D-Day Plus One [excerpt from my novel]    



 As the first squad descended the slope the next morning into an open field of picturesque rice paddies and leisurely herded together civilians who had hidden in the copses dotted along the way to the western shore, another company further ahead suffered severe casualties as one of its platoons was trapped in a deep ravine and its other two rifle platoons bravely attacked under heavy enemy fire to rescue the few remaining men. Lieutenant Link’s platoon was pulled off its line to back up the other company and the first squad edged into the narrow neck of the ravine, the sound of rifle fire ricocheted off the flanking ridges. As it came to the opening valley of rice paddies, Chic[ago] instinctively blessed himself as he gaped upon the horror. Fellow marines lay dead everywhere—bodies half submerged in the mud of rice paddies or strewn on the grassy paths. As the men passed each body their eyes burned with fearful sadness. Desperately the living stared into the eyes of those with their pale faces to the sky or rolled to the side, hoping that from the look of death there would be some message, some flicker of meaning. They passed, with only the image of cold blankness etched in their minds. Chic deployed his men, each taking a grassy access striping the paddy while the other squads combed the flanking ridges for caves unsecured. LI [Long Island] gave his new BAR another work out when he spotted a Jap playing possum next to a dead marine sunk in the rice mud. After he opened fire, sending the Jap soldier to his ancestors, he felt nauseous that he had disturbed the body of a fellow marine as one round ripped into the shoulder of the corpse. On the left above there was a clamor from the second squad as they came upon a cave and heard noises within. One of them threw in a grenade, but before it exploded a Jap soldier darted out with the grenade in his hand. He laughed hysterically as the surprised marines ran for cover. It exploded shrapnel and pieces of the Jap rained down on the second squad, one of which lay dead and another wounded from the flying shrapnel. Tennessee shook his head in disgust and yelled over to Long Island, “That’ll learn you, I reckon, not to complain when I count off before throwing.” When Link’s platoon reached “Love“ Company—what was left of it—it took the left flank while the company tightened its ranks. Together they mopped up the last of the resistance there; the rest of the day was relatively quiet while the first squad soaked in the specter of L company’s fate at the paddy.That evening, having had his C ration of spaghetti and meat sauce right out of the warmed up can, and having dug his lonely foxhole, Chic asked Johnny to accompany him up the line to L Company. When they got there Chic went up to one of the marines looking less in shock than the others to ask where the second platoon was located. The marine was sitting on a battered skinless helmet perched on a mound of foxhole dirt. He had another one with tattered covering on his lap; vacantly he glanced up at the visitors.



Dragging hard on his Red Cross gratis cigarette, while returning to his immediate matter at hand—replacing his helmet’s tattered camouflage cover with one borrowed from the dead—the young veteran clawed at the covering and then squinted up at Chic. He mouthed off bitterly, “Most of the platoon is back at the rice paddy.” Then he softened his tone and added waving his arm down the line, “You’ll find them about ten holes down.”



Chic and Johnny [LI] went down the line nodding to the familiar faces of the veterans, very few of whom went as far back as the visitors, who had miraculously survived since the Canal—especially Chic who had been in the first wave at Tulagi and then behind the enemy lines at Guadalcanal when Johnny was with him. The battle-wise and weary pair approached the vicinity of L company’s first platoon. Chic couldn’t refrain from counting the number of foxholes—there should have been at least twenty riflemen stations. The young marine was right: there were only ten before they reached the second platoon to look for Chic’s old buddy from the First Raiders at Guadalcanal where he had been wounded; and when recovered had been reassigned to L Company at Bougainville where he was again wounded.



Though Chic had seen earlier the second platoon’s bodies spread all over the paddy, which had been dubbed “Death Valley“, he had not the macabre instinct for an actual body count—that only came later in the sterile remoteness of the calculating mind. While passing three foxholes they read the faces—all drawn by the terror of their day—of the first platoon of L Company. The face of Chic’s old buddy was not there. Chic stopped short at the fourth hole when he realized he was already upon the third platoon. Grimly he looked over at Long Island. Abruptly he turned on his boots and went up to one from the remnants of the second. Though Chic knew the lad from Battalion sports competition at their convalescence base now on the secured Canal, the lad seemed to stare right through him as though still in shock.



Chic tried getting a response from the eyes. “Seaton, isn’t it?...Happen to know how Sarge Fenner made out today?...He is still here, I mean?” Chic asked awkwardly.



“He did better than most of them,” Seaton said, staring past him. “If he got enough plasma, that is.”



“Oh, wounded badly?—Sh-iaa, that’s his third time!”



“And last—he ain’t comin’ back.”



“That bad, eh?” Chic nervously fumbled with the little cardboard Camel flip box.



The dazed Seaton ruminated, “I suppose, in a way he’s lucky....Three times, you say?...Gosh, I never knew that. Well, there won’t be a fourth.”



“You seem pretty sure he’s not coming back. I mean he wasn’t wounded mortally?”



“Na, he’ll be all right—once he gets used to getting around on one leg and using one arm.”



“Oh, no,...Jeez, that’s going to be tough on him—a real, rugged, active guy,” Johnny yelped, then puffed on his butt a few times, recalling Fenner sliding hard into second base back at convalescence. He then looked into the numb faces of the others in the platoon.

“Jeez, mates, you leathernecks really saw hell close up today....How many left?” 



Another, ramming his rifle bore, said as though still dazed, “Just what you see....a few from headquarters and weapons, but even there a whole machine gun team got wiped out. Yeah, hell, all right....Ten of us left, twenty gone forever and eighteen wounded —about ten real bad.” He brought his hand to his face and scratched his stubble caked with dried mud from the paddies.



Seaton piped in angrily, “Yeah, but I hear the brass is delighted over the light casualties these first two days—they keep telling us how lucky we are that this is no Iwo.”



Chic said, “Well, that’s the way it goes with the brass. They always take the wider look.” He stood up, gave them an informal salute and added, “Let’s hope they give you a few days on reserve to collect yourselves.”



“No such luck. Because we’re now so small they got us on the point tomorrow,” Seaton whined.



Chic shook his head. “That’s God awful!” He left them in their despair as Johnny’s ears perked at the words, thinking of his father’s expression: “Like standing ten miles from the sun.” The two veterans—another cell tissue perhaps overlaid with psychological scarring—returned to their squad.



After, Chic sat down to his warmed over canteen cup of coffee; he was relieved that his skeletal squad had survived the second day unscathed. Then his mind drifted to L Company’s second platoon, visualizing the horror of that rice paddy and was saddened and a little guilty, the natural aftermath of survival. He looked down the line to the second squad, less one foxhole, then tossed the remains of his coffee to douse the sterno. Pulling the poncho up over him, he wondered how many fewer foxholes there would be in his squad tomorrow.



Copyright © 1990 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: February 7, 2004.