The Liberators Read online

  This book, this series, is dedicated to

  Nick Eliopulos, who taught me what

  The Buddy System really means.

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  PART ONE: POLLYWOGS

  CHAPTER ONE: New Heights

  CHAPTER TWO: It’s What Buddies Do

  CHAPTER THREE: Higher and Higher

  PART TWO: SHELLBACKS

  CHAPTER FOUR: Uncaged

  CHAPTER FIVE: Are We There Yet?

  CHAPTER SIX: We’re with The Brute

  CHAPTER SEVEN: Bliss

  CHAPTER EIGHT: The Dead of Night

  PART THREE: ASSAULT AMPHIBIANS

  CHAPTER NINE: Hopping Islands

  CHAPTER TEN: Easy

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: Severed

  CHAPTER TWELVE: April Fools

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Liberation

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  Our first jump is off this bitty little platform, like a swimming pool diving board, only onto turf instead of into water. I jumped off boulders higher than that thing when I was a kid. This is just to practice our landings, so nobody breaks any legs with carrying all the extra weight of the gear and all. Forward rolling, that’s the key, forward with a rightward twist, so you half-corkscrew to the ground onto your hip, then flat forward with both arms stretched ahead like you’re bodysurfing.

  The trick is all in the knees. Landing stiff, trying to tough it out and remain upright, that’s a chump’s game. Instructor compared it to a contest of smash-up: one very stupid marine vs. planet Earth. Earth was so far undefeated and would likely remain that way for the foreseeable future.

  But, guys being guys, and this being the Marine Corps, there are still a number of broken legs. Our course has a forty percent dropout rate, between one thing and another. Heh. Love that statistic. Always will love that statistic. Makes me laugh. Heh.

  We soon move up from the platforms to the towers — water towers and suchlike. Anything pretty high that doesn’t tend to have pedestrians under it, in harm’s way of a bunch of leatherneck lunkheads dropping out of the sky and squashing them. We are the new secret weapons, the marine paratroopers, the paramarines, and if I got a nickel every time I heard the word elite used to describe the kind of force we were gonna be, I could pile them nickels up into a jump tower so high none of us would survive it.

  The Eastern Shore League had folded up its tent at the end of the 1941 season, like most of the quality minor league operations did. Nobody ever came right out and said so, but I guess it just seemed suddenly really dumb to have the fittest guys in America playin’ ballgames when the rest of the world was out there killing each other in a war that was without a doubt gonna eventually include the USA. Of course, guys like me were always gonna join up anyway, but maybe others would have been happier playin’ ball and hoping for the best as far as all the fighting and fate-of-the-free-world business was concerned.

  So the leagues, especially the quality ones like the class-D-level ESL where I was playing proudly for the Major League–affiliated Centreville Red Sox, went and made the decision easier for everybody. They did that by suspending operations for the duration of the war. And, as much as I enjoyed my time in Maryland, bashing baseballs and embarrassing pitchers on my way to eventually joining the big club up in Boston, I agreed completely that this was the right thing to do.

  And so, the next right thing to do was obvious.

  “You know I have flat feet,” my pal Zachary Klecko said to me when I called him up from our hometown of Sandusky, Ohio.

  I laughed a lot at that, wasting a good deal of valuable long-distance phone time in the process. He could always make me laugh, that boy, without hardly even trying.

  “Sure, I know that,” I said eventually. “You were the only guy I ever saw who could absolutely mash a ball off the wall in deep left center and still get thrown out at first base by three steps.”

  It was his turn to burn up valuable long-distance phone time, but with his punishing, faintly growling silent treatment.

  Then, “That happened once, Nardini, all right? Once.”

  “Exactly,” I said. He was playing right into my hands like we both knew he would from the moment he picked up the phone. Like he always played into my hands. “Most of the time there was nothing wrong with your feet at all. They’re only maybe a little bit flat. In every other way, you are just the fighting machine your country needs right now. You. Exactly you. Seen the recruiting posters? Some of them actually have your name on them, I swear. Uncle Sam wants YOU, Mr. Zachary Klecko! I promise, I saw one of those in the window of the post office on Meigs Street.”

  That made him sigh, real loud. That’s how I knew I had him and the hook was in deep. The surrender sigh of his, it’s a sigh with oomph, like a pneumatic drill, that’s how I always knew.

  “I have a really good thing going here in Detroit, Nick. Ford takes good care of its people. And they’re building a plant over in Ypsilanti that’s just for the purpose of manufacturing bomber aircraft for the war. B-24 Liberators, Nick. I already have a job lined up there, the day the plant opens, so I know I’m doing my part and there’s no way you can make me feel otherwise.”

  The next valuable stretch of silence between us was not an accident and it was well spent.

  “Uh-huh,” I said, very sympathetically.

  “And I got a gal up here. Her name is Rose, and I’ve been dying for you to meet her. And Rose got a job, too, up at the Ypsilanti plant, and we’re gonna be going together, and building them Liberators, and so, like I said, doing our bit for the war effort …”

  This time, out of respect because there was a lady involved, I remained silent for just a bit longer, like I was thinking about it, even though it was just for show.

