Seasons of the Heart Page 8

  The captain or a surviving crew member appeared a few yards away. The man shouted something, then disappeared under the water.

  A large wave with an empty steel drum balanced on its crest was bearing down on Phillip. He tried to duck, but the container hit him squarely on the forehead and he passed out.

  When he came to, he was lying on his stomach, half on, half off, a large board. Bugleman was lying next to him, kicking the makeshift raft toward shore. They had arrived at Bataan.

  “Awake now, buddy?” Bugleman asked. “I was getting worried about you.”

  Phillip moved his head gingerly. “Where are we?”

  “Don’t know for sure,” Bugleman said, “but I think we’re just off Bataan. Or maybe further north.”

  “Bataan …” Phillip sounded disoriented. “Where’s … Pershing …”

  “The General Pershing? We were in a PT boat—remember? Headed for Corregidor. We were torpedoed … hit a mine … who knows …”

  “Oh, yeah … PT boat gone?” Phillip couldn’t clear his head, which had begun to ache horribly.

  “Nothing left.”

  “Where’s the captain?”

  “Gone. Along with the rest. You’ve been out for a half hour. Must have really creamed yourself.”

  Phillip groaned as a stab of pain almost made him black out.

  “Look, Phil, I’m sorry if you have a little headache”—Bugleman’s sardonic humor suddenly reawakened—“but can you help kick a little? This isn’t a Sunday swim, you know.” Bugleman thought it prudent not to make any wisecracks concerning sharks which he knew infested the South China Sea.

  In response, Phillip only moaned.

  “It’s our only chance, you idiot!” Bugleman was genuinely angry now. “The current’s taking us in the wrong direction. We’ll either drown or else the Japs’ll use us for target practice. For God’s sake help me, will you?”

  He stopped kicking. “Listen!”

  Phillip heard a droning noise but couldn’t tell what direction it was coming from.

  “Jap patrol boat,” Bugleman said. “If they spot us, duck!”

  Even as he spoke, the tiny boat shot out of the mist. It was manned by two Japanese marines. A machine gun was mounted in the bow.

  They abandoned the plank and dived simultaneously. Phillip stayed under until he thought that his lungs would burst. He heard the propeller pass over his head. Then he came up for air, inhaling seawater as he did. He retched miserably as he saw the boat turn and race back toward him as a marine prepared to fire. He dived again, and again the boat passed over his head, this time splintering the improvised raft into a thousand fragments.

  Surfacing cautiously, keeping only his face above water, Phillip could hear the Japanese cursing somewhere in the mist. Their incomprehensible babble brought home to him just how deep they were in enemy territory.

  The cursing stopped and the motor was turned off, then ignited, and the patrol boat abandoned the chase and disappeared.

  Now their situation was even grimmer, for with no raft to hang on to, both men were tiring rapidly.

  A small plane was flying overhead.

  “Reconnaissance, most likely,” Bugleman gasped. “A Mitsubishi.”

  “We’ve got to be pretty close now,” Phillip said hopefully. His legs were starting to cramp badly and he was horribly thirsty.

  They saw the outline of the jungle rising out of the mist. Powered by hope, they increased their efforts.

  The Japanese plane, which had disappeared for a few moments, was back—flying slowly and much lower now. Then it was joined by three others—Zeroes, their most feared fighter plane.

  Phillip wanted to dive, but Bugleman stopped him. “They’re not out for us—look!”

  The planes were in fact after much more important targets. They banked steeply to the right and screamed inland.

  Phillip followed their flight.

  The three planes flew up and down the beach and the nearby jungle, firing their machine guns and cannon, while Japanese warships, somewhere in the distance, lobbed heavy shells at unseen targets farther inland, toward the heavily jungled mountains.

  Then the defending Americans returned fire, as their antiaircraft guns tried to down the enemy planes.

  Phillip shuddered with horror as a mutilated body—friend or enemy?—was flung by an explosion out of the sea and into the air in front of him.

  Bugleman, cursing now, urged him on, and they swam toward the south end of the beach.

  A hundred yards from safety, two graceful fountains of water and smoke rose from the sea from shells, fired from ships anchored somewhere offshore. Then all was quiet.

