Green Hell Read online

  Billie Jones lay moaning on the ground, and Hotshot Stevenson knelt beside him, examining his arm.

  “How is it?” Butsko asked.

  “I don't think he's gonna be able to use this arm for a while.”

  “Hurry up. We can't hang around here long.”

  Hotshot took gauze from his medicine bag and cleaned out the wound, and Butsko looked toward the east. The faint glimmer of dawn was on the horizon and he felt exhausted. He'd have to find a place for his men to get some rest, and it would have to be far from there. He doubted if there were any more Jap patrols around, so he took out a cigarette and lit it up. Then he sat down on the ground with his back to a tree. He took out his map, unfolded it, and found his approximate location. He figured he was about ten miles from Segi Point. It should take two or maybe three days to cover that distance, depending on the terrain. And the jungle would be crawling with Japs before long.

  This fucking jungle, Butsko thought, slapping a mosquito on his cheek. I can't stand this jungle anymore. He looked at Hotshot Stevenson, who was wrapping a bandage around Billie Jones's arm.

  “How you coming, Hotshot?” Butsko asked.

  “Almost finished, Sarge.”

  “Let's get ready to move out, men!”

  SEVEN . . .

  Lieutenant Karuma opened his eyes and saw a ray of light shining through the window. He realized it was morning and sat up abruptly in his bed. He looked around and for a split second didn't know where he was, because this wasn't the shack he was accustomed to living in. It was the shack belonging to the commander of the camp, and he remembered that he was commander of the camp now.

  He looked at his watch; it was nine o'clock in the morning. He wondered why nobody had awakened him. Outside his window he heard soldiers marching in close-order drill. It occurred to him that if you're the camp commander, nobody dares to wake you up. You can sleep as late as you want. You are lord of all you survey.

  Lieutenant Karuma rolled out of bed and placed his feet on the floor. He reached for his package of cigarettes, and it occurred to him that Sergeant Shinko hadn't reported to him yet. Why hadn't Sergeant Shinko reported to him? Where the hell was he?

  He looked out his window and saw a guard posted in front of his door. “You, there!” he shouted.

  The guard turned around, his eyes those of a frightened rabbit. “Me, sir?”

  “Yes, you! Where's Sergeant Shinko?”

  “I don't know, sir. I haven't seen him around, sir.”

  “Get me Sergeant Mitsui!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The guard ran off and Lieutenant Karuma put on his pants. Could it be that Sergeant Shinko was still in the jungle, tracking the Americans? One would think they would have located them by now. Lieutenant Karuma put on his boots and his shirt and strapped on his samurai sword. He thought a little porridge for breakfast would hit the spot.

  There was a knock on his door.

  “Come in!”

  Sergeant Mitsui, a rangy rawboned ex-farmer, entered the room and saluted.

  “Sergeant Mitsui,” said Lieutenant Karuma, “has Sergeant Shinko returned yet?”

  “No, sir.”

  “No?”

  “No, sir.”

  Lieutenant Karuma furrowed his brow in thought. Where was Lieutenant Shinko? “Sergeant Mitsui, I'd like you to take a squad of men and go out and look for him. He should have been back by now. How soon can you leave?”

  “Within a half hour, sir.”

  “Good. You're dismissed.”

  Sergeant Mitsui saluted, turned, and marched out of the room. Lieutenant Karuma sat behind his desk and scratched his head, wondering where Sergeant Shinko was. He thought about it for a while, couldn't come up with any reasonable answers, and decided to go to the mess hall and have breakfast.

  On second thought, why should he go to the mess hall? He was the commanding officer now, and he could have break-fast—and anything else he wanted—brought to him.

  “Guard!” he shouted. “Get in here!”

  The soldiers from the recon platoon slept throughout the morning and the early part of the afternoon in a part of the jungle so dense that it was like night. It was on the outskirts of the swamp, and the guards heard slithering and crawling throughout the day, but no creatures ventured forth to bother them. Billie Jones slept best of all, because Hotshot Stevenson had emptied a Syrette of morphine into his arm to kill the pain of the dog bite.

