I walked away from the Command Center thinking about what was ahead the next day. Frankly, I had to give accolades to the men. They had physically endured the most difficult conditions with virtually no grumbling. Well, not many of us were excited about eating Spam, but the guys bit their lips or joked about having leg of pig for supper. The 381st and 382nd were one tough bunch.
The smell of war hung in the air. The constant firing of cannons sent a wave of acidic smoke that burned your nostrils. Gunfire, antitank firearms, relentless shelling with grenades or mortars blended into an aroma of destruction. And of course, the scent of death, of decaying bodies, turned your stomach. Nobody talked about these awful odors and we sure as hell didn’t write home about it, but the stink stayed.
I got into my jeep and turned on the ignition. Even the jeep had a barbecued petroleum smell. As I prepared to pull out, a memory came to mind. Hadn’t thought about that odorous experience for years.
I must have been around nine years old when my stomach started aching with a steady, dull throbbing sensation. As boys will, I ignored it, but the hurting didn’t stop. That particular morning, I started my usual walk to school, but I only got a couple of blocks when I crumbled to the ground. I couldn’t walk any farther.
The best I could do was to crawl back to our house. I pulled myself through the doorway and sprawled on the floor.
“Lord, help us!” my mother nearly screamed. “What’s happened?”
I moaned. “My stomach’s killing me.”
“Get in here in that bed.” She picked me up and carried me over to their soft bed.
I tried to catch my breath, but the agony made it hard even to breathe. Even the cat walking across the floor felt like old Tubby made the bed shake. I couldn’t stand it, but I could hear my mother talking on the telephone.
“Yes, Dr. Seibert. Get right over here. Art’s hurtin’ real bad.” For a few moments, she was silent, but then she bellowed. “I mean right now! This minute. Art’s in trouble!”
I heard the receiver click as she hung up the phone attached to the wall. I didn’t want to move.
“Doctor’s on his way,” my mother said, hurrying around the bedroom. “Don’t you fret none. He’s comin’.”
When Dr. Seibert arrived, he immediately started poking around on me. In a few minutes, he stood up. “Beulah, I’m taking this boy to the hospital. We got a big problem. I’m sure his appendix is about to rupture. We can’t waste any time.”
“Oh, God help us!” Mother looked up at the ceiling and grabbed a blanket to throw around me.
Off we went in Dr. Seibert’s old Ford. When we got to the simple country hospital, they wheeled me into the operating room without even hesitating at the door. They told me later the rest of that little adventure.
Apparently, when the doctor began to operate, my appendix burst. The smell was so foul some of the nurses had to leave the room. The stink of that ruptured appendix sent everyone running for fresh air.
Of course, penicillin hadn’t been invented yet. Mother was certain that I would die and apparently the doctor seemed to agree. I guess I didn’t, but for a while I thought I preferred a quick exit from this world. I have no idea how I survived, but I was sick for a long time.
Dr. Seibert and I saw each other so often that we became fast friends. The doc was always chewing on a stogie. Watching him chew on the stub taught me to smoke. Loved the smell. Strange how different scents affect you.
And bring back memories.
* * *
The time had come to jump off. Colonel Cyril Sterner took the Second Battalion of the 382nd up the hill. To our amazement, in forty-five minutes the entire battalion reached the top of the Tanabaru escarpment. At about the same time, the Third Battalion encountered eleven Japanese with two machine guns. In short order, they took them out and marched quickly on to the Tabletop area east of Hill Nine. Anyone acquainted with the previous struggles had to be surprised.
Bradford’s Task Force discovered the same lack of resistance. As the day wore on, our soldiers kept moving forward. The town of Tanabaru fell to us. The Second Battalion captured Hill 143. Taking this hill, which dominated the surrounding area, was important. We were now in a position to observe the flashes of the enemy’s big guns and could accurately hit that target.
By afternoon, we had a different picture. The Japanese cranked up the heavy artillery again and the war was back on.
So far, we’d had a day of sweeping, significant gains, but the area in front of us was formidable enough to chill the blood. The Maeda escarpment had been given another name by the soldiers on the field. Some called it Sawtooth, others Hacksaw Ridge. Those were the kinder names among a host of profane descriptions of this death trap.
The ridge abruptly rose five hundred feet above sea level before being topped by a fifty-foot precipice. Climbing up this sheer wall was possible but only with great difficulty and only at the western side. At the other end, a sheer tower of granite that we called Needle Rock shot straight up in the sky. Small hills stood scattered around the outcropping. Everyone knew we were looking at Dracula’s Castle.
General Easley showed up at an observation post and declared the ridge needed “softening up.” I immediately got the call from headquarters to target the ridge. I gave the coordinates to Sergeant McQuiston and told him to have the men start blasting the entire area. We began blasting a long section of the escarpment. Our objective was to pound every gun position that forward observers could locate. They would send the coordinates to Command Central and in turn the big boys would call them on to us.
The face of this high cliff was covered with machine guns that had excellent observation positions to cut down everyone in front of them. The Japanese really knew what they were doing when they fortified the front of the escarpment. Thirty-six artillery pieces blasted away with what was about the equivalent of 1,616 pounds of ammunition. In response, Corsair aircraft dive-bombed the southeast corner with twenty-four five-hundred-pound bombs and a similar number of hundred-pounders. The Corsairs proved to be one of the greatest fighter aircraft of all time. Pilots used these fast and powerful planes to help turn the tide of the Pacific War. By the end of the war in August 1945, they had knocked out over 2,140 Japanese aircraft. The American pilot kill ratio was eleven to one. The Japanese took it on the chin.
The ground shook, but the enemy kept firing. Any observer could see that we were truly up against a wall. Their rock fortress appeared to be an impregnable defense that somehow we had to figure out how to scale. As our artillery kept firing, I began to realize another dimension to this new confrontation. The enemy’s leaders didn’t seem to care how many soldiers they lost.