Eventually the rear lines came into sight: a colony of peaked tents pitched amid mud and sphagnum moss on a sloping valley floor, snow-streaked peaks above. Scattered bodies of Japanese soldiers began to appear beside the road, limbs at strange angles, sometimes just a helmet atop a crumpled mass. In the bivouac area, Jamie found a lieutenant in charge of a company of engineers and explained that he was a combat artist （“Something new every day,” said the man） and wished to go to the front. He was told there wasn’t really anywhere to go at the moment. The forward groups were holding their positions. “Make yourself at home,” the lieutenant said, making a sweeping gesture toward the tents. “Sample the many delights of Attu.”
* * *
—
In the evening, not far away, Japanese soldiers drank sake in gulps. They’d been on the tundra for a year and were low on supplies. For a time there was almost only night; now there was almost only day. Always there was fog, the terrible wind. The colonel in charge had decided against surrender. The Americans’ defenses in the valley were light, but, beyond, they had a battery of howitzers on a hillside. If the colonel could seize those, he could turn them back on the Americans. The plan was desperate, almost impossible, but an attempt would be an honorable course.
A thousand men were left. They jumped up and down, screaming and stamping the soil. Pistols were pressed into the hands of the wounded, who, as instructed, shot themselves in the head. Those who couldn’t were dispatched with injections of morphine or, when patience ran out, grenades. They drank more, everything they could find.
At dawn the colonel ordered them to break for the American lines.
Screams woke Jamie. A man near him was bayoneted where he lay, but Jamie was overlooked. He struggled from his sleeping bag, ran uphill with his rifle, away from the chaos. Grenades sent up sprays of earth. He half fell into a foxhole already occupied by the body of a long-dead Japanese soldier.
Three Japanese, not far away, cut the guy lines of the medical tent. The canvas fell, draped over thrashing bodies on cots. The soldiers started bayoneting. Later Jamie would remember the tormented dog from so long ago, under the blanket, but he thought of nothing as he brought up his rifle and took aim. The first one he got in the back of the head. The man’s body jerked forward as though yanked by a rip cord. The second he caught in the shoulder, spinning him down into a crouch. While he was kneeling, one hand over the wound, Jamie hit him in the chest. The third man was looking around, confused. Jamie saw that his only weapon was a bayonet tied to a stick, and he dropped this, stood there gazing at the mountains until Jamie’s next shot pierced his forehead.
Jamie set aside his rifle. He took a small notebook and a pencil from his chest pocket. His hand shook badly.
After a time, the Japanese seemed to lose their sense of purpose and moved in short erratic bursts, like minnows, brandishing weapons at nothing. A few ate rations taken from the dead, wolfing down chocolate bars. They passed around packs of cigarettes, lit up. From uphill came the sounds of continued battle, but the men on the valley floor stood in casual clumps as though at a party. They took grenades from their belts, tapped them against their helmets to start the fuses, held them under their chins or against their stomachs. Quick blasts of gore. Smoke like a magician’s screen, revealing, as it dissipated, that bodies recently whole and alive made headless and handless or scooped out at the middle.
In the foxhole, Jamie drew and drew, would only realize later that he had covered pages with garbled scribbles and blotches out of which no sense could be made.
Ratcliffe Hall, Leicestershire, England
March 1943
Two months before the Battle of Attu
One long. Two long. One short, two long.
T. M. W.
Tomorrow.
Marian, in bed, imagined Ruth in her identical bed on the other side of the wall, one finger tapping. Tomorrow…Lndn…dinnr w Ed…pls? Want u to…
No more tapping. Had Ruth fallen asleep? Or forgotten her Morse? Marian pressed her palm against the cold plaster, waited. Finally she tapped with her index finger.
To w?
A reply: To knw hm.
In January, when Marian had arrived at Ratcliffe Hall, she had learned it was called a “great house,” not a mansion or a palace. There was one other woman pilot billeted there, an English girl, and three men, two of whom were American, but Marian, daunted by the grand surroundings and the rapid chatter of the others, kept to herself. She was given one of several rooms over the garage, all of which had the luxuries of radiators and hot water. There were tennis courts and what she learned were squash courts. There was a butler who cleaned the pilots’ boots, and dinner was served in a wood-paneled dining room, accompanied with wine and ale. Occasionally, illustrious friends of their host, Sir Lindsay Everard, appeared at the table without warning.