Excerpt
Eruption
The Night of the Battleships, Guadalcanal, Oct. 23, 1943
Here I lie, in the high kunai.
Emerging to the smoke and the bloody grease.
The grass like emeralds,
The parrots like charm
Made this paradise far from harm
Had we not dug our holes and covers
Thinking the shells that zoom above
Were meant for metal, and planes and not
Our little wiki by the sea —
My shelter from the enemy.
But now I emerge, my buddy nearby,
We both stare out at the fallen palms,
The widow makers that have conspired
To kill us as if we did them harm,
When we only meant to eat their fruit.
Gee, I didn’t think they gave a hoot.
But now, in the aftermath of light
I shiver less, but tremble instead,
And can never stop my twitching head.
The jungle blasted through the dark,
Fire fell and the ground, it swelled
Like a ship at sea,
Or the end of days, which it might have been,
The final raze.
The earth engulfed me, me and Jim,
We huddled close, I to him,
And he wept and I cried,
And we heard those who died,
As the big guns at sea,
Pulverized me.
Nerves shot. Limbs shaken.
Pants wet as I lose my bacon.
And I clutch and am clutched,
For eternity, because the curtain is drawn.
For hours, it seemed, we had this rain,
This death from the sea and the jungle insane.
And when it ended, who knew? Who cared?
We were frazzled beyond dreams we dared.
So like rats we push aside
The stinking boughs and the sharpened fronds
And listen to the calls and the cries beyond,
The survivors and the fallen fond.
I’m dumb. Jim’s dumb. The world’s dumb too.
I can only stare at Paradise lost.
But more has been lost than a Pacific Isle.
I lost my bacon and my generous smile.
So here I lie, in the high kunai
And pray if the guns go off again,
That I embrace a sniper’s dart,
Through the head or through the heart,
Because words forever fail my lips
After that night with the battleships.

In the Shadow of the Umabrogol
Peleliu, Palau Islands, September 15, 1944
“Corpsman! Corpsman!” came the call
First from me,
Then Corporal Louie,
But he fell before his last call came,
And I was left there stranded
In the heat of Peleliu.
“Corpsman! Corpsman!” came the call,
A whisper now as my wound procured
And I wept while my life bled forth.
Peace reigned in brief — the mortars snuffed,
The mute of the rat-tat-tat.
Then I saw my mother's face.
“Mama! Mama!” came the cry
Her sweet face hovering,
Her smile my smile,
And she worked on my wound and bound my leg,
Then jabbed the morphine in my thigh.
Her face became a cloud,
Then emerged anew as Doc Wallace
Our corpsman from brigade.
“Easy, easy,” said he, waving for a bearer
And a bottle holder.
“You'll live to see another day,”
I doubted that, despite the calm,
The opium working like lotus balm,
Because the mortars blared again
Between the rat-tat-tats.
My eyes closed in the dreamy jaunt,
The rock of the stretcher’s trundle,
But as I went, I caught a glimpse,
My savior’s twitch and twist,
Doc Wallace and his stain,
Fallen to the defilade,
Where I should have been slain.
“Corpsman! Corpsman!” came the call
A call for another to carry him home,
But he was crushed to the coral heat,
An angel of twenty beneath the feet
Of Umabrogol’s Bloody Nose.
The mortar’s scream arose —
A requiem for this corpsman.
“Corpsman! Corpsman!” you come to me
In my sleep for these many years.
I see your face amidst my tears
And I wonder where your fodder lies,
The aftermath of battle cries,
An exchange unfair — not me but you
In the unholy stench on Peleliu.