8.(3-5) Restless Natives - We Are Expendable

Slim Novel 8 - http://adventuresofkimi.blogspot.com - See Homepage


3.  Restless Natives

I see several hundred meters of jungle cleared in rectangle for airstrip and at far end, huts. Men are busily pulling stumps, dumping soil and laying concrete.

   “Hey! Who in hell're you?” shouts a sergeant.

   Identifying myself, I follow the men to a hut for lunch: the white rice and dried squid in pungent brown sauce suits me fine. How I got dumped on Guada (trooper's slang for this place) is greeted with good humor. Most troopers here can be described by the army term fuck off – trouble maker banished to god-awful isle. Officer in charge, Lieutenant Watanabe, is a sympathetic intellectual ordered here because he saved the honor of Filipina nurses slated for rape after the fall of Manila. I alternate helping with field construction and tripping about the island with Private Itoh, a university man sent here because during boot camp he wrote a protest letter against army brutality. My talk with Itoh confirms initial impression: Guada is a hellhole. Where there is not green rotting jungle populated by leaping lizards, poison snakes, ferocious biting giant ants and gigantic cockroaches; there are hot humid plains covered by razor-sharp Kunai grass that can cut to skin inside thickest clothing, and everyone has malaria of the vicious type that attacks brain leading to constant depression with nightmares. Luckily I brought quinine pills. I ask why the army has not supplied it and Itoh answers “We are expendable.”

Itoh and I hike up Mount Austen, an active volcano. As we stand on a ridge gazing seaward I hear a thud like someone punching a pillow and, turning to Itoh, I see him crumple to the ground, with, sticking out of his neck, a pencil-like black wood end of a cylinder missile. He is dead before I can check pulse. I flatten on turf as two more missiles whistle by. My first meeting with the restless natives! Not waiting for formal introduction, I race back to base where Itoh's death stirs little excitement. Each day men die from malaria, beriberi, dysentery. No one expects to leave in anything but a standard body size wood box.

4.  Shock

Evening:  Lieutenant Watanabe and I sup on pickles and rice. It is his wife's birthday and he shows photo: pretty kimono lady with 2 children.

Sleep fitfully. Wake to ground shaking. Earthquake? Also, rumbles like thunder from sky. Stumble out of hut and see sky full of flashes. Volcano? No! Flashes from north! Is it tropical storm? But where is rain? In light of flash I glance at watch: 4 AM. Whistling sound rapidly increasing in pitch captures my attention.

I am lying on ground dripping blood amid remains of hut, underpants soaked with urine and soiled by feces, feeling no pain as I gaze at flesh hanging from left forearm. Explosions all about and men running. Sit staring moronically at blood dripping from forearm.

   Medic stops to bandage. “Yankee Monkees landing on beach! Better git while gittin's good or they’ll be havin’ yuh fer breakfast!”

   Get up and follow him, noting happily that rest of me is intact. Burning huts light a hellish scene: The half completed airstrip is littered with debris, much of it human – arms, legs, chunks of flesh. Figures of fleeing men, many dressed only in shorts, outlined by flames, are scurrying into jungle at far end of the strip. Incendiaries are exploding all around. Running toward the Ilu River, I encounter a blood-dripping Lieutenant Watanabe trying to organize the frightened fleeing men to form a line of defense. All ignore him and my last view before plunging into river is of the Lieutenant charging in direction of the beach, his sword high, his voice booming a boisterous banzai.

5. Half-Barrel Kamaboko Buildings

We wade up the cool waters of the Ilu River, 13 of us led by a petty officer.

Morning sky is overcast and air humid. Later we rest on slope of Mount Austen. 
   My left arm is aching badly, my head pulsing from fever as through binoculars I see the Americans landing on the beach from busily moving barges that dot the water of lagoon. They are occupying the airstrip against no resistance. Where is our Imperial Navy? It has been caught by surprise in waters we are supposed to dominate. And only eight months from Pearl Harbor! The Americans learn fast.

   And the airstrip! Where just last night our ramshackle huts, there are now neat rows of prefabs – half barrel buildings so called because shaped like long corrugated barrels cut down middle lengthwise and laid with convexity upwards forming roof and walls like an animal burrow, exactly shaped like our Japanese kamaboko, a processed shark meat roll. About 15 meters length and 5 meters wide on the ground.

   Bulldozers move over the strip like ants going to honey. In an hour they accomplish more than we did in a week. Planes will soon be using the strip to strafe and bomb us.

   Night crashes down with many walking wounded. Word is that a full U.S. Marine division has landed. What luck! My exile is turning into a war front!
   To read on, click 8.(6-7) Rest and Rescue