Hunter Sniper

The shelling let up before the boats began racing in toward the beach. Mercifully, there was not much return fire, aside from a few artillery rounds that plunged into the sea, almost like a token effort. Maybe the shelling had wiped out the Japanese defenses, after all. None of the incoming craft were hit.

The ships themselves wouldn’t be sticking around. The presence of the Japanese Navy and enemy planes made it too risky for the invasion fleet to allow itself to be bottled up close to the shore. Once the troops were away, the big ships would head for open water.

A coral shelf prevented the boats from carrying them all the way into the beach. Instead, the soldiers had to splash ashore from a hundred yards out, wading through the breakers. Fortunately, the sea was calm and the breakers were manageable — not usually big enough to knock a man down.

Steele was the first one out when the metal gangway splashed down. He’d heard some machine-gun fire coming from the tree line. It didn’t take much imagination to picture being ripped in half by a burst from shore. But the tracers were reaching out toward other vessels, poor bastards. So far it looked as though he and his men would be able to get off the boat in one piece.

Despite all their training, some of the men froze when the ramp came down. Steele shoved at the nearest man to get him moving.

“Let’s go! Let’s go!” Steele shouted, leaping to one side as men spilled down the ramp and hopped awkwardly into the foaming sea. Most were so loaded down with the gear on their backs that they resembled stooped-over, two-legged turtles.

He saw Rodeo and Alphabet go by, carrying their sniper rifles wrapped in plastic to protect them from the salt spray and sand. Private Egan jumped out with his war dog, Thor, held tightly on a leash. The water was over the dog’s head so that Thor had to swim for it, Egan shouting encouragement while he also struggled through the deeper troughs of water. In fact, for a moment it looked like Egan was in greater danger of drowning than the dog. But Thor surged ahead, the tension on the leash managing to keep Egan on his feet in the surging sea.

All around them, similar scenes were repeated from dozens of other landing craft, the massive landing operation forgotten as each man fended for himself in the waves. This was always the hard part, when the whole damn operation threatened to come undone.

The Japanese weren’t entirely absent. A smattering of bullets dappled the surface of the sea like rain. At the next landing craft over, a couple of men were hit and went down, the red stain of their life’s blood spreading through the white foam.

For the briefest moment, Steele felt awed by the utter magnificence of the scene — the rows of landing craft beached on the coral or sand, foaming waves, soldiers in khaki struggling through the water as a few streamers of tracer fire burned even brighter than the tropical sun. He stood there in the water, letting the spectacle of it all imprint on his brain. If he lived another fifty years, he would never forget this sight.

But there was no time to dwell on the scene, not if he wanted to live another five minutes.

“Follow me!” Sergeant Bosco shouted, leading the way across the coral shelf.

To call it a “shelf” was something of a misnomer, because that gave the impression of the coral being smooth and level. The coral posed many hazards. Unseen underwater, deep potholes in the coral waited to trip a man and send him face down into the surf. When loaded down with gear, getting back up again wasn’t easy. Some of the deeper kettles in the coral could drown a man.

It didn’t help that the coral was sharp and abrasive, acting like crushed glass when it came in contact with hands and knees and shins. The raw, scraped skin burned like fire in the salt water.

With all the men off the landing craft, the lieutenant headed for shore.

There was some sporadic enemy rifle fire, mixed with bursts from a few of the dreaded Nambu machine guns, but no concerted effort to keep the Americans from coming ashore. Even the heavier enemy artillery fire had mostly fallen silent. The Japanese had stopped short of putting out the welcome mat, but the situation could have been far worse.

Steele slogged through the water, trying to get ahead of his men. He stopped to help a soldier who had fallen. The man was discovering the hard way that it was entirely possible to drown in three feet of water when you couldn’t get your feet back under you.

Steele dragged the man upright so that the soldier came up, sputtering for air. The lieutenant didn’t wait for him but kept going toward the beach. There was no stopping now. He had to keep the momentum going.

Some of the GIs had already reached shore and were throwing themselves down on the sand, partly to avoid enemy fire and partly because they were exhausted by the effort of reaching dry land.

He didn’t let them rest for long.