A familiar voice roused me from my nap: “All you white tags, get your asses back on The Line. Up and at ’em, ladies; this ain’t the fuckin’ Navy.”
It was, of course, Colonel Sam, who was now sporting a bloody sling on his left arm. He was standing about twenty feet away, surveying the damage—and the casualties. Not everyone had a white tag, I noticed. He’d managed to retain his coffee mug, though, the one I’d “borrowed,” although now it was bloodstained. For a Marine, that probably made the coffee taste better. That strange-looking kid was right next to him. I knew he had to be at least eighteen, but he sure didn’t look it. The colonel spied me.
“Lieutenant Bishop,” he called. “C’mon—we need that grid. You can nap later.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” I croaked back to him. I tried to get up. All that dirt falling on me had taken some of the roundness out of my lower limbs, so I staggered as I tried to get to my feet. There were other men getting up and I was conscious that several of them were in worse shape than I was. And there were body bags, the ubiquitous body bags. Harvest time on Iwo. Some incoming dropped along the ridge above us, blasting a series of notches at the top that were perfectly spaced, like some kind of giant saw blade.
It was going on evening, with a few orange lines painted in the clouds to the west above the ugly black silhouettes of the gunships out there. As I watched, a dark gray shape that had to be a battleship disappeared in clouds of flame as she fired a full salvo at some deserving enemy emplacements. A gentle breeze had sprung up, bringing the all-too-familiar stink of sulfur and carrion. Smell the dead shit? Now you know you’re alive.
I staggered over to the CP tent, passing another crop of filled body bags on the way. They were laid out with military precision, about a dozen. Every man who walked by looked at them, but without moving his head. Apparently, it was bad manners to stare. You didn’t want to know who was in there. A guy you’d been talking to an hour ago. From the same town you were from. Don’t look. Don’t ask. Stay sane.
Some of the guys ahead of me were shedding those white tags, as if ashamed to be “OK” in the presence of all those dead Marines. A bulky sergeant standing near the CP asked me where my piece was. I told him I was Navy and didn’t have one. I had no idea where that shotgun had gone. He snorted contemptuously and then pointed to a stacked-arms collection of various kinds of rifles that had been assembled near the body bags.
“Git you one, Navy,” he grumped. “You cain’t be out here without no rifle.”
“Yes, Sergeant,” I said and walked over to the stack and pulled out a carbine. It had a clip already inserted, and there was a GI can filled with magazine clips right next to the stack. I pulled out two of what I hoped were the right ones, along with a sheathed knife. Then I hurried to get inside the CP tent.
It was almost as if nothing had happened: the cigarette smoke was already turning the air blue, thank God, and the radios were chattering with frantic calls for fire support. There were more lanterns going so I could actually see better than before. There was one difference from the first CP I’d been in—it looked like everyone here, officers and enlisted, had been wounded, and not by that last barrage that had put us in a bunker. Major Murphy gave me the high sign, but he had a radio handset in one hand and a kneepad, so I guessed he was taking in new fire missions. I went to the plotting table, where I discovered three plotters working hard to lay out the new grid over the island chart. I watched what they were doing, made some changes, and then the colonel showed up. His young shadow with that unsettling stare was still with him, as if waiting for orders.
“This thing ready to work?” the colonel asked.
“Yes, sir,” I told him. “All we need now is a spotter who has this grid in front of him.”
“The whole damn thing?”
“No, sir, just the piece that covers where he is and where there are enemy forces visible to him. Here’s what that would look like.”
I lay down a piece of tracing paper and drew the major lines nearest where I postulated the spotter’s position to be—up on a ridge, back of the front line, The Line, but close enough to see where the enemy were holed up. He didn’t have to worry about covering the whole island—just the part in front of him from which his guys, the line units he was supporting, were taking fire.
“Okay, I got that,” the colonel said. “How’s about this, Navy. You wanna help? You pick a position on this big grid that’s in our sector. That big chart right there shows the whole island. I’ll get some people to take you there and then stay with you; you set up shop and then call in to the batteries right here on a freq we’ll give you. You confirm where you think you are. I’ll call the nearest front line unit and tell them where you are and who you are. They’ll give you the targets they need hammered. Then we’ll talk the talk, okay?”
There it was. “How’s about this proposition. You thought this scheme up. Now you go out and play spotter, and we’ll see if it works.” It made sense, though—they wouldn’t have to train a regular Marine spotter over the radio. In a way, I knew I wanted to do it.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “I’ll try. These people who’ll take me there—they artillery people?”
“Um, no, Lieutenant,” he said with a strange expression on his huge face. “They’re grunts, but they’re raiders. They’re Old Breed. Specialists who’ll try their level best to keep you alive. Do exactly what they say and maybe you’ll make it through the next twenty-four hours.”
