Our Lot in War

Submitted into Contest #180 in response to: Start your story with someone having a run of bad luck.... view prompt

20 comments

Creative Nonfiction Historical Fiction

[TW: pg-13 WW2 battle scene]


In 1942 my father was lucky. He studied anthropology in university—even published a paper on the Minahasan people of Indonesia—and when the draft came he was enlisted into US Army Intelligence rather than being called up for combat.


During the war he shuttled around the Pacific collecting information on local populations, providing weapons to resistance movements, and helping negotiate problems locals had with US military bases.


On one such journey, on a troop ship bound for the Philippines, he saw something unusual. A young Marine with perfectly white hair. There were reports of US soldiers suffering malnutrition from being garrisoned on remote islands.


“I noticed your white hair,” he said, “have you always had it?”


“Why do you ask?” The man's hands were shaking slightly. 


Soldiers sometimes find it hard to talk about their problems, so my dad changed the topic for a while. “The Philippines. A great place. Pineapple, steaks, beer, can you believe it? A lot better than those goddamn atolls.”


“Looking forward to it, sir.”


After more small talk about how pleasant things would be at their next destination, the white haired Marine got back around to answering the first question, and started to talk about himself.


**


My name is Doug, and I'm a mechanic from Michigan, engaged to a wonderful girl back home, Carol.


Last year, after Pearl Harbor, I signed up for the Marines. Soon enough I find myself on a Marines troop carrier circling around in the middle of the South Pacific.


One day, we are told to get ready, and soon enough, we are climbing out of the ship into landing craft. After we are onboard, the squad leader tell us our mission. In the Marines, they don’t tell you where you are going until the last second. Well the battleships had been firing their guns at an island in the distance for a few days, so it’s not a big surprise.


He says that’s Tarawa island, and we Marines plan to take it that day. Thousands will be landing. On the main beach, the Japanese have a dozen cement bunkers and the machine guns in those bunkers have a full range of fire across the beach. We need to do something about those guns.


I enlisted in Michigan as a vehicle mechanic but when I show up at Parris Island, they weren’t training mechanics, so I was taught Combat Engineering instead. Eight weeks of learning how to clear minefields, build pontoon bridges, and use explosives.


In the first landing wave we are the only combat engineers. We're given 40 lbs of TNT. We need to take out any bunker still in operation after the USAF bombers and the Navy artillery do their work. One of us will need to crawl up to the bunker and toss the bomb onto it. Under enemy fire, it’s a near suicide mission.


The Sergeant says he’s not asking for volunteers. Our squad has 10 Marines, and we will draw lots for who takes the demolition pack. The rest of us provide cover fire.


He writes the numbers 1 to 10 on tiny scraps of paper and puts them into a sock.


The first guy the Sergeant hands it to pulls out a “6”, looks happy with himself, and passes the sock to me. I put my hand in. I feel one of those pieces of paper between my fingers. Concentrate on feeling the number on it before pulling it out. If it's a "1", I can get ready to kiss this world goodbye. 


I think about my fiancee Carol. Will she miss me when I'm gone? I can't imagine her with another man. Nervously, I pull the tiny scrap of paper out. Sweat runs from my face. I open it and my head spins when I see a “2”. Then I focus again, and see it’s a “9”.


I keep my cool as if this is just a game of dice. Marines, we are all in this together. I can’t show it to the others but I can’t believe my luck. I might get a chance to get out of this after all.


After two more draws, a kid from Colorado turns pale when he pulls the number “1”. Another guy gets a “2” and the Sergeant reminds him he needs to be ready if anything happens to the number one guy. We talk to the kid from Colorado the whole boat trip and tell him It's going to be alright. We know better than to leave him alone in his thoughts.


At a steady crawl, the heavy wood boat moves toward the beach. From our seats swinging wildly from side to side, half the marines get sick on the floor. But not me. I’m used to the waves on Lake Michigan.


In training we learned landing craft need to ride in on high tide to push in high up the beach. The boat driver grumbles that the tide might fail today, A neap tide. The driver says he doesn’t have a gun and doesn’t want to get stuck on the beach.


Around us are dozens of boats like ours. Only a few Japanese artillery shells land anywhere near us. Seagulls fly overhead, oblivious to the war. I wonder what they are thinking about all this. Ahead, we see a thin band of white sand steadily getting closer.


The boat lurches and throws us out of our seats. A terrible scraping sound comes from the bottom of the boat. 


“The reef,” the driver shouts out. At low tide, the coral rocks of the reef hide just below the water surface.


He reverses the engine. We back up and then go forward again, trying a different channel. Another bump, and we’re stuck again. This time, reversing the engine doesn’t free the landing craft from the rocks.


Now we’re immobile and the tapping of Japanese bullets on our boat becomes more frequent. If the Japanese open up with anything high-caliber, we will be Swiss cheese in this flimsy wooden landing craft.