  Butsko got them up at three o'clock in the afternoon. They had nothing to eat because their rations had finally run out. Most of the men had no more cigarettes, either, but Longtree hadn't smoked all of his yet, and he passed his surplus around to the men who hadn't any.

  Butsko looked at his map and figured out the direction they'd go that day. They'd move out after their morning cigarettes and head in a straight line for the coast watcher station on Segi Point. Any live animals they ran into along the way they'd kill and eat, but they wouldn't make any special detours for hunting and fishing. The main thing was to reach Segi Point as quickly as they could and get the hell off that island.

  “How're you feeling?” Butsko asked the Reverend Billie Jones.

  “Feel real nice,” Billie Jones replied with a silly smile, his arm bandaged from wrist to elbow.

  Hotshot Stevenson winked at Butsko, to indicate that Billie Jones was higher than a kite.

  Butsko looked around at the others; they looked like wild men with their beards, ragged filthy clothes, and matted hair. They puffed their cigarettes silently and they all looked well rested and ready to kick ass.

  “All right, let's go,” Butsko said, standing up.

  The men got to their feet, adjusted their packs on their backs, and scratched themselves. Frankie La Barbara spit a wad into a bush. Bannon slapped a bug that had landed on his forehead. Billie Jones giggled, and drool dripped down his chin.

  Butsko walked east toward Segi Point, and his men followed in a long, disorderly line.

  Lieutenant Karuma decided to conduct a surprise inspection at the mess hall. He stormed into the long barracks-type building, his white gloves on, and walked back to the kitchen, frowning and sniffing the air. The mess sergeant saw him, ran over, and saluted.

  “I am here to inspect your kitchen,” Lieutenant Karuma said.

  “Now?”

  “Now.”

  Lieutenant Karuma reached out and ran his gloved hand underneath a counter, then held up the glove; there was a brown smudge on it. “Aha!” he said triumphantly. He saw a row of pots hanging from hooks on a wall, took down a pot, and looked at its bottom, which shone like a mirror. “Not bad,” he murmured. Spinning around, he saw an oven, opened the door, thrust his hand in, and scraped his finger along a corner. With-drawing his glove, he saw a black stain on his finger. “Filth!” he said. “This oven is filthy!”

  “But, sir,” said the mess sergeant, “we were waiting for it to cool down so we would clean it.”

  “It's cool now. Have it cleaned at once.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The mess sergeant shouted at his cooks, who gathered rags and attacked the stove. Lieutenant Karuma headed for the pan-try, when he heard footsteps in the dining room of the mess hall. Looking over the counter, he saw Sergeant Mitsui approaching, a solemn expression on his face.

  Uh-oh, thought Lieutenant Karuma.

  Sergeant Mitsui saluted. “I'm afraid I have bad news, sir. Sergeant Shinko, his entire detachment, and two dogs have been killed.”

  Lieutenant Karuma took a step backward as if he'd been punched in the mouth. “Killed?” he said.

  “Yes, sir. Every one of them.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “Evidently they were ambushed while they were on the” march, sir.”

  Lieutenant Karuma stroked his handlebar mustache. Sergeant Shinko and his detachment had numbered over forty men. He didn't believe that the few Americans he'd seen last night could have wiped out that many men. They must have had help from the n
atives. It was time to show the natives where their best interests lay. Lieutenant Karuma looked at his watch. It was five o'clock in the afternoon; there was still plenty of time.

  “Sergeant Mitsui, keep your detachment together and round up two more rifle squads. Assemble them in front of my office in fifteen minutes.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Sergeant Mitsui walked away, and Lieutenant Karuma turned to the mess sergeant. “You'd better have this kitchen cleaned up by the time I get back! It's a pigpen!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lieutenant Karuma walked out of the mess hall and headed for his office to get his equipment and Major Uchida's samurai sword. He'd make those natives regret their sneaky collaboration with the Americans. When he was finished with them, they'd wish they'd never seen an American.

  The recon platoon trudged through the thick jungle. Butsko had no idea of where he was. He couldn't rely on his compass and was heading in an easterly direction, according to the position of the sun in the sky, but he might end up miles away from Segi Point.