  Neither man had the strength to strike out in another direction, so they continued toward the beach.

  They had almost reached safety when they again heard the patrol boat engine. Both men turned their heads in the water and looked back, sure that this time the end had come. White-hot tracers streamed past Phillip’s face. He ducked, surfaced, and kept swimming.

  The patrol boat was coming up fast. No chance now—they would be shot like fish in a barrel or cut to pieces by the propeller. He braced his body and waited for death.

  It didn’t come. Instead, the boat made a full turn and headed for open water as an American heavy machine gun concealed somewhere in the foliage beyond the beach raked the water near the boat, giving him and Bugleman a few precious minutes to make it to shore.

  As if to dash his last hopes, one of the Zeroes returned and bombed the beach, trying to hit the concealed gun. Disappointed, it climbed, turned, and buzzed angrily toward Corregidor.

  Phillip’s knee struck sand. Weeping with joy and exhaustion, he struggled to his feet, blinking the saltwater from eyes that were almost swollen shut. He turned and squinted seaward.

  The captain was floundering helplessly some twenty yards from shore—apparently about to go under. A shell exploded on the beach, showering Phillip with sand. He dropped automatically to his face, then got up and headed for the water to help his friend.

  Grasping Bugleman’s arm, Phillip towed him to the beach, and the two men staggered toward the safety of the jungle.

  There was a crackle of small-arms fire and Bugleman dropped to the sand and lay still. To his horror, Phillip saw a bright-red patch high on Bugleman’s leg. He was hit—and badly.

  Bugleman was barely conscious and in severe pain. “Can’t walk … You go on … Head for cover,” he muttered.

  Phillip didn’t answer. Instead, he gathered what remained of his strength, bent down, grabbed Bugleman by the shoulders, fell twice, then half carried, half dragged his friend toward the shelter of the trees. He didn’t slow down when a burst of pain shot through his upper arm, and continued until the dunes and bamboo thickets had sheltered them from the enemy.

  Sick with fear, he laid Bugleman on the ground and ripped away the bloody fabric on his leg. The Japanese bullet had gone right through the femur, shattering it. The bone was sticking out through a mass of raw flesh. Phillip turned away and vomited.

  When he recovered, he strained his swollen, almost useless eyes in the unaccustomed dimness of the jungle and looked for American or Filipino troops. He was sure they were nearby. So, perhaps, were Japanese advance scouts or sharpshooters. But he had to chance it.

  “Medic!” he yelled, but his voice was lost in a blast of artillery fire. When it was quiet, he called a second time, terrified that Bugleman was going to bleed to death. The captain was moaning softly.

  “Help!” he cried.

  One of the soldiers—they were in fact Americans—approached with an air of indifference, puffed on his cigarette, and looked down at Bugleman.

  “Call a medic,” Phillip pleaded.

  The soldier seemed to be reflecting. Then he said, “I’ll see what I can do, but we’re in real bad shape here.”

  It seemed hours before an exhausted, sweat-stained man in khaki shorts and a torn shirt knelt before Bugleman.

  “I can splint
him up and try and stop the bleeding,” he said. “But in this jungle he’ll probably die anyhow. Just a matter of time.”

  Methodically, the medic fashioned a rough splint out of bamboo foraged from the trees behind them. Then Phillip helped him force the jagged bone back into the torn flesh of the thigh. Bugleman, still blessedly unconscious, moaned loudly, then fell silent.

  Phillip swallowed hard, trying not to be sick again. He remembered that once he had been unable to touch a cadaver.

  When he saw the long, dirty bandage that the medic pulled from an equally soiled hip pocket, Phillip protested. “For Christ’s sake—you’re not going to wrap him up with that rag, are you?”

  The medic sighed. “Best I got.”

  Phillip had no comeback. The hideous wound, the primitive first aid, and his own fatigue had left him numb. He could scarcely move, much less think.

  The medic finished, left Phillip a canteen full of evil-smelling water, and went off after promising that a stretcher-bearer would be there “soon.”

  The battle was dying down. The Zeroes had disappeared in search of more visible prey, and there was only sporadic and generally ineffectual shelling from the Japanese warships.