He laughed when he saw the expression on my face.
“SOBs got ’em a hate-on for artillery spotters, Lieutenant,” he confided. “They’ll send out sniper teams to find you, once they figure out where you are. The guys I’m sending out with you will make you move when they smell trouble coming. Don’t argue with ’em. All three were on the ’Canal and Peleliu. Old Breed Marines. They know their business and they know their enemy.”
Major Murphy was standing behind the colonel. He asked who exactly they should send out with their brand-new spotter. He had a sympathetic look on his face when he glanced at me.
“Round up Goon’s squad,” the colonel said. “This here boy’s gonna need some experienced help out there.”
The strange kid next to him began mumbling numbers that sounded surprisingly like gunfire-mission-control numbers. His eyes stared at the floor, but his hands moved in syncopation with his words, like the conductor of an orchestra. What the hell?
The major told me to sit down on one of the ammo boxes outside right by the entrance to the CP until he got me my new escort. I watched as the activity in the big tent picked up. I’d been right about almost all of them having wounds. You could tell by the way they walked, or tried to use plotting instruments with damaged hands. Some had visible bandages. I guessed that the Japanese were indeed serious about knocking out command and control sites.
I saw the strange guy again. He was now sitting on an overturned and cut down 55-gallon drum. He was watching the plot, and I noticed that his hands were performing a slow-motion washing action and his head bobbing ever so slightly as he stared intently down the length of the table, where several PFCs and corporals manned radio sets on one side, and other Marines, mostly PFCs, sat on the other side, working plotting tools and their Ouija boards.
My escort showed up and introduced himself as Gunny Malone. He gave me a sideways nod and we pushed through the tent flaps and out into the night air. He’d seen me staring at the strange-looking kid.
“That’s Wrecked,” he said in a soft voice that was barely audible amid the noisy babble coming from inside the CP.
“Wrecked?”
“Yeah,” Malone said. “The first day we set up shop we found him down next to a shell crater, just above the beach. All his clothes had been blown right off him. Nekkid as a jaybird. No eyebrows. Nosebleed. Babbling to himself. Limping like his feet hurt. No helmet. No weapon. Shakin’ like a leaf. Wringin’ his hands like you just saw. Cryin’. We tried to talk to him but he was deaf—couldn’t hear shit. Barely can now. But here’s the thing: not a mark on him. No real bleeding. No bruises. Our medic—Navy corpsman—said he’d get him down to the medic station.
“But right then the Japanese found our range and big shells started going off. Wrecked screamed and did a swan dive—like into a swimming pool—into that crater. Three of us joined him—it was a deep crater. Probably Navy stuff; maybe even a Beast. He was down there tryin’ to dig to China, sayin’: not again, not again, not again, about a hundred times a minute. Us three put our heads down and waited it out, saying our prayers. He kept diggin’ the whole time, that not-again shit never stopping.
“Finally the incoming stopped—we were getting used to it by then. Probably big stuff from Suribachi. By the time we finally put our heads up, the CP was on the move—again. Officers callin’ orders everywhere, Sittin’ Bull looking like he wanted to eat somebody alive. We look down into the crater and the kid was still digging, eyes closed, his hands bloody now, total panic. The corpsman had disappeared. Major Murphy said we can’t just leave him, so the three of us went back down there and pulled him up to the top of the crater and then we took him with us.
“We moved about six hundred yards into a gully and set up shop as fast as we could. Generators, tents, antenna field, sentry posts. We had some KIA and some more wounded, so we three couldn’t just sit around with some shell-shocker. I shared a canteen and he just looked at it. I took it back, drank some water, gave it back to him. He drank some water, gave it back to me. I told him to stay right there. He still wouldn’t look at me, but he stayed right there. We got set up and then we had to figure out what to do with him. The colonel came out about then, took one look at him, and you’d think he’d seen a ghost. He said what the hell, and we told him. He said ‘We can’t leave him like that, just like Murphy. Find him some utilities and bring him in the tent.’ We did. The colonel kept looking at him when we brought him in. We’d found some utilities that were too big for him, but at least he wasn’t naked any more. His hands were still goin’. Looked like some kinda teenage boy scout, playin’ Marine. Still scared, but talking now, a little bit, anyway.
“Murphy asked him his name and unit; he couldn’t remember. No dog tags, either. What happened to you? Really big bang. Flying. Landed in the sand. Sleep. Woke up, all alone. Dead guys. I ran away. Tripped, hit my head on something. Sleep.
“‘How old are you,’ one of the other officers asked him. I could see why—he looks like he’s maybe sixteen, max. Don’t know. By then a lotta shit was coming in on the spotter nets, so we put him in a corner and told him to just rest. Way he was, somebody gave him the name ‘Wrecked.’ ’Cause that’s what he is.”
