Harry Turtledove - End of the Beginning

Machine guns, mortars, and some 105s opened up on the buildings ahead. Hellcats strafed them. By the time the barrage let up, they were smoking wreckage. Les wondered how anybody could tell them from the rubble farther east. He shrugged. He’d worry about that later, if at all.

“Boy, those Jap bastards must be dead meat now,” a recruit said happily.

Les laughed, not that it was funny. “Yeah, and then you wake up,” he said. “They’re waiting for us. You see one you think is dead, put a bullet in him. He’s liable to be playing possum, waiting to shoot you in the back.”

The replacement looked disbelieving. Les had neither time nor inclination to knock sense into his empty head. Captain Bradford yelled, “Forward!” and forward he went.

As usual, he ran hunched over, making himself the smallest possible target. He dodged like a halfback faking past tacklers. And the first piece of cover he saw-goddamn if it wasn’t a bathtub, blown from Lord knows where-he dove behind.

Sure as hell, the shelling and strafing hadn’t killed all the Japs. It hadn’t even made enough of them keep their heads down. Arisakas and Springfields and Nambu machine guns opened up. Knee mortars started dropping their nasty little bombs among the Americans. So did bigger mortars farther back. Les hated mortars not only because the bombs could fall right into foxholes but also, and especially, because you couldn’t hear them coming. One second, nothing. The next, your buddy was hamburger-or maybe you were.

Wounded men started screaming for medics. The Navy corpsmen who went in with Marines didn’t wear Red Cross smocks and armbands or Red Crosses on their helmets. The Japs used them for target practice when they did. The medics carried carbines-sometimes rifles-too. In France in 1918, the Germans mostly played by the rules. As far as Les could see, there were no rules here. This was a very nasty war.

He snapped off a shot or two, then ran forward again. Several Marines were shooting at a ground-floor window from which machine-gun fire was coming. Les Dillon put a couple of rounds in there, too, to give the Japs inside something to think about. Two Marines crawled close enough to chuck grenades through the window. The machine gun promptly squeezed off a defiant burst. More grenades flew in. This time, the enemy gun stayed quiet.

Les ran for a doorway. Dutch Wenzel ran for one a couple of houses farther on. He stopped halfway there, yelped, and said, “Aw, shit!” His rifle fell to the pavement.

“What happened, Dutch?” Les called.

“Got one right through the hand,” the other noncom answered. “Hurts like a son of a bitch. I never got shot before.”

“Welcome to the club.” Les wouldn’t have joined if he had any choice. But an injury like Wenzel’s…

“Sounds like you got a million-dollar wound. You did your bit, it won’t kill you, it’ll probably heal good, and you’re out of the fight for a while.”

“Yeah, I already thought of that,” Wenzel said. “But you know what? I’d sooner stay here with the rest of you guys. I feel like I’m getting thrown out of the game just after we went and scored six runs in the eighth.”

“Stay there till we push forward some more,” Les said. “Then you can get to the rear without worrying a sniper’s gonna get you.” Without worrying so much, he thought.

“Yes, Granny dear,” Wenzel said. Les laughed. Like him, the other platoon sergeant was more used to giving orders than taking them.

Then the laughter died in his throat, because the door he was standing in front of opened. Had the Jap behind it been a soldier, Les would have died in the next instant. Instead, he was a skinny eight-year-old kid in ragged shorts. “Watcha doin’, Mister?” he asked.

“Jesus!” Les exploded. “I almost shot you, you dumb little-” He broke off when he saw how skinny the kid was. Fumbling through the pouches on his belt, he found a K-ration can. “Here. This is chopped ham, I think. Bet you like it a hell of a lot better’n I do.”

The kid’s eyes got big as gumdrops. “Wow!” he breathed, as if Les had just given him the Hope Diamond. “Thanks, Mister!” He disappeared, yelling, “Mom! Mom! Guess what I got!”

You almost got a.30-caliber round in the teeth, that’s what. Les’ heart still thuttered. All kinds of bad things happened during a war. Even so, how could you make yourself forget you shot a little kid? Les knew he had lots of things to worry about, but that, thank God, wasn’t one of them.

NO MORE TAKING A SAILBOARD OUT from Waikiki Beach. The Japs had put down barbed wire and machine-gun nests and mines. Years after they were gone, some damnfool tourist would probably blow his foot off on one everybody missed till he found it the hard way.

Oscar van der Kirk wasn’t especially worried about some imaginary tourist. He just didn’t want to blow off his own foot crossing Waikiki Beach. He did want to live long enough to have the chance to cross it again.

Because of the fish he’d brought home, Oahu’s hunger hadn’t pinched him and Susie as much as it had most people. Now they had to do without, and it hurt. And they had Charlie Kaapu with them, so it hurt even more.

The only way to get food now was to go out and work. The only work was helping the Japs build more roadblocks and barricades and pillboxes to hold back the U.S. Marines and Army. Oscar thought it was a lot of work for precious little rice. Charlie started going out with him after a few days. Oscar wondered if he was strong enough to do the hauling and lifting, but he took them in stride.

“No huhu, ” he said when he and Oscar didn’t happen to be close to any Japs. “Up in the goddamn tunnel, I did twice this much on a quarter the food. Everybody did.”

Remembering what he’d looked like when he came out of the Kalihi Valley, Oscar believed him. He did ask, “How?”

“They’d kill you if you didn’t,” Charlie answered. “That whole setup was made to kill people. Either the work would do you in or the guards would. I hope our guys gutshoot every one of those bastards. They deserve it.” He was normally an easygoing fellow. Not here. Not now. He meant every word of it.

But he knew how to bow and smile at the Japanese riflemen and machine gunners when he got anywhere near them. Oscar knew how to do that, too, but Charlie’d had the advanced course. Oscar could satisfy the Japs. Charlie could make them smile back and even laugh.

Sometimes he would cuss them in friendly tones while he smiled. He took his life in his hands every time he did it: some of the Japs had picked up bits and pieces of English. Oscar kept trying to warn him. And Charlie would say, “Yeah, Oscar. Sure, Oscar,” and he’d go right on doing it. It was as if he had to take his revenge on them no matter what it cost him.

Off to the west, the battle for Honolulu ground on. The Americans had the artillery. They had the tanks. They had the airplanes. They even brought Navy ships off the south coast of Oahu, to blast the city with big guns. All the Japs had were the rubble and their weapons and their stubborn courage. Those were plenty to make the American reconquest a long, slow, bloody job.

“I hope they all die,” Charlie said with a big grin on his face. “I hope they all die slow, and I hope they hurt all the time while they’re doing it. Yes, you, too, Sergeant- san, ” he added to a Japanese noncom who walked by after fiddling with the sight on a machine gun. Hearing only the title of respect, the sergeant grinned and returned Charlie’s bow.

“Ohhh, Charlie,” Oscar said.

“Right, Oscar,” Charlie said, and Oscar shut up.

So far, Waikiki had been only at the edges of the fight. A few overs from the U.S. bombardment of the rest of Honolulu came down there. The big raid on the POW camp in Kapiolani Park had been just east of the main part of Waikiki. Oscar began to hope his district would come through without much damage.