Max Collins: The Million-Dollar Wound

We shook our heads no to his combat question; Barney added, “Nate here was a cop.”

That same wry, weary smile the entire 1st seemed to share crawled onto his face. “You won’t be writing any traffic tickets out here, Pops.”

Barney got defensive, jerked his thumb toward me. “He was a detective! He’s been in his share of shoot-outs.”

I nudged him, embarrassed. “Please.”

Barney gave me a disgusted look. “Well, you have.”

“Any experience is better than nothing,” the leatherneck granted.

“We just came from gettin’ jungle training on Samoa,” Barney said. “They told us how at night the Japs creep through the brush like ghosts and then all of a sudden jump right up in front of ya and blow your head off or slash your throat or cut off your…is that really true?”

“Fuckin’ A a doodle de do,” the leatherneck said. He smiled the wry, weary smile again, sucked on the cig. “Like some pointers?”

“Sure,” we said.

He gestured to the ground, or anyway the brush and trees that clung to it. “Watch for trip wire. Those little bastards can set wires up in the jungle that can wipe out half a platoon.”

It looked hopeless to me. I said as much: “How the hell do you spot a wire in undergrowth like this?”

“You either spot it or it spots you. And never go by a bunch of so-called dead ones without spraying the little fuckers. They like to play possum and then open up on you, when you walk on by.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Anything else?”

“The most important thing. If they capture one of your men, write the poor bastard off. They’ll tie him to a tree and go to work on him. They’re experts at it. You’ll hear him holler, probably beg you to come rescue him. This is exactly what they want. They want your men to come running in like big-ass birds. ’Cause they’re waiting for you and not a man one of you will survive, mac. Not a one.”

Then he just sat there and smoked his cigarette.

“We appreciate the advice,” Barney said, after a while.

“They feed you rice today?” he asked us.

“Yeah,” we said.

He almost shivered. “I had a gutful of that swill. You know what winning this fuckin’ war means to me? Never having to eat rice again.” Wistfully, he added, “I could sure go for some of that Jap pogey bait, though. Hard and sweet-like the dame that ditched my Uncle Looie.” Pogey bait was Marine for candy. “But you guys don’t need to worry. You’re gettin’ the tail end of the rice, anyway.”

“Why?” we asked.

He sucked on the cigarette, made a face. “The First’s been cut off since we landed, the fuckin’ Navy all but deserted us, what little supplies we got come in from flyboys and destroyers that broke the Nip blockade. If it wasn’t for the food the Japs left behind, we’d’ve been eating roots and bark. But you ain’t gonna have to eat no fish heads and rice; supplies and men are comin’ in every day, now.”

“The tide has turned, then,” I said.

“It’s turnin’. But you still got your work cut out for you.”

“Henderson seems well secured,” I said.

Barney, glancing back toward the busy airstrip-planes taking off, troops trooping in, supplies being unloaded-nodded.

“Boys-if you don’t mind my callin’ older gents like you ‘boys’-my last piece of advice for ya is keep thinking like that and you’ll be deader’n Mr. Kelsey’s nuts by nightfall.”

He was right, of course. The Nips were all around the perimeter, including Sealark Channel-or Ironbottom Sound, as it was informally known, referring to the sixty-five or so major warships resting there, about half-and-half American/Japanese. Nightly shelling from the Sound meant Henderson Field was virtually surrounded. Its security was as false as the orderliness of the plantation palms.

Soon we were moving up, past Henderson, toward the Matanikau River just five miles away, the west bank of which belonged to the Nips, and across which they weren’t shy to come. Shells exploded all around us, shaking the earth and those creatures crawling on it, us included, on our bellies, inching through thick underbrush, thorns and brambles nicking us, marking us, shell smoke drifting over us like dark dirty clouds.

But we weren’t the only crawling creatures. We crawled past snakes, and they crawled past us; we met bugs the likes of which the worst Chicago tenement never dreamed of, but is “bugs” the word when it’s a spider the size of your fist, or a wasp three inches long? Lizards flitted by, forked tongues flicking; land crabs skittled along, like dismembered skeletal hands clawing frantically at the earth. And most of all mosquitoes. Ever-present, less than swarming, but so constant there soon came a point where you couldn’t swat at them any longer.

Finally we reached the forward foxholes, where more of the 1st waited to be relieved. We did that, crawling in as they crawled out, into the two-and three-man holes. Barney and I and that kid from Chicago, D’Angelo, another veteran of Corporal McCrea back at Dago, shared a foxhole with the mosquitoes. Before us was a row of sandbags, stacked, beyond which was a double-apron barbed-wire fence. From our position you couldn’t see the river, but I could hear it, and smell it. The smell of the jungle and the rivers and streams that cut through it was not nature’s finest hour; it was a fetid perfume made from equal parts oppressive humidity, rotting undergrowth, and stink lilies.

The rest of the afternoon we stayed dug in, listening to and watching artillery shells explode, as our side traded fire with the unseen Japs across the river. It never became a passive experience-with every explosion, you knew that if the direct hit didn’t get you, the flying red-hot shrapnel could, and if neither got you, it was getting some poor bastard just like you, down the line. And you knew most of all that you could be next.

In the lulls we’d talk and D’Angelo smoked; he was a thin, dark kid with a sensual mouth that the girls back in the Windy City no doubt loved, for all the good it did him here. We sat beating our gums, comparing bug bites and agreeing that Chicago was a pretty tame place to live, compared to this hellhole, anyway.

Then we watched a sunset paint the sky red and orange, in an impressionistic, tropical dream right out of Gauguin. The moment was a peaceful one; it was enough to make you forget bug bites and shrapnel and humidity, and darkness fell.

Generally speaking, I’m not afraid of the dark. But I’m here to tell you I’m afraid of the dark in a jungle. The rustle of leaves, the flutter of wings, the skittering of land crabs, indiscernible yet ominous shapes moving, looming out there. We’d been ordered not to shoot unless the Japs fired first, so as not to give our positions away. So we crouched in the foxholes with bayonets at the ready, and if I thought this was making me nuts, Barney was truly ready for a padded foxhole.

Seemed like every minute or two, he’d half rise and lunge forward, across the sandbags and barbed wire-a leaf moved in the wind, or an animal rustled in the brush, and Barney was out there slashing, stabbing, destroying imaginary Japs. Some of these nonexistent enemies would sneak up behind us, and Barney lunged to the rear, stabbed, slashed; you never knew when or from whence one of the yellow bastards was going to strike next.

It spread to the other nearby foxholes, and soon our whole platoon was going crazy slashing and stabbing little yellow men who weren’t there. Finally I touched Barney’s arm and said, “Take it easy. There’s lots of sounds out there. If it’s Japs, we’ll know it.”

I’d barely finished the sentence when an ungodly screech ripped the night apart, and I was on my feet, yelling, “Banzai charge!” bayonet flashing in the moonlight.