“California, check the depth,” the Sergeant says—he calls us by our home states, says it's easier than remembering our names. The Sergeant never answers our questions about the battles in North Africa we know he was in.


California pulls himself over the edge of the boat and drops into the water. His shoulders are showing above the water.


“Drop the gate,” the Sergeant cries out.


With a loud creak, the front of the Higgins boat drops open, which fully exposes us to fire from the beach. We have trained to get out of the boat fast and into the water.


“To the beach and dig in, Marines,” the Sergeant shouts.


With water up to my armpits, getting to the beach means wading in one step at a time. The tide pulls us out every other step. Splashes from bullets in the water around us look harmless.


Somebody shouts, “Phil!” 


I look over and see Phil fall face down into the water. The white foam of the waves turns pink. Phil was number “7”. He almost cried after he had seen the number.


An artillery shell explodes in the water right behind me, It’s pointless to look if anyone got hit, and I keep pushing in.


When the water is down to my knees, I start running. The cracking of Japanese infantry rifles and the piercing ripping sound of their machines guns is now very close. I ready myself for the pain of red hot lead.


A rise of sand is just up the beach, and I dive behind it. Taking out my infantry shovel, I start digging. A few infantry already on the beach toss grenades at the Japanese, but they don’t reach their lines in the trees or the bunkers.


I see smoke from the machine guns inside firing in the bunkers 10 feet above the beach. 


From his foxhole, the sergeant shouts out, “Roll call!” 


“Colorado!” and then, ”Delaware, Carolina, Arkansas, California, Michigan, Dakota!”


There’s seven of us left.


I scan the surf behind us. Hundreds of marines are slowly wading in. At intervals, the Japanese machine gun strafes the surf. Soldiers topple over and sink into the water.


“We need to take out that machine gun,“ the Sergeant says, “Colorado, prepare the charge.” 


We back off while Colorado readies the fuse. When it’s armed, if someone pulls the cord, they only have 10 seconds to get away from the explosion.

 

He puts the backpack on and slithers out of his foxhole. It’s 300 feet to the bunker. The sound of a Japanese machine gun rips through the air.


“Colorado?”


A Marine uses a shaving mirror to look over the top of the foxhole. “Colorado has been hit, Sergeant.”


The Sergeant waits for another round of US navy artillery to hit the Japanese line. 


“Delaware, go get the pack and complete the mission.”


The Japanese are barely firing back now, and Delaware looks more optimistic. He only makes it two feet farther than Colorado before getting hit.


It goes on like this, and soon Carolina and Arkansas are also gunned down, having made it just a few feet further.


The beach is silent for a long time.


“I think they’ve run out of ammunition,” the Sergeant said, “California, you need to do this.”


California is number 6, He slithers over the top of the foxhole, makes it to Arkansas without being spotted, slowly takes off the backpack, and then crawls very slowly back to our foxhole. 


“It takes a while for the machine gun to ready itself, sir,” California says, “I can make it before they notice me.”


The Sergeant nods.


California takes off at a full sprint. The beach remains silent for what seems an eternity as he runs and runs and it looks like he’s going to make it.


The sound of the Japanese machine gun fills my ears.


California’s goes down. He hasn’t even made it 10-feet.


“Michigan. You’re next.”


I look around and see number 7 and 8 aren’t here. Probably dead. My knees begin shaking uncontrollably.


The sergeant is holding his pistol in his hand. “We must take out that bunker, Michigan.”


“Yes, sir.”


Together we study routes to the bunker as he did with the previous Marines. Listen to the crescendos and lulls of the machine guns. Scan the beach strewn with dead marines looking for possible hiding spots.


I see a tiny look of indecision on his face.


“Do you really think this is a good idea?” I ask.


He looks at me, looks at the bunker, and puts his pistol back into its holster. “Nah. Let’s just forget about it for today.”


After a long night pinned down, the next morning we hear the rumble of a US army Sherman tank. Behind it, a fresh wave of troops with heavy weapons begins to clear the bunker line. We join the mop up operations. A day later, the battle of Tarawa is over.


And the next week, sir, my hair turned white. I can’t wait to get home when this war is over.


January 11, 2023 03:25

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20 comments

Rebecca Miles
21:00 Jan 14, 2023

This is a realistic take on the prompt; I can imagine you could be first up on a mission, over the top etc based on something as random as which number you draw on a slip of paper. Chance can be cruel anywhere, but in war, even more so. Your story draws attention to that sad fact really very well. From a style point of view, I enjoyed the active verb choices, they really delivered the battle context.

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05:27 Jan 15, 2023

thanks for reading, happy to hear putting the story into present tense with active verbs works. I've struggled to do that with sound, and have been keeping my eyes open (wrong word haha) for making sounds and feelings more active.