  Finally, two bedraggled and unshaven soldiers, both shivering with malaria, arrived and loaded the still unconscious Bugleman onto a stretcher. Phillip stumbled after them, up a steep ridge and deeper into the jungle.

  When they reached what Phillip had been assured was a field hospital, he gasped. It was nothing more than a collection of rusty old bunk beds set up in a clearing under the trees. The “operating room” was an ancient shed with a corrugated roof. The floor was dirt.

  Bugleman was carried inside and laid on a wooden table covered with a khaki blanket. Nurses tried to brush away the flies as the surgeon, a young Filipino, explained to Phillip that the camp had run out of anesthetics several days earlier. They had been cut off for over a month, and had received thousands of casualties, many of them worse than Bugleman.

  To Phillip’s horror, as soon as they dressed the wound and began to manipulate the leg, the intense pain jarred Bugleman into consciousness.

  At first he tried to stifle his cries, but soon he was screaming in agony. Finally Phillip couldn’t stand it any longer. He left the shed and went outside, sobbing.

  Men lay on cots all over the clearing. Many of them were so thin they were virtual skeletons. Some were missing limbs. Others had suffered grossly disfiguring facial wounds.

  Phillip stumbled over to a tree and leaned against it, shaking, unable to pull himself together.

  There was a gentle touch on his shoulder, and slowly he raised his head. A young nurse was standing behind him. “Are you okay, soldier?”

  “Yeah … I’m okay.” He attempted a weak smile.

  Suddenly the nurse spoke sharply. “Why, you’re wounded.”

  Puzzled, Phillip looked down and saw a patch of dried blood running from his shoulder to his elbow. Thinking back to his desperate dash across the beach, he vaguely remembered a flash of pain. “It’s nothing. Forget it.”

  The nurse paid no attention to him. “Take your shirt off, soldier,” she commanded.

  There was a long cut in Phillip’s arm. The nurse led him to a tent where she bathed the wound and bandaged it. Then she looked at the bruise on his temple, trying to distract him from the pain by telling him her name was Fiona and what it had been like the last month on Bataan. Listening to her, Phillip was reminded of Ann. It seemed a hundred years since she had kissed him goodbye in San Francisco.

  When Fiona was finished, Phillip described Bugleman’s injuries and asked what she thought about his chances for recovery.

  She looked grim. “There is a terrible problem with infection here in the jungle. And we’ve had to evacuate three times. He has a chance, but that’s all.”

  After she had gone, Phillip went back to the operating hut to see how Bugleman was doing. The surgeon was just walking out. “You his buddy?” he asked Phillip. When Phillip nodded, the doctor said, “He came through it pretty well. If he could be flown out….” He walked off, leaving Phillip with his friend.

  Bugleman looked terrible, but he was conscious and even articulate. Phillip took his hand. “How do you feel?”

  “Still hanging in there. Looks like you saved my ass.”

  Phillip smiled. “But it doesn’t look like I did it soon enough to get us to MacArthur. What do you think we should do now?”

  “Well, I’m going to be out of commission for a while. I guess you’ll have to report to the nearest combat unit. But come back for me in a week or so.”

  “Yes, sir!” Phillip said, forcing a light note into his voice. “I’ll expect to see you walking around.”

  One of the orderlies gave Phillip directions to an American command post. Before he left, the man handed over a pair of boots. Without being told, Phillip knew that they had come from a corpse, but he also knew that he couldn’t survive without footgear. It took him an hour to reach the camp.

  Phillip reported to the commanding officer, a captain—a career soldier who wasn’t much impressed with second lieutenants fresh from the States. And this one in particular was too handsome, well-fed, and aristocratic for the captain’s taste.

  A cream puff, Cox thought to himself. He’ll last a week.

  “I’m Captain Andy Cox,” he barked. “Well, Lieutenant Coulter, you’re going to get the chance to kill some Nips. How do you feel about that, boy?”

  Phillip had seen enough of Cox’s type not to react. Men like Cox loved war for its own sake, and their enthusiasm had nothing to do with making the world safe for democracy or for any other ideal, for that matter.

