A Sea of Mud

So there I was in a fox hole, minding my own business with all hell breaking loose on the ground and in the air. But I was confident that if anyone was going to get hit, it would be someone else. When you're young, you think that you are omnipotent. Something like those poor guys in Iraq in their Humvees.

My fox hole buddy was Jerry Maloney, a New York Irishman who was tough as nails. Suddenly I felt this awful thump on my left leg. I turned to Maloney and said "Jerry, I think I'm hit." His response was that I was full of shit. I kept insisting and he lost his patience and told me to look at my leg. I did and promptly went nuts. There was a hole in my leg that looked big enough to shove a silver dollar through it. I became furious and plenty indignant screaming that I had never heard of fucking Okinawa and what the hell was I doing there in that sea of mud anyhow.

The medics came and hauled my sorry ass to a tent to wait to be carried to a hospital ship. Then those God damn airplanes started roaring overhead again. I was under the bed before you could say "there is one scared Jew." That was only one of two times in my entire life that I was truly frightened.

I was shipped off to Saipan for recovery. Saipan was an experience in itself. There were Japanese still in the hills and very so often they would fire into the compound. They never hit anyone but did manage to keep us all very nervous. Once when I was in the Coca Cola line, they started firing and everyone scrambled and jumped in the ditch in a heart beat. The Coke wasn't worth taking another bullet.