Malone went back inside and then came right back out. He’d been told to get me fitted out. He took me to yet another stash of field gear. I’d lost a lot of my equipment in the bunker collapse. There seemed to be no shortage of individual equipment collections, which spoke volumes about the number of casualties we were experiencing. This time I selected a holstered 1911 .45 caliber pistol as my individual weapon, figuring I’d need both hands free when I went to work out there. Once I had what would be considered a minimum collection of field gear strapped on, the gunny took me back to the CP, where we plopped down on some ammo crates.
It was almost fully dark by now but the flares hadn’t started up yet. Our nearby guns were silent for the moment, visible only as gray shapes in the darkness. There was lots of activity over there, however, as the crews humped ammunition around the emplacement. I asked the gunny where we were going next. He said he didn’t know yet; Major Murphy had told him to wait out here until they had a spotting location set up and a copy of the grid fragment I’d need to work. And Goon’s squad.
I was pretty tired and a bit sore from my underground experience. I asked the gunny where I could get something to eat. He seemed surprised. I told him I’d been something of an orphan since coming ashore. He told me to stay put and headed back into the main CP tent. He was back five minutes later with a small tin can that was warm to the touch.
“Beans and franks,” he announced, proudly. “We warm ’em up on one of the radio equipment cabinets. All those vacuum tubes get hot.”
He handed over a plastic spoon that felt suspiciously sticky. He’d also brought out a mug of coffee. The mug had a crack in it; I had to drink it halfway down to make it stop leaking all over my hand. I finished off the C ration in about six bites and felt much better. The gunny had his own coffee mug. He offered me a cigarette.
I was what people called a social smoker—I’d accept a cigarette if someone offered, mostly to be polite. Our guns may have been quiet, but there were plenty of other ones which weren’t. The island was flat enough that we could see some of our own artillery blasting away and then the corresponding red and yellow flashes downrange as their shells landed. Then bright yellow flashes as they shot back.
Now that it was dark the rattle of infantry weapons was much reduced. There’d be flashes of gunfire offshore—mostly five-inch from destroyers—which would illuminate the ships in orange-yellow light themselves for a fraction of a second each time they fired, like a photographer’s flashbulb. There were patrols starting out from the CP area to set up night defensive positions around “our” hill. Silent forms, bent forward under packs of ammo and water, trudged out into the darkness. Water was crucial. Killing created quite a thirst. I learned there was no fresh water on the island.
“Another two hours, the bastards’ll start creeping out of their tunnels,” Malone said. “They come out in onesies and twosies and try to sneak up on our front line foxholes and mortar pits. First thing you know, some bad dream flops down into your hole and starts screaming and swinging steel. I wish we had us some war-dogs.”
“I’m surprised we don’t,” I said. “I’ve read they’ve got ’em in the ETO, and so do the Germans.”
“I heard we did bring some,” he said with a sigh. “But word is they ran away with all the incoming and then the Japanese ate ’em. The Navy’s had this island buttoned up for weeks now. No supplies gettin’ through. You don’t mind me askin’, Loot—what’s this new grid deal?”
“In principle, same as the grid you’ve been taught all along,” I said. “The big difference is that now each division has its own grid which they lay down over their area of responsibility. That means all fire support requests have to come up the chain of command—battalion, regiment, sometimes even division CPs. This new grid covers the whole island with one grid. In theory that means that any spotter, no matter where he is, can call in a mission directly to any guns he can get comms with.”
Gunny nodded. “I get that,” he said. “Oughta get rounds on target a whole lot quicker. I’m the chief radio tech in there; I get to listen to those guys out there callin’ in for arty. Too many times our GLO goes back to ’em with ready guns and he don’t answer up anymore.”
He looked at his watch. “Lemme go see how they’re comin’ in there. We need to get you out on station before it gets too late and the bastards start creepin’ around.”
“Iwo’s their ground,” I said. “They’ve had some time to get ready for us.”
“Got that right,” he said, getting up. “Colonel says this whole island is like a stone sponge and now there’s enemy with a knife in each hole of it. Stay put, Loot.”
“Yes, Boss,” I said. I was a lieutenant; he was a Marine gunnery sergeant. Of course I called him Boss.
He left me out there in the dark, but I was hardly alone. The first set of flares popped while I waited, revealing that there were men moving around the whole CP area—messengers coming in, sentries and scouts headed out, ammo vehicles bringing up more rounds of everything, LVTs grinding back down to the beach with wounded—and, I had to assume, the dead. That awful smell was back, the sulfur and the dead bodies competing to make all the living just want to stop breathing. The only thing I’d ever smelled that came close to it was when one of the swamps about a half mile from the big house at home had turned over.
