The Final Storm by Jeff Shaara

ain’t never seen anything like you. They thought your head was on fire.”
    Welty shook his head, ignored the man, who returned to the manic discussion of their next mission. Adams still looked up at the red hair, said, “I don’t remember seeing too many girls on Ulithi. Guadalcanal, different story.”
    “You can have ’em, Clay.” Welty tapped his shirt pocket. “Got all the gal I need right here. She’s back in Richmond writing me right now. Gotta write her again too, before we get all wrapped up in whatever we’re doing next. My parents aren’t too happy about it, but not much they can do about it now.”
    Adams left that alone, knew Welty wouldn’t go into details about his parents at all. And he had seen the photo Welty kept in his pocket, a bright smile on a pretty blonde, every letter coming with that soft scent of some kind of perfume.
    “Yeah, well, can’t argue that one. Agree with you though. These island dames don’t do a thing for me. Most of ’em got no teeth, or too much of everything else.”
    Welty lay back in the bunk, his feet still dangling, and Adams closed his eyes, tried to avoid the arguments around him, thought, I’ve seen a few of these island girls that weren’t too damn ugly. A few. Not sure what I’d do if one of ’em pounced on me.
    He had heard plenty from the combat veterans, warnings that the natives on any of these islands could be as dangerous as the enemy soldiers they helped to hide. The words had been drilled into them all, first by the company commander, Captain Bennett, then Sergeant Ferucci. Stay thehell away from the indigenous people. He still didn’t know exactly what
indigenous
meant, but the meaning was clear enough. Out here, anyone not a Marine could be looking to kill a Marine. Simple enough.
    “Listen up!”
    The voice came from the hatchway, and Adams saw Captain Bennett lean in through the oval opening, followed by the platoon commander, Lieutenant Porter. The men shifted across the tight space, gave the officers room to stand, and Bennett said, “All right, it’s time to let you in on the big secret. Though why anything needs to be so damn secret out here is a mystery to me. Any of you know where Okinawa is?”
    There was a hum, some men suddenly aware that the secret wasn’t secret anymore.
    “Didn’t think so. If you’ve heard jack about what the First went through on Iwo Jima, you know that place was nothing but a hole in the ocean, one tiny hot rock. Some of you found the same thing on Peleliu. Not much to look at, not much to fight over. But we fought over it anyway, because it was our job. This one’s different. A hell of a lot different. Okinawa isn’t some four-mile lava pile. It’s a damn country. Sixty miles from top to bottom, maybe a dozen miles across. There are several major airfields there that the top brass wants, and a load of Japs defending them. As bad as that ought to be, there are a hell of a lot of civilians there who have been under the Jap boot heels for years. One of our jobs will be to fix that, liberate those people. I’ve heard about how many of you have been shooting your mouths off how anxious you are to get started on our next mission. Well, good. I want to see you
enthusiastic
about your jobs. Whether you got your training at Parris Island or San Diego, or whether you had to eat sand for General Shepherd on Guadalcanal, everything you were taught about fighting the Japs is about to be tested.” The captain paused, gave a sharp nod to Lieutenant Porter, who stepped forward, shouted, “Which way do you run your K-bar knife into a Jap’s gut?”
    The response was immediate, a chorus.
    “Up, sir!”
    “What do you do when you pass an officer on the line?”
    There was a slight hesitation, then a smattering of responses, all the same.
    “Nothing, sir!”
    Porter seemed satisfied but Bennett said, “That’s right. Nothing. No salutes, no
yes sir, no sir
. No
sir
at all. I’m not going home in a box