  The jungle had been the same all afternoon, with no distinguishing landmarks. It was a tangled, gnarled mess crawling with lizards and bugs, and the men were getting hungrier with every passing minute. Butsko decided that the most important thing to do was find out where he was.

  “Hold it up!” he said.

  The GIs came to a stop and looked at him, wondering what he wanted this time.

  “I need a volunteer to climb a tree and see where the hell we are.”

  Nobody said anything.

  “Bannon, you just volunteered. Here, take my binoculars.”

  Bannon spat at the ground and hung the binoculars around his neck. He looked at the nearest tree but didn't think he had the strength to climb it.

  “Somebody give me a hand,” Bannon said.

  Homer Gladley, the strongest man in the platoon and the hungriest, interlocked the palms of his hands and held them knee-high. Bannon stepped on them and Homer raised him up. Bannon reached for a branch, caught it, and swung himself onto it. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, turned his cap around on his head so that his vision would be clear, and climbed up to the next branch.

  The tree was thick and sturdy, with wide, gnarled branches festooned with vines and greenery. The world became brighter as Bannon climbed higher, and soon he could see the sun sparkling on the leaves. He continued to climb, breathing heavily, feeling a bit dizzy from hunger. Finally he poked his head through the branches at the top of the tree. All around him was a sea of tree tops, but in the distance, not more than a mile away, were two hills side by side. If they could get to the top of those hills, they should have a decent view.

  Bannon scrambled down the tree, jumped from the bottom branch to the ground, and told Butsko what he'd seen. Butsko decided the hills weren't that far out of their way and that they might as well head in that direction.

  “Let's go!” Butsko said.

  “Hey, Sarge, when're we gonna get something to eat?” Homer Gladley asked forlornly.

  “You sound like a fucking woman,” Butsko replied. “Miss a couple meals and you start crying.”

  “I was just wondering,” Homer said.

  “Stop wondering and move the fuck out.”

  Butsko took the lead, and the men pressed through the tangled jungle. Homer was angry about being called a woman by Butsko, but he was a good-natured fellow and could never stay angry at anybody for long. Instead his thoughts drifted toward platters of food. He saw the table at the old farmhouse groaning under the weight of a family meal. There were chickens roasted to a golden brown color, filling the air with their savory fragrances, and hams glazed with honey sauce, covered with rings of pineapple. In the center of the table would be loaves of bread baked by his mother, and corn muffins, and pots of cow butter. There'd be bowls of string beans, okra, carrots, and his favorite, mashed potatoes and gravy. And waiting in the kitchen would be cakes and pies for dessert and that wonderful coffee his mother used to perk, and it would be so nice to sit down with his family for a good meal, just like in the old days, which were only a little over a year ago but seemed like another lifetime.

  Finally they came to the foot of the hill and Butsko told them to take a break. They collapsed onto the ground and this time they had no cigarettes to smoke. They were out of everything except water; they all sipped from their canteens. Butsko knew that soon he'd have to stop his journey to Segi Point and begin a serious search for food, because even he was starting to feel a little weak.

  He let them rest for ten minutes, then told them to get moving. Grumbling and burping up gas from their empty stomachs, they climbed the side of the hill, holding on to branches so they wouldn't lose their balance and fall backward. Homer and Bannon helped Billie Jones, who was still a little bit out of his mind from morphine. Butsko hoped he could spot a coconut grove from the top of the hill, because coconuts were good food and would sustain them until they reached Segi Point.

  They reached the top of the hill and were thrilled by the wide panoramic view. They could see the vast stretch of impenetrable jungle below, the glittering ocean far away, and the narrowing of land that was Segi Point. Butsko took out his map and figured out where he was. According to the map, there was a coconut plantation about five miles away, in the general direction of Segi Point, but he had found so many errors in the map already, he couldn't be sure the coconut plantation really was there. For example, the hill he was on wasn't marked on the map, and neither was the one beside it.

  “I hear something,” said Sam Longtree, who had the keenest ears in the recon platoon.