Malone came back out and told me to hurry up—and wait. He brought more coffee, God bless him. I’d been having withdrawal pains ever since coming ashore. I asked him what was the deal on the “Goon” squad.
“That’s Goon’s squad,” he said, chuckling. “And it’s three guys, not a whole squad. The boss man is Corporal Willy Logan and he’s a Scout Raider; other two guys are, too. Kinda famous in this regiment. Willy Logan was one of my guys on the ’Canal when I was with the First Marine division. Me and him got close after the big Matanikau River deal.”
As Malone told it, Goon’s full name was William Thomas Logan, who was a corporal, from up in the Ozark mountains. Malone said I’d understand the nickname once I saw him; he was, apparently, a dead ringer for the archetypical goon depicted in newspaper cartoons everywhere: six one tall and close to the same wide, with a slab belly, no neck, flattened face with the crooked nose of a boxer, pig eyes, upper arms the size of hams, and heavy, flat hands. He walked with a slouch in size 12 boots and was generally quiet and good-humored except when he wasn’t, and then: brother, watch out.
He’d grown up in the tiny town of Hector, Arkansas, population around five hundred, where his father, William Brown Logan, had owned the only automobile repair garage/gas station in that part of Pope County. William Brown was known for fair trade and mechanical expertise with cars and engines, and Willy, as Goon was called to differentiate him from his father, learned the trade early on. His grandfather was known locally in Pope County to be a moonshiner who’d been cooking since Prohibition, so Willy’s daddy had a discreet but lucrative sideline “fixing” the bootleggers’ vehicles. The pure mountain water coming down from the Boston range of the Ozarks was a major factor in the quality of Pope County moonshine, and it became much sought after in the larger towns of Arkansas. Willy, as a kid, had been mainly used to acquire high-quality white corn from farmers along Missouri’s southern border who were willing to exchange bags of dried corn for a jug or two, but he graduated to running the actual product once he turned sixteen.
Willy had one younger sister, named Mary Lynn, who’d gone astray at the tender age of fourteen, having matured as a sultry, wild-child bleach-blonde with a figure that belied her adolescence. She took to calling herself Marlene and sported provocative clothes while causing havoc among Hector’s teenage boy population. Her father finally had enough of her antics and made her go live with the Methodist preacher and his family of twelve children to be brought up in a strict and respectful fashion on the preacher’s hundred-acre apple orchard and small dairy. The preacher and his wife were known for taking in “God’s strays” and reforming them into proper God-fearing citizens. The preacher’s wife, whose name was Grizelda, ran the whole operation more like a monastery than a family farm. Prayer several times a day, gardening and preserving for the table, milking the cows at three in the morning, sewing sessions for suitably modest clothes, and lots of bible study in the evenings. Mary Lynn secretly complained she’d been banished to the waiting room for Hell.
Mary Lynn toed the line for the first year or so, courtesy of Grizelda’s eagle eye and handiness with a birch rod. At almost seventeen, however, Marlene slithered back into Mary Lynn’s consciousness by pointing out to her that the preacher, a tall, full-bearded, and staunch fundamentalist who was forever quoting scripture and standing in aloof judgment of just about everybody, had been casting some unhealthy glances at Mary Lynn’s ever-ripening body when he thought no one was looking. Mary Lynn saw a way out of what she considered a prison by ever so slowly conducting a campaign of covert seduction on the preacher, a skill she’d perfected in high school. The preacher didn’t stand a chance and inevitably quite a scandal erupted in dear old Hector. But then came the real calamity: Willy’s father and his grandfather, Ebeneezer, took matters into their own hands, shot and wounded the preacher, and then hanged him from one of the preacher’s larger apple trees.
They were taken to the county seat, put on trial for murder, convicted—they proudly admitted to what they’d done—and sentenced by a sympathetic local jury to a year and a day in prison. By then some relatives of the preacher had begun talking up a blood feud. The judge took Willy aside and told him he’d best leave the county and join the Army or whoever would have him.
Willy went down to Little Rock, found a recruiter, and enlisted. He served one year, until the pre-enlistment physical exam he’d never gotten revealed flat feet, a disqualifying condition for the Army, which lived on its feet. Then Pearl Harbor happened and Willy signed up with the Marines, who asked if he’d had any problems with his flat feet in the Army. Willy shrugged his shoulders and told them he just sort of shuffled along like he’d always done and gotten along fine. The recruiter gave him a waiver, and here he was three and half years later, a corporal and a veteran of the Solomons campaigns and, most recently, Peleliu.
Malone reveled in telling the story. From all that detail I realized he’d told it many times, and the respect in his voice gave me some confidence. I’d be in good hands. And they called the guy Goon. I couldn’t wait to meet him.