  “That’s nice,” I said. “But, no.”

  “Um. No?”

  “No. Yes, I’m sorry, but it’s no. I am sure Miss Rose is lovely and I am sure she will agree with me.”

  “Ha!” my old pal bellowed over the line. “You haven’t even met her yet. But of course you’re sure; you’re always sure. So what, exactly, is it that my Rose is supposed to agree with you about?”

  Oh, that was my boy, reliable as the tides.

  “With this,” I said. “Rosie and I both know that you, my friend, are not meant to be building Liberators. You are meant to be one.”

  I wasn’t bothered when he followed several speechless seconds of breathing by saying, “I’m hanging up on you now.” I wasn’t even bothered when he made good on that threat.

  Because we both knew. And we both knew that we knew.

  Of course, I felt guilty. Naturally. I wasn’t some heartless, selfish, good-looking beast. There I was, luring probably the greatest guy in the world out of his perfectly respectable and productive civilian life to come out to play with me. Possibly resulting in the grisly death of one or the other of us, but my hunch was both.

  But I couldn’t help myself. I was no more able to refrain from dragging Klecko on any great big unknown of an adventure than he was to resist me. So we were just being us, is what we were doing.

  Right? Right.

  Okay, certain things I was known for, and you could ask anybody. Modesty prevents me from saying handsomeness, because a gentleman should leave that to the judgment of others. But the things that I had earned a reputation for — for my whole life, practically — were these: I was a great baseball player, and I would be again if I didn’t get killed serving God and country. I love my God and my country and my baseball. I am loyal; I am reliable, tough, willing. I suppose it should also be disclosed in the interest of fairness that there would be some out there, especially in the baseball fraternity, especially in the Eastern Shore L
eague, who might add that I was known for being a bit mouthy. Though it could also be added that those people saying that were more than a little bit jealous.

  Confidence. If there was one word that all those people would tell you was the one word that could maybe sum me up, I suppose that word would be confidence. I always liked to show a lot of it. Everybody knew that about me. Confidence, that was Nick Nardini, and everybody knew it within the first three seconds of knowing me.

  But then again, maybe mostly nobody knows anybody else. Not really. It’s a hard thing to do, actually, to know somebody inside. To know about the confidence he has, and the confidence he possibly doesn’t have.

  Maybe nobody knows anybody. Or maybe, everybody is allowed one somebody who truly does. One some buddy.

  And there are certain things you just can’t do without that one some buddy.

  “It’s not a guarantee, you know,” the recruiting sergeant said as Zachary Klecko signed the paperwork that sealed the deal that was, apparently, not a guarantee.

  “What?” Klecko said, looking up and looking stunned at the sergeant while I pried the pen out of my old friend’s paw in order to sign my own enlistment papers.

  “Like I said,” the sergeant said, “it’s a sort of gentleman’s agreement, more than it is a binding commitment. The Corps will, of course, do everything within reason to keep two good buddies together —”

  “Right,” Klecko cut in, kind of desperately. “The buddy system.”

  “Yes,” the sergeant said calmly. He spoke more calmly, in fact, with each signature he witnessed. “But it is more of an informal system. An aspiration, if you will, more than a pledge to keep two recruits together come what may. Especially in a wartime situation, especially in an unprecedented global conflict such as the one we are witnessing today, there are so many variables, so many different sets of demands and requirements, in so many different countries. And even those demands are constantly changing, adapting to meet the hundreds and hundreds of challenges that, frankly, only the United States Marine Corps could ever meet. Under the circumstances, we could hardly offer guarantees. You understand that, certainly.”

  He always breathed heavily, whistley, through his nose when he was mad or confused or frustrated, and so now Zachary Klecko was sounding like a bull about to charge, practically pawing at the ground as he tried to form the words.

  “I understand that now,” he said. “I didn’t understand it in the same way at all when you laid it all out before I signed.”

  I was just about ready to talk my pal down. Then the smiling, nodding, distracted reaction of the recruiter made me want to punch the guy, as he looked right past us to the next pair of young simps coming through the door. “You’ll be fine,” the sergeant said without bothering to look at us anymore. “You will be together right through basic training at the very least. I can give you my word on that. Then, as long as you meet the same criteria, pass the same tests, match up with the same job specs and demands along the way … I see no reason why any two buddies should be denied the opportunity to see out their USMC commitments together, from this moment on to their date of discharge.”

  Right to the end, he failed to look at us. He gradually rose from his seat, offered us a hand to shake across the Formica top of his gray metal desk, and started his gravitation toward the new pair of guppies he had in his sights.

  I found it almost funny, watching the sharky guy at work, until I felt Klecko leaning hard in the direction of following after him.

  I grabbed my buddy, throwing an arm most firmly around his thick and stiffened neck.

  “You heard the man,” I said. “As long as we do it all right, as long as we match up. As long as we want it enough to work at it, they will keep us together. Buddy.”

  By degrees, he stopped leaning toward the confrontation. He settled into my grip.

  “Buddy,” he said, looking right into my face. “It’s up to us. We’ll do this together, the whole way. Together. Right?”

