Into Enemy Waters by Andrew Dubbins

Author:Andrew Dubbins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2022-04-21T00:00:00+00:00

22.

The

Flag

On February 19, 1945, the morning after the bombing of the Blessman, George and his teammates leaned on the rail of their UDT transport in swim trunks, watching the marines land on Iwo Jima. There were ships as far as the eye could see, a fleet consisting of four hundred fifty naval ships and three Marine divisions numbering seventy thousand men.

It was an overcast day, but George could see the landing boats motoring to shore. Each boat’s stream of wake looked like a long line of white acrylic paint across a blue canvas. The boats came in waves every five minutes, each filled with marines in tan uniforms spattered with olive drab.

George figured many of those marines were teenagers, like him, who’d never experienced combat. He hoped the intelligence that the UDT had collected would help. At the very least, he hoped it made them feel a little better knowing someone had been there first.

Looking back, George believes that the UDT’s work did indeed give the Marines some confidence. “That they’re not going in blind,” he says, “that they know what they were about to face.”

George’s platoon had not been given an assignment that day, but other UDT men were hard at work leading the Marines’ landing boats into the eastern beaches.

Meanwhile, inside their bunkers on Iwo Jima, 21,000 well-trained Japanese defenders were armed and ready. The Navy’s preinvasion bombardment had knocked out many Japanese shoreline emplacements but had barely scratched the enemy’s eleven miles of underground tunnels and caves.

The first wave of marines landed at 8:59 a.m., each man moving forward in a crouch across the black sandy beach. Three minutes later, at 9:02, the Japanese opened fire. Shells came whining down on the marines from every direction, and machine-gun bullets whipped past them in a whir of death.

Ensign Arne Kvaalen, who’d survived the Blessman attack, was shuttling back and forth in a landing craft leading the marines ashore, as Draper Kauffman had instructed. He could see the marines diving onto the sand as they hit the beach, then get up and run forward. But with each successive wave, Kvaalen noticed that fewer and fewer men were getting up.

Severed legs and arms were scattered across the beach, some as far as fifty feet from the bodies. In a surreal sight, the shore was also littered with hundreds of Valentine cards. The marines had gotten their last mail call five days earlier, on Valentine’s Day, and many of the men had shoved the cards in their pockets to read again later. Now, as an avalanche of enemy shells ripped apart the soldiers, their sweethearts’ bright red cards dotted the black sand.

Draper stood beside Beachmaster Squeaky Anderson in a gunboat, watching the marines hit the beach. Squeaky—­in his usual uniform of torn camouflage jacket, shorts, shined shoes, black socks, and garters—­turned to Draper. “I think she look all right,” he said in his thick Scandinavian accent. “Want to go in?”

Just ninety minutes had elapsed since the first wave landed. Draper could see marines scrambling for cover and slithering on their bellies across the bullet-swept sand.

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