanging from the ceiling by their hands, their bodies bloodied beyond recognition. Two of the Japanese have rifles and are guarding the entrance, two more have bloody knives and are standing by the prisoners, the last is sitting on a stool, watching the process. I freeze; I can’t believe what I am seeing. I want to kill all of them, but my arms won’t raise my rifle. Matt’s M-3 bursts to life, it’s barrel spitting fire at the two guards. The leader jumps to his feet, his side arm in hand; the two interrogators also draw side arms. Matt has run out of ammo. The two guards lie dead, but the others are untouched. The leader raises his pistol, smiling, and fires, the shot seems to blind me, and rings through the cavern. Matt falls, a bloody hole in his head. I drop to my knees, the sulfur water splashes into me eyes. Strength surges through my body, I can fix Matt, I have to fix Matt. I feverishly use everything I can reach to restore Matt, he can’t be dead, I was talking to him moments before. I look up in time to see the leader turn his gun on me. I only feel the impacts, my body is already numb. If I didn’t pause, Matt could still be alive. Through my darkening vision I see the two interrogators walk to me, as if they were spiders, creeping upon pry caught in their web. As they near me, I see them pause and raise their revolvers, but before they can shoot, they are engulfed in flame. A massive foot is planted by my head and the man torches the commander. Through the haze I see a burn mark on the back of the man’s head.
I awake in a soft white bed, in a cold metal room. I look around, I am in a hospital on a ship. The other beds are full, some have men, some have bodies. There is a nurse giving the man next to me a drink, when she is finished she turns to me. She’s a pretty girl, small, yet seasoned for her age.
“Oh, you’re awake!” she exclaims.
“Yeh, where are we?”
“On the USS Washington.”
“Washington? What is today?”
“February 25.”
I have slept for three days. My stomach aches, from both lack of food and the bullets. Then, what happened in the caves comes rushing back like a downpour of pain. The bloody prisoners, and the smile of the commander as he executed me and Matt. Matt who might be alive if I hadn’t frozen, Matt who defended me with his life. The beckoning of sleep becomes too much to resist, I sink into the inky blackness.
When I awake again, the metal walls of the ship have been replaced by off-white plaster walls. The rows of wounded have been removed, with a single man taking their places. His face is distorted by the clinging fog of sleep, but as it wears off I can start to make out the features of his face. The man sees my eyes flutter open and moves next to me.
“Luke? Son, are you awake?”
The face is no longer muddied, it is the face of my childhood, it is a face of strength and of endurance; it is the face of my father.
“Luke? Son, are you awake?”
“Yeh dad, I am.”
“Luke, did you know a man named Mathew? He wrote letters to his wife and son about you, and now they want to meet you, and ask you about him.”
My chest tightens, strangling my heart. Matt’s family will ask me about their dead provider, and what can I tell them? I can’t tell his son that he is dead because of me, I can’t tell his wife that he was executed while I didn’t fire a shot. The creaking of the door plucks me from my thoughts. I am expecting to see a small child and woman, however, I am surprised by the hospital bed that is being pushed through the doorway. The man on the bed is restrained, but is unmoving. The bed turns to me and I see a face that seems to drain the light from the world. It is the face of a dead man come life. Matt stares back at me with a dead, blank, stare.