  “You and me,” I said. “The whole way.”

  At first, the Marine Corps kept their word. Klecko and I were sent through the process shoulder-to-shoulder. Physical exam, smartness exam, every test they had on offer, we were allowed to take them on the same day, to compare notes, make adjustments, and finally, report in for basic training at Parris Island, South Carolina, lockstep, together.

  It was from this point on that they would try to separate us. Not that it was a personal thing, like they were singling us out for any special attention out of spite or anything. It was just that the tests got, out of necessity, increasingly difficult and increasingly specialized, designed to draw each man’s strengths and skills out to the point where they could be best utilized by the Corps. Which meant, of course, that they were working out how each man could best serve his country in this pitched battle of good vs. evil.

  I laughed out loud the first time I heard a test commandant say that, just ’cause it sounded like it came out of a Superman comic. Commandant didn’t laugh, but he did make a point of asking me my name again and writing it down for later, when I’m sure he knocked points off my test score. Apparently, people could do things like that on this new team I was joining, where everybody had a rank and I was at the bottom looking up. I quickly learned to keep that kind of laughter to myself.

  The important thing about basic training at Parris Island was that they tested a guy physically and mentally before sending him off to war. If you could take Parris from these drill instructors, the saying went, then you could take Paris from the Nazis. I heard that said four different times before somebody wrote it down and I finally understood what they were all talking about. Not the Nazis, who I was pretty clear on. But the Paris thing. One of them has an extra R, but you can’t hear it. Doesn’t make a guy stupid.

  Me and Klecko, we were prepared. Even with his semi-flat feet, he was capable of whatever challenge was set for him. As I knew he would be. I didn’t care how flat his feet were or how many too-many-seconds it took him to run a hundred yards, or how easy it was to enrage him to tears with a simple “your mother” or “your sister” joke. He was the very man. The one I wanted fighting by my side, or, okay, maybe a couple strides behind my side. The one I knew I could count on. The one who would make me braver and tougher than I really was, and would always somehow make up those couple of strides to be there when I needed him.

  In fact, he showed up at basic training already in better shape than I’d ever seen before, better than in his baseball days, high school, any of it. He’d always been a big guy, but now he was broader, harder. I suspected he’d even somehow gotten faster, which wasn’t supposed to happen after a certain age, I didn’t think.

  So, of course, we made it through the seven weeks of basic together. That was almost easy. Because first, we were honest athletes from way back, so that part was never going to be a problem. And we were no dummies, neither of us, most of the time. So we matched up fairly well right along the line, no reason for anybody to break their word and split us up. And if my time in the fifty-yard dash suddenly and mysteriously got a few seconds slower, I had no worry about my speed coming right back when I needed it to beat out an infield single.

  We were about to graduate from being mere boots to being marines, and we were anticipating where in this whole crazy mess of a war we were going to be assigned, together, when a posting appeared. We were just out of the showers, pulling on fresh, clean gear after scraping one more day’s sweat and Carolina clay off us. A couple of still-grimy guys filed past us in the other direction at the same time I saw the flier stuck to the board.

  To be honest, I was swallowing a whole lot of worrying over that together part of what was to come. I couldn’t think of how we were going to ensure it, until I clapped eyes on this.

  Special Marine Corps personnel sought. Must be equal to highest demands of fitness, ingenuity, creativity, and heretofore unforeseen individual challenge. Candidates must possess flexibility of mind and body, openness
to new modes of military concept, and must be unmarried. Danger and uncertainty, as well as adventure, of this new undertaking must be stressed.

  Ideal candidates can look forward to a further intensified period of maximum physical and mental testing and training, successful completion of which will result in a substantial boost in both monthly pay and daily challenge. If all of the above sounds like it appeals to you, then please contact your Senior Drill Instructor.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I said as I read the posting, with Klecko’s moist dog breath huffing right into my ear.

  “Y’know, Nicky,” he said, still huffing, “I wasn’t even thinking yet about what I was thinking at all. I was thinking about what you were thinking. Because whatever you’re thinking somehow always seems to matter a lot more to my life than what I’m thinking. And I was thinking that you were thinking that we both should be thinking about going for this thing.”

  I turned, so that my ear was no longer in his face, but my eyes were right up at his eyes.

  “We’ll be great at this,” I said.

  “They’ll never let me in,” he said. “Not in a million years. Not with my flat feet, not with my slowness. This time, buddy, you’re going to have to go on without me. But you should.”

  Bless him, Klecko was no actor. He was so gamely unconvincing you’d think I just suggested shooting his puppy because it had fleas. But he went on talking. “It’ll be perfect for you, so you should go. I want you to go. The buddy system … ah, that was always just kid stuff anyway, right? This is something else. You should do it. This buddy hereby releases you —”

  “So, you agree,” I said. “We’ll be great at this.”

  “When did you hear that? I never agreed nothin’ with you. And then there’s Rose. We were talking about getting married. First chance I got for an extended leave, we were gonna do it. And you saw, no marrieds need apply.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “you’re right. We will be great at this.”