  “What does it sound like?” Butsko asked.

  “Planes.”

  “Everybody shaddup.”

  The men stopped talking and wrinkled their foreheads as they tried to hear the planes. At first the sound was like a faint hum far away and barely perceptible above the ordinary sounds of the jungle and the breeze in the trees, but then the hum became a buzz that grew progressively louder.

  “There they are!” Longtree shouted, pointing toward the sky.

  Butsko shielded his eyes with his hand and looked in the direction Longtree was indicating. He saw little dots in the sky, all in neat formations, coming from the direction of Guadalcanal. Either Japanese planes were returning from a bombing raid, or the American Air Corps was going on one.

  “Keep your heads down,” Butsko said.

  The men hid in the foliage and looked up at the approaching planes, whose roar now filled the blue sky. Butsko heard a siren go off and looked around. Where in the hell had that come from? He turned to the next hill and saw the long ugly snout of an antiaircraft cannon rise into the air! A Jap antiaircraft site was only a few hundred yards away, and he hadn't even suspected!

  The bombers angled down toward the island and came in low and steady. Butsko looked at them through his binoculars and saw the white stars on their khaki wings. They were American bombers, B-25s, diving in for a bombing run. The antiaircraft gun on the next hill opened fire, and puffs of smoke appeared in the sky, attracting the attention of the Grumman Wildcat fighter planes that were supposed to provide protection for the bombers.

  Other antiaircraft guns in the jungle fired at the bombers, which were still quite high in the sky, flying past rapidly while the Wildcats dived down and strafed the antiaircraft gun sites. Some bombers detached themselves from the main formations and peeled off, dropping down out of the sky toward the antiaircraft sites. Tiny dots like eggs fell out of the bellies of the bombers, which scooted to the side and climbed into the sky again.

  Their bombs landed on and around the antiaircraft sites, and the one on the next hill was taking a terrific pasting. Butsko's hill shook with the explosions, and he turned around to see the main formations peeling off on the western side of New Georgia, where the Japanese air base was. He also could see aircraft climbing up to meet the bombers; evidently these were Japanese fighter planes determined to defend their airfield.
/>
  The GIs laid back and watched the show as fighters and bombers clashed with each other. They saw several Japanese Zeros gang up on a bomber and try to shoot it down, but the bomber's tail gunner and topside gunner held them off long enough for American fighter planes to arrive and attack the Japanese fighters, driving them away. Loud multiple explosions reverberated across the island as the American bombs exploded on the Japanese airfield.

  American bombers were shot out of the sky, and so were Japanese fighter planes. They fell to the earth in flames, exploding in the jungle, sending orange balls of fire like balloons rising in the sky. An American fighter plane caterwauled across the sky over the hill where Butsko and his men were hiding, smoke pouring out of its belly, and crashed in the jungle below. The engines of planes snarled as they climbed high into the sky, trying to get the height advantage on their foes. Planes flew around in all directions, firing machine guns and cannons, dropping bombs. It made no sense to Butsko. He wondered how the pilots could distinguish friendly planes from enemy planes, because everything was happening so quickly. He thought it a strange way to fight a war.

  More bombs were dropped on the antiaircraft site on the other hill, and it stopped firing. A Japanese Zero dropped out of the sky, its tail and one wing shot off, trailing a thick column of black smoke behind it, and crashed in the jungle. Smoke billowed up into the sky above the Japanese airfield on Munda Point. The American bombers regrouped in the sky and headed back to Guadalcanal, while the American fighters stayed behind to keep the Jap Zeros busy. The dogfights continued for several minutes and then the American fighter planes flew away. The Zeros followed them for a while but then turned back toward their airfield. The sky above the island became quiet. The bombing raid was over.

  Butsko stood up as the last American fighter planes disappeared on the horizon. He raised his binoculars to his eyes and looked at the Japanese antiaircraft emplacement on the next hill and still could see the snout of the gun. Smoke trailed into the sky from the site, and he wondered how badly the Japs over there were hurt. Maybe he and his men should go over there to take a look, because surely the Japs had some provisions.