Their Backs against the Sea by Bill Sloan

Author:Bill Sloan [SLOAN, BILL]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2017-06-27T00:00:00+00:00

PRIVATE FIRST CLASS RAYMOND RENFRO was as tired as he had ever been. He hadn’t slept for more than a handful of minutes in over a week, and if he could have shut his eyes for a moment, he would have been sound asleep. He was half-listening to a conversation between two 4th Division Marines in his rifle platoon who were talking about who would get the other’s watch if they didn’t make it through the next few minutes. They were under attack, Ray knew that much, but it really didn’t matter. Ray felt like screaming at them, but he wasn’t sure he had the strength.

“I was utterly exhausted,” he recalled. “I didn’t know what to do, but I didn’t really care.” There he was, just sitting on a rock, when he heard a clicking noise—just like when you snap your fingers. The mine was about four or five feet to his left when it exploded.

The last thing Renfro remembered was going up in the air and somebody giving the order to retreat, so they withdrew to the top of the hill they were on. They left Renfro and two or three others lying there, thinking they were dead.

Ray didn’t know for sure how long he lay unconscious there, but he slowly awakened. He couldn’t see anything because his eyes wouldn’t open. He had blood all over his face, but he finally managed to open his left eye. He started feeling around to where he was injured. He still had his arms and legs, and through the gravel and grit in his eye he could make out the men on his left. They looked dead. But there was another Marine on his right. He’d been hit hard, and his whole chest was just laid open. Ray started to talk to him.

“There’s nobody here but us,” he told the man. “Everybody else is dead.” Ray knew from which direction they’d come, so with his help they started slowly up the hill. Eventually several Marines ran down and dragged them to safety.

Someone gave Ray a shot of morphine, and he began to examine where he was hurt. “I had a big piece of shrapnel in my left shin bone, three pieces in my left arm, and two in my left thigh,” he said. “My eye still would barely focus from the rock and sand hitting my face. My BAR and helmet, they were all bent up. It looked like they’d been stomped on.”

Ray lay there until they put the wounded in a Higgins boat and ferried them out to a hospital ship. “I heard one of the men say, ‘Well, this one looks like he’s dead.’ I waved my hand to let ’em know I was still alive. I must have looked pretty scary. I hadn’t shaved in a long time and I was bloody all over, but by God I was alive!”

And there were plenty of Japanese still alive, as the Americans were about to learn.

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