The day had begun hours earlier; the night before, really, because the sleep the men had managed to catch in their bunks, after a late evening spent on last checks of their gear and last stabs at writing the perfect letter to their girl or mother, was more like tiptoeing across the surface of sleep than actual sleep, and they were startled out of it at 0300 by alarm bells and a voice on the loudspeaker shouting “Reveille! Reveille!” At chow, JJ scarfed down the steak breakfast, even though it seemed to have the consistency of rubber; grinning, he told his men they’d better do the same. Soon, they were all chewing, and chewing, and chewing. It seemed like they chewed forever.

At 0630, the command came: “Land the landing force!”

Next thing JJ knew, he was sending his pack-laden, helmeted men over the side of the transport. He followed behind them, clambering down a massive net into the LST waiting below. Smaller, amphibious LVTs idled on its deck, puking blue smoke, and JJ was herding his men into one of them as the Navy’s fleet of ships let go their first shells. The landing crafts were so loud that the Navy’s shells were hardly audible, but one of JJ’s men tugged on his elbow and pointed, and JJ saw the island shuddering under the fireballs exploding against the black sand.

Once everyone was in, packed like oysters and stinking of sweat and the disinfectant on their dungarees and the white cream they’d smeared on their faces to protect against the wall of fire it was thought the Japs might throw up when they landed, the LVT’s gate was closed. With a grinding of gears and a jolt, it began lurching toward the open gate of the LST. Still the shells screamed over their heads. When their craft crawled off the LST’s deck and bounced on the swell of a wave (what a relief they weren’t going to sink right to the bottom; you knew in theory these things floated, but sometimes they sure didn’t look like they would), JJ saw the foot-high lettering across the ramp of one of their neighbors: TOO