The eight landing craft formed a jagged line of gray ship's metal across the tumbling Pacific Ocean. The small boats rose and dived through the rough waters, the ocean's shimmering green phosphorescence pounding against the ship's straight metal sides before misting over the helmeted heads of F Company. Private Eric Davis stood corralled between Marines, their helmets dripping salt water, their fatigues dark and wet. He hunched his shoulders as the landing craft caught the crest of another wave, diving through it in a nauseating roll, more water spraying onto the men.

Two months earlier he had been home in Boston. Then there was the draft. A month of training in Mississippi, his station in the Pacific, and the rest was a blur of sleepless nights aboard rolling ships, lying on canvas bunks, one on top of the other, listening to the occasional air raid warnings as Japanese Zeros buzzed above, circling like hungry vultures over their prey.

The landing craft hit another sickening drop, forcing Eric to spread his legs wider to hold his balance as more water sheeted down on him. They had been circling the island for ten minutes, the warm sun baking their helmets, drying the salt tightly against their skin. Over the metal sides of the landing craft, the men turned their heads, watching the Navy's shells slam into the thick vegetation across the beach.

Turning suddenly, the LCM slanted toward the shore. A Marine Air Group torpedo bomber roared overhead, its single prop cutting the air as it blasted by, making one last pass at the beachhead.

That morning the soldiers had been woken at 3 A.M. The mess boys of the USS Pennsylvania were wearing pressed white jackets and serving up plates of eggs and bacon, while jazz thrummed through the intercom speakers. Eric felt sick when he saw the food. When the military allowed a good meal, it usually meant the men had it coming heavy from the Japs that day. His shipmate Alabama used to say that a decent one was close to a last one, like granting the condemned prisoner his final dinner before the gallows.

The day after a landing, the colored regiments clearing away the dead from the beaches always found a good amount of half-digested eggs mixed in the sand, punched out by bullet wounds to some soldier's gut. They used to serve onions mixed in with the meal, but medical corpsmen found that the smell in the Red Cross tents was too overwhelming. The onion scent literally permeated out through the wounds, mixing with the odors of blood and defecation. Standing well out to sea, the USS Galla, a transport craft from New Guinea, had nine bagged bodies ready to begin the journey home to be buried. Someone had neglected to store them far enough aft, so, in their quarters, the crew could smell them decay.

He thought of home, his mind wandering back to Jessica. Hanging near the head of his cot were the three letters he had from her, stored in a tight roll in one of his bandoliers. He found her handwriting comforting, not so much for what it read, but in its femininity, the shapes of the words themselves. The way each letter seemed to flow together in her familiar style.

Before, before the war, before the smell of the dead, he used not to notice when they might be apart. Now, however, it was her face that came to him in the darkness behind his closed lids. Maybe he just liked the idea of a pretty girl caring for him, but, for whatever reason, Davis found himself thinking of her. Especially the way her hair smelled. He used to press her hair against his face, burying himself deep in its sheen. That sweet smell. God, how I loved that.

An explosion slammed his ears, his helmet vibrating against his skull. The damp chin strap, dangling loosely, swung back and forth, hitting him like a wet noodle across the face. The helmet fell down across his eyes, momentarily obscuring his vision. He pushed it back in time to see a section of the beach ahead of them disappear in a red burst of sand and broken branches. The shells from the Missouri landed in the thick palms lining the edge of the beach, sending splintered wood sections into the air for a moment, before they splashed back into the rolling tide.

Eric turned his head, leaning to the side to look out across the ocean. Behind them, safely out to sea, the Missouri and the Nebraska launched their last rounds of protective fire. Dotted against the horizon, the battleships' guns seemed harmless against the vastness of the sea surrounding them, their puffs of gunpowder smoke appearing as benign as milky clouds from burst mushrooms.

The metaphor was lost by the whistle of the automobile-sized shells as they passed overhead, screaming angrily, before slamming into the beach ahead of them.

Their craft continued forward, steadily moving toward the whirl of burning jungle and frothing sand. The LCM ducked again, water spraying against its sides and shooting up into the air in white fountains. Behind him, the ship's diesel engines groaned onward, a pulsating metallic sound, the tone rising and falling with the rolling of the ocean. Sometimes up, sometimes down, but always the monotonous droning. The driver stood above, his face tight and gleaming with seawater beneath his helmet, protected by a metal wall that reached past his waist.

Eric felt a tug on his sleeve.

"Cigarette?" Jimmy Scotti was holding out a thin white stick, while another unlit one dangled precariously from his top lip. His voice was contorted, his mouth tight as he tried to talk while keeping his lips pinched around the cigarette in his mouth.

"No, thanks." Eric shook his head.

Scotti shrugged and put the cigarette carefully into his front pocket, shielding it from the water.

"This is a mess, huh?" Scotti said suddenly, his voice sounding tense.

"What's that?" Eric asked.

"This," Scotti answered simply. "This whole fucking thing. Out here on the waves, landing on some Jap-infested island."