  “Well?” Cox demanded when Phillip remained silent. “I asked you a question, Lieutenant—how do you feel about killing Japs?”

  “They are the enemy and I’m a soldier … sir,” was all Phillip would give him.

  Cox’s expression became a mask. “Get yourself a rifle. And one more thing—bands of the yellow bastards have been landing all day and hiding in the jungle. Don’t fall asleep in an exposed position. You could wake up with your belly ripped open. You wouldn’t like that, would you, Lieutenant?”

  Phillip was issued a standard American M-l, but he noticed that most of the men carried old Springfields. “M-l’s jam up,” the bearded supply sergeant told him. We trade ’em to the Filipinos for these.”

  “Or else we just take ’em when the gooks drop ’em and run,” a soldier commented sourly.

  The next day there was only intermittent shelling, but the following morning saw a full-scale attack, with air support and light armored vehicles. They had been eating breakfast when someone spotted the first dark shapes appearing on the horizon.

  When the first bomb hit, Phillip dived for the foxholes that lined the edge of the beach. It was his last conscious action for hours. He crouched in the shelter as the anti-aircraft guns pounded Japanese planes, feeling helpless and wishing he had been at the camp long enough to be assigned. The bombing and strafing seemed to last an eternity. Finally there was a lull, and the men were ordered to retreat back into the jungle.

  For the next few weeks, Phillip’s days followed the same pattern. Long periods of bombing by the Japanese were followed by another hurried retreat. It was impossible to tell from which direction the enemy would attack next. He was given odd jobs to do, but there never seemed time for him to receive instruction as an infantryman. When there was a lull in the battle, the men had only one subject of conversation: food. They discussed their favorite meals endlessly. Hamburgers, ice cream, lasagne—it was as though talking about food nourished them.

  For they were slowly starving. Since January, all they had gotten to eat was a daily half-ration of rice, often full of weevils. Occasionally one of the backwoods Southern boys would catch a monkey or a rat, and they all wolfed down the meager meat. Horses and mules had long since disappeared into the cooking pots. With the exception of Phillip and the stocky CO, Cox, all
the men in the unit were emaciated. Their flesh seemed to have melted away, and their eyes were hollow, with a peculiar lifeless stare.

  No one bragged about what would happen to the enemy when the American fleet arrived, for they were slowly realizing that the defenders of Bataan might not be rescued after all. Not even the most confident pep-talk from Cox could raise their spirits.

  From time to time, Phillip wondered how Bugleman was doing, hoping he was still alive. But after the second week, Phillip was like all the other soldiers; he could think only of the twin imperatives: food and survival.

  Early one morning, several weeks after Phillip had joined the unit, they ran straight into a unit of infiltrators. They had orders to descend a ridge and help shore up a flank of the Luzon line, which ran across the southern part of the peninsula. Not anticipating an immediate attack, they were marching carelessly two abreast down an overgrown path. Suddenly seven or eight Japanese clad in black emerged from a small clearing below them, crouched, and opened fire.

  The soldier next to Phillip went down. Phillip instinctively dropped flat and began shooting. In front of him a Japanese was just cresting the hill, rifle raised. Phillip gritted his teeth and pointed his M-l. It was an easy shot, but the thought of actually killing made him hesitate. Then he aimed and squeezed the trigger.

  Nothing happened. The rifle was jammed. At that moment the Japanese saw Phillip.

  Panic hit him like a sledgehammer. He was a sitting duck. Without a wasted motion, Phillip rolled behind the body of a dead soldier. He heard the thwack and felt the shudder as the bullet hit his shield of human flesh. He grabbed the dead man’s Springfield, aimed it as best he could, and fired.

  The Japanese clapped his hands to his belly and staggered back, his face a grotesque parody of surprise. He seemed unable to believe that he had been hit. Then he dropped his rifle and crumpled slowly to the ground.

  Phillip was crawling backward into a bamboo thicket when he saw Captain Cox, lying facedown, blood pouring from a ghastly wound in his arm. To his horror, he realized that Cox’s arm was hanging by a shred of muscle. Bullets whistled past them as Phillip dragged the captain back behind a low, rocky ridge.