Chapter 4
Men on the righthand side of the landing craft disembark
over the front corner of the ramp and step off
to the right oblique, while those on the opposite side
move similarly to the left. The coxswain keeps the engines
purring in order to prevent the boat from turning sideways.
Here you go. The sea accepts you with stoic indifference,
investigating your hips with routine efficiency and a practiced touch
and emptying the warmth from the pockets of your body.
Draw in your breath. Hold your piece at high port.
Keep moving. Churn through the foam. Don't try to run
or the drag of the waves will upset your balance.
Proceed diagonally to the swirling surf with feet wide apart.
The overhead barrage covering the landing sounds like the screech
of a jalopy's brakes before it crashes into a barn.
Shell bursts stride across the atoll roof with awkward boots
and towers of orange flame spring up in their footprints.
A fifty-pound projectile from a five-inch Navy gun swoops down
and a leaping tree smears its green across the sky.
You see the men of the first two attacking waves
swarming up on the beach, digging in or creeping ahead.
Mortar units go forward to blast pathways through the strongpoints,
and the supporting fire of rifle squads can be heard
crackling like the stiff pages of newspapers bearing death notices.
Walk out your life from one step to the next
because that's all you can be sure of. Oh, Christ,
wouldn't it be nice to lie in the gurgling tide,
limp, cool and unknowing like the simple end of everything?
You wonder why there is no fire from the defenders.
Where is the spew of 37-mm cannon raking the boats,
the heavy machineguns, the howitzers and small arms fire,
the shrapnel from AA guns leveled off at point blank?
Will this be a relatively undefended island? Have the Japs
abandoned their shore positions in favor of higher ground inland?
Or are they waiting for the right moment. . .just waiting?
You are surprised to find that you can think clearly
and that all your senses have suddenly become extraordinary perceptive.
You smell salt air mixed with the odor of cordite
and you can taste the curdled roots of your tongue.
Ahead of you are jagged bits of concrete strewn around —
the shattered remnants of obstacle blocks sunk in reefs offshore,
and straggling along the sand above the high tide mark
are the shapeless parings of a double apron barbed wire
entanglement with now and again torn extremities dipped in craters.
Look out! Quick calamity, let loose by the meager pressure
of a brown digit stabs the surf ten feet away.
Snipers! The first bullet ever fired at you in anger!
My God — there's another! A squirming little dagger of lead
kicks up the wet sand rising in front of you.
Terror cracks its bristling whip as you mount the earth
and you run astride of the breeze with no awareness
of your feet touching ground. Nothing but the void consciousness
of being relentlessly exposed and caught in a cone of
suction that pulls you helplessly back into its deserted vortex.
Hit the dirt! Sink your knees in the shuddering sand.
Fling out your elbows and let your extended rifle butt
absorb the punch of sudden breathlessness. Now roll, roll, roll.
Thrust your meat outward and spin on your belching bowels,
once, twice, in the mad twitch of some agonized dreamer.
Lie still. A nightmarish hangover is sitting on your eyelids.
You got up on the wrong side of the world.