Eric nodded, thinking for a moment. "You know, I've never seen a Japanese person before."

"What?"

"I've never seen anyone Japanese before."

"You're shitting me."

"No." Eric shook his head. "I swear, there was one guy down the street who I thought was Japanese, but turned out he was from China."

Scotti snorted in surprise, then, lifting his head, shouted to someone in the front of the boat, "Hey, Leonard!"

"Yeah?" came the muffled reply from one of the helmeted heads.

"Davis here never seen a Jap before."

A few of the helmets turned toward the back of the craft with mild interest.

"Yeah? Fucking-A," Leonard's reply came, muffled over the sound of the crashing sea and the roar of the engine. "Well, he's about to see a whole fucking bunch of 'em at once."

Scotti nodded at this reply. "Never seen a Jap before... fucking Japs," he whispered in amazement to himself, shaking his head. The cigarette was still dangling from his mouth, and Scotti tightened his lips, bringing a silver lighter up toward the white paper.

Eric watched Scotti trying to light the cigarette, the flame dancing around the end of the smoke, his hand too unsteady to hold the lighter in place. "I can't get this damn thing lit." His voice sounded angry. "It's too damn wet out here."

Disgusted, he took the cigarette out of his mouth and tossed it overboard, the white stick sucked up instantly by a rolling wave. Eric looked forward, seeing the shore approach steadily. They were close enough that he could distinguish each of the individual trees lining the sand, the gracefully arching palms rising like sentinels guarding the entrance into the jungle beyond.

There was a soft thud from the beach ahead. It was followed by a whistling noise, as if someone had left a teapot on to boil for too long. Around him, men were beginning to cringe, pulling their heads toward their shoulders like turtles. Davis lowered his head as well, gripping his rifle more tightly.

The whistling increased, until reaching a full shriek. There was a pause, then the water next to them exploded into a froth of white as a Japanese 75mm shell smacked close by the craft. The men ducked into the puky mess in the bottom of the landing barge, ceasing to watch the approaching coastline.

"Three minutes!" shouted the driver, perched in the metal-plated wheelhouse above them.

"Get ready," the captain shouted out above the noise of the sea. He was an older man of about thirty-five, with a wide face covered by stubble and acne scars. Shells began exploding in the water around them, violent bursts of white foaming the water, which kept their heads down below the sides of the landing craft.

"Tighten up those helmets," the captain shouted. "Keep the waterproofing on your weapons."

Eric pulled the loose strap tightly underneath his chin, till the helmet pressed against his head. Around him men were doing the same.

"When we hit that beach, keep moving, never stop." The captain was holding the edge of the landing craft, steadying himself against the rolling sea.

There were murmurs and nods among the men. The captain straightened his helmet. "If you feel sick, go ahead and vomit now, get it out of the way." The captain looked around at the men. "Any man that tells you he's not afraid is crazy. Put it aside."

Another explosion tore into the water ahead of them, spraying light steam across the men. Eric crinkled his nose -- it smelled like someone had loosened his bowels already. The smell wafted backward from somewhere in the front of the ship.

"Hell, I ain't scared," Scotti was mumbling to himself, rocking back and forth. "Goddammit, I'm gonna be all right." He kept repeating it, until the words flowed together into a chant. He ran his hands over his face, stopping for a moment to rub his glistening eyes, then his fingers frantically began to dig at his chin strap. "This fucking thing's too tight. I can't breathe in this."

"Sixty yards!" the driver shouted from behind, holding up one finger above his head.

Numbly, Eric made the sign of the cross over himself. Beside him, a guy who'd just been transferred into the unit was unwrapping a piece of gum. He put the stick in his mouth and went to work chewing nervously, crumpling up the paper and placing it back in his pocket.

Suddenly Eric had an intense urge to urinate. He crossed his legs over, trying to push the sensation away. The sky had begun to cloud over, and rain was falling in thin drizzles, striking against the ocean in gray slanted lines.

The beach ahead was covered in gray-black sand, stretching back about seventy yards before meeting an impossibly thick jungle. Above the line of the jungle, wisps of fog curled around a steep range of mountains, while the surf crashed in low waves against the shore. A thin stream of smoke rose into the air from the great jungle-surrounded volcano, Mt. Bagana. Out at sea, the Missouri and the Nebraska had ceased their protective fire and the landing craft advanced in eerie silence. The talking among the men had halted, each man staring forward in nervous expectation as the rain dotted hundreds of tiny circles on the surface of the gray ocean around them.

Through the thin mist, Eric saw a sudden flash of red on the island. Then a second, and a third. There was an instant of silence, the final moment of quiet, before Japanese bullets tore at the sides of the landing craft. Pa-ching, pling, pling. Then there was another noise, different from the hard crack of metal against metal. It was softer, like a broomstick smacking a plump feather pillow. Just as it sounded, one of the soldiers jerked backward with a short cry, collapsing to the floor of the landing craft.

"Here it comes," the captain shouted. "Stand ready."

Copyright © 2003 by Matthew B. J. Delaney