Harry Turtledove - End of the Beginning

The deck exploded in cheers. Sailors and Marines all yelled as if it were going out of style. Les joined in as enthusiastically as anybody else. So did his buddy. People around them were still shouting and screeching when he suddenly sobered. “What are we jumping up and down about?” he said. “We just won the chance to get our heads blown off. Aren’t you glad about that?”

“Fuckin’-A I am,” Dutch answered. “And so are you, you sandbagging son of a bitch. Otherwise we’d both be gunnies by now.”

“Well, shit. When you’re right, you’re right,” Les said. He and Wenzel had both turned down the chance for a third rocker under their sergeant’s stripes so they could go along on the failed attack the year before instead of training boots at Camp Pendleton. Then they’d ended up at Pendleton anyhow, still at their old grade. Life was a bitch sometimes.

The racket from the Valdosta Liberty ’s engines got louder. The ship sped up. So did all the others in the invasion fleet. Wenzel grunted. “They don’t want to waste another minute, do they?”

“Would you?” Les answered. “They’ve wasted a year and a half already, and then some. About time we took Hawaii back. It’s not right for Hotel Street to belong to somebody else, goddammit.”

“There you go!” Dutch Wenzel laughed. “Now I know what I’m fighting for: cheap pussy and overpriced booze.”

“Suits me fine,” Dillon said, and Dutch didn’t contradict him.

As Dillon always did when he was up on deck, he looked out into the ocean to see if he could spot a periscope. The odds were long. In this miserable tub, the odds of being able to dodge if a Jap sub did fire a torpedo were even longer. He knew all that. He looked anyhow. It was like snapping your fingers to keep the elephants away: it couldn’t hurt.

“Wonder how far from Hawaii we are,” Dutch said.

“Beats me,” Les answered. “Ain’t a hell of a lot of street signs in this part of the Pacific. We’ll get there when we get there, that’s all.”

They got there three days later. They must have sailed past the battle between the American and Japanese carrier forces, but not a sign of it remained. The ocean kept its own secrets, kept them and buried them deep.

As the troopships approached the north coast of Oahu, the battlewagons and cruisers and destroyers that had accompanied and escorted the U.S. carriers were giving the landing beaches hell. The boom of the big guns echoed across the water. When the shells roared in, they rearranged the landscape pretty drastically.

Les watched with enthusiastic approval. “The more they knock the snot out of the Japs, the easier the time we’ll have,” he said.

Dive bombers took off from the carriers and pummeled what Les presumed to be Japanese positions, too. Their bombs kicked up even more dust and dirt than all that high-caliber artillery. It was, more and more, an aviator’s world. What does that make me? Les wondered when the thought occurred to him. A minute later, he shrugged. It makes me necessary, that’s what. They can blow Hawaii to kingdom come, but I’m the poor, sorry son of a bitch who lands there with a bayonet on the end of his rifle and takes it away from the Japs. Boy, am I lucky!

He couldn’t even blame his draft board, not when he, like every other Marine, had volunteered. The Army was the place for draftees, and welcome to them.

In spite of everything U.S. aircraft had done to the island, a few Japanese planes did get off the ground and attacked the fleet. The Hellcats and Wildcats overhead went after them like dogs after marauding wolves, but they made hits, too: here a cruiser, there a troopship. When flames and smoke burst from that other ship full of Marines or dogfaces, Les swore horribly: those were his countrymen getting hurt.

Here and there along the beach, Japanese field guns fired at the fleet. Shells splashed into the water around the warships. They returned fire. The Japs might have been wiser to stay quiet. When they drew notice to themselves, bigger U.S. guns did their damnedest to smash them flat.

Somehow, Dutch looked away from the astonishing spectacle ahead. He nudged Les. “Here come the LVIs.”

That made Les glance back over his shoulder, too. Sure enough, the landing craft-Landing Vehicles, Infantry, in official alphabetese-were coming alongside the Valdosta Liberty , as they were alongside the rest of the troopships, including the one that was on fire. Maybe that was a way to get the men off as fast as possible. Maybe it was more on the order of routine gone mad.

Whatever it was, Les didn’t have time to worry about it. He nodded to the men with whom he’d be going into battle: mostly kids not old enough to vote, some of them hardly old enough to shave, leavened by a sprinkling of the old breed, veterans like himself. He’d been wondering what to tell them when the moment finally came. Now it was here. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he said. “Just like the book, and everything’ll be jake. Right?”

Their helmeted heads bobbed up and down. Despite the most realistic training the Corps could give, most of them had no idea what being under fire was like. Their big eyes, tight lips, and somber faces said their imaginations were working overtime. Les remembered how scared he’d been when he got up to the line in France. He soon discovered everybody else was just as scared, including the Germans.

Were the Japs on the beach-and there were bound to be Japs on the beach-scared, too? They were supposed to make the Hun look like a Sunday-school teacher. Could they be scared? Les hoped so, but he wouldn’t have bet anything above a dime on it.

“My company!” Captain Bradford shouted. “Take to the boats!”

Marines climbed over the rail and scrambled down nets stretched over the side of the Valdosta Liberty . Men had been moving from ships to boats like that as long as there’d been ships and boats. As far as Les was concerned, there had to be a better way. You could get smashed between ship and boat, you could fall into the water and drown, or you could fall into the boat and break your ankle. None of those helped the country one goddamn bit.

A couple of men already in the LVI steadied Dillon as he swung down from the net into the landing craft.

“We got you, Sarge,” one of them said.

“Thanks,” Les told him-he was a long way from too proud to be glad for the help. As soon as his own feet were steady on the steel deck plates, he reached up to help other descending Marines. They got everybody into the LVI without seeing anyone hurt. Les hoped that was a good omen. He also knew damn well the record wouldn’t last once they hit the beach.

Diesel engine belching and farting, the LVI pulled away from the troopship. Another one chugged up to take its place. Along with countless more, it wallowed towards Oahu. Les couldn’t see out; the sides of the boat were too high. All he could see besides those steel walls were other Marines in green dungarees and jackets and camouflage helmet covers like his-and, for variety, the sailors running the LVI, who wore helmets painted battleship gray along with blue dungarees and shirts.

Even if he couldn’t see out, he knew when the landing craft got close to shore. The American naval barrage fell silent, to keep short rounds from coming down on the LVIs. As soon as the warships’ guns ceased fire, the Japs on shore opened up with everything they had. They’d kept a lot of their weapons quiet after all. Shells and mortar bombs started splashing down among the oncoming boats.

One burst close to Les’ LVI. Fragments clattered off the boat’s side, but none got through. “Thank you, Jesus,” said a Marine behind the sergeant. Les found himself nodding. He’d never been a churchgoing man, but he wouldn’t turn down anything he could get right now.