Gone to Soldiers
“It was not a flattened bagel like Tarawa atoll. It was not jungle like Guadalcanal. It was more of a little country, a fair-sized island with a city and pleasant-looking villages. They had landed in an area of beautiful sandy beaches, lined with the usual coconut palms and adjoined by terraced sugarcane fields, but the civilized beauty of the place did not occupy his attention long. That first night they were shelled by artillery that commanded their shallow beachhead with maddening accuracy. All night long the shells came in among them, while from the quality of screaming, he tried to guess who had been wounded by the last shell but not blown to shreds.
Nothing, he thought, crouched in his shallow foxhole in fetal position, nothing made him feel as helpless as lying under an artillery barrage. When they came ashore, he felt naked crossing the reef, exposed, a target in the slow amphtrac lumbering along while shells and machine-gun bullets wiped them out. But then he was at least movi...ng with some kind of chance to fight back or reach cover.MoreLess
Nothing, he thought, crouched in his shallow foxhole in fetal position, nothing made him feel as helpless as lying under an artillery barrage. When they came ashore, he felt naked crossing the reef, exposed, a target in the slow amphtrac lumbering along while shells and machine-gun bullets wiped them out. But then he was at least movi...ng with some kind of chance to fight back or reach cover.MoreLess
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