“Help!  Corpsman!” The plaintive
voice drifted through the darkness.  They had to tackle the Navy Corpsman attached to their squad to keep him from rushing toward the sound.
        Word had come down from battalion HQ: “Stay in your foxholes at night.  Don’t move around.  Above all, don’t advance beyond your lines.”  The order should have been unnecessary.  The Marines were on Bloody Nose Ridge on Peleliu, the most dangerous place in the South Pacific at the moment.  And right over there, a short upwind spit, lay a battalion of Japanese soldiers dreaming up nasty ways to kill Americans.
  
One of those ways was to sneak an English-speaking Jap near the American lines and have him pretend to be an injured Marine; then, when an unsuspecting corpsman came to his aid, he got a bayonet in the ribs for his trouble.
        Thus, the order to stay put.  It made perfect sense to the squad and they were happy to comply.  But to a corpsman, the sound of an injured man was like the sirens’ song to Odysseus.  He just couldn’t resist.  So they would wrestle him to the ground, and detailed the largest member of their squad to sit on him until the Good Samaritan urge passed and he came to his senses.
  
Five days ago, they had been ordered to take the Bloody Nose.  They slogged through the underbrush, ignoring the coppery smell of blood and the bodies splayed around them like dolls cast away by some giant, bored child.  Ahead they heard the high-pitched chitter of the enemy’s Nambu light machines guns and the baritone bursts of the American BARs in response.  The tympanic cough of mortar launches punctuated the steady stream of small arms fire from the M-1s.
        The Japs fought with an insane fury.  Still, the Marines pushed ahead, leaving more American and Asian bodies in their wake.  Like their sergeant said, “The word ‘retreat’ just ain’t found in a Marine Corps dictionary.”
        Finally, they took the ridge.  Now they had to hold it.
  
When the platoon first reached the ridge, they settled into the foxholes abandoned by the retreating Japanese.  The platoon leader, a recent graduate of Annapolis, looked too young to grow more than peach fuzz on his cheeks.  He gave

them an ass-chewing, and ordered them to move out and dig their own foxholes.  They grumbled
 about that until dusk, when the Japs began dropping shells, dead center into the abandoned foxholes.  Another nasty trick.  Suddenly they regarded the lieutenant with a new respect.
        They commandeered a dead Jap’s helmet to crap in at night, should the need arise.  Sarge came by to check on morale and to make sure they were squared away with ammo and rations.
        “Three Marines from Delta Company were searching through some of the dead gooks, liberating souvenirs,” he said, nodding toward the helmet.  His raspy, resonant voice sounded like a deuce-and-a-half rolling down a gravel road.  “Turns out, the Japs had hidden a grenade under one of the bodies.  When the Gyrenes turned it over, the grenade went off.  Killed two of them.  The third got a million dollar wound.”
        The Marines exchanged glances.  A million dollar wound was one that got you sent home, but didn’t cripple you for life.  The notion of flipping over one of those bodies and finding a grenade quickly passed between them; and just as swiftly, the thought of the two leathernecks who’d bought the farm.
        The sergeant watched them, as if reading their minds.  A slow smile played across his face.  “You boys stay put.  You’ll get home soon enough.”  The smile faded.  “But not in a body bag.  If any of you bastards gets yourself killed, you’ll have to answer to me.”  He left amid their shaky laughter.
  
They settled into their foxholes,
making themselves as comfortable as possible, thinking of girls and hot meals, and million dollar wounds.
 
                         About The Author
  
        Tom Hooker is a new member of the Writers’ SIG and is a member of Mensa.  He is a native of Mississippi and an Ole Miss graduate.  He and his wife, Elaine, live in Hendersonville, North Carolina.
        Tom’s work has been published in Nuthouse and The McGuffin.  He is currently working on a novel in revision.
 
  
                                    Copyright © Tom Hooker