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I enjoyed the way you told this story: the opening with the POV of the intelligence guy, then switching to the white-haired Marine as he tells his story—and what a story it was! The little detail of the oblivious seagulls was something I really liked. They’re carrying on as they always have, and always will. Meanwhile, the guys in the boat below are grappling with the fact that they might die in the next few minutes. The ending paragraph was excellent.

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05:08 Jan 15, 2023

Thanks for readingl I started writing the battle story in past tense, and then thought it would work a lot better in present tense, so had that slightly awkward switch to his story, but hopefully it read smoothly again after a few sentences.

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Wendy Kaminski
15:25 Jan 13, 2023

What an incredible tragedy! Also so well-written that it felt like I was revisiting "Hacksaw Ridge." Everyone seems to have shown love for your seagull line, and allow me to add mine to that: it's like when you are in the middle of something traumatic, and your brain just focuses on the most nonsensical things and thoughts. This felt that way to me when I read that line - wonderfully done and perfectly placed in the middle of the action of the story. Really just a lot of love/respect for this story, in general, and I am so glad they had a pr...

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02:37 Jan 14, 2023

Thanks so much. I hadn't thought about this story for a long time, but the prompt brought it back to me. I'm trying to make my prose a tiny bit more colorful, so happy you liked the seagull line. I'll try to do more of that in the upcoming stories;) thanks for commenting and your support!

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Delbert Griffith
10:03 Jan 12, 2023

This is a pretty realistic story about what happens in a war of this type. A lot of Marines died in this manner during WWII. I have a brother-in-law (now 90 years old) who was a Frogman and he tells me stories about guys he served with, older guys from WWII. They had some bloody fucking battles. The seagull thing struck me as a counterpoint to war. Animals don't fight wars over ideology. I liked the seagulls. Riveting tale, Scott. your writing is always engaging. Nicely done, my man.

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00:57 Jan 13, 2023

Thanks Delbert, I told this one pretty directly, glad you liked my one little poetic diversion with the seagulls. Yeah the living memories of ww2 and vietnma are fading now and the new horrors of war seem a bit sanitized these days, I'm afraid history is going to repeat every 75 years when people think some ideology is more important than people just getting along peacefully. Anyway happy you found the story engaging, thx for reading.

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A.R. Eakle
16:26 Jan 11, 2023

There was one thing that really captured my attention in this piece. It was when you wrote the seagulls were flying around oblivious to the war. I think you could have really captured the chaos and terror of the scene by portraying the seagulls as being erratic and reacting to the war as well. I think it would have added a depth to the story that war doesn’t just affect people. Great story also! Interesting that it’s based on a coworker’s story.

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01:14 Jan 12, 2023

That's a good point about the seagulls. I thought about that. But the theme of the story, also in the title, is how we are all given lots in life. The Marine who drew the 9, is still in a far worse position than the Sergeant or boat driver, or the intelligence office who's above them all because he's better educated and can just sail around the Pacific checking things out. (I'm sure those guys had a lot of risk too though, it was a war). So the bird has the position of just not being involved at all in the human war which wouldn't make any s...

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Daniel Allen
15:06 Jan 11, 2023

Great story. The little details might be fictional, but they're what really bring it together.

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01:11 Jan 12, 2023

Thanks, glad to hear you enjoyed it. first time i've written a war story.

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Lily Finch
13:29 Jan 11, 2023

Great bones - excellent story. LF6 Aside from being well written, the story paints a vivid picture of the scene and captures the essence of war and marine life. You accurately depict the marine's inner thoughts and respect for their duty to their country and their senior officer. It came across as very authentic. Everything flowed well, and the pacing was right on the money. Great job!

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01:16 Jan 12, 2023

Thanks Lily, the first time I wrote a war story, so had watched quite a few youtube videos, happy to hear I got the right balance on their internal thoughts and emotions versus all the military details and war stuff. Thanks for reading!

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Chandler Wilson
12:56 Jan 11, 2023

Excellent piece of work. You never cease to amaze me.

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01:10 Jan 12, 2023

Thanks for checking it out. Story telling hour this week;)

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Graham Kinross
22:19 Feb 08, 2023

The details in this are rich and tragic. That whole thing was such a waste of human lives. The end really hammers home that no one sane wanted to be there.

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Nicole Of 2022
01:34 Jan 20, 2023

I love your way of writing this story with this prompt. What a great job you did. Really interesting and intriguing would love to support eachothers accounts<33

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03:31 Jan 11, 2023

Based on the true story told by a coworker whose father was in US Army Intelligence in the Pacific and met a young Marine who had white hair after drawing a number 9 in a mission to bomb a bunker on an invasion beach, and having a close call when it was his turn. The small details of the story are fiction.

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Tommy Goround
09:02 Jan 11, 2023

Works. Works well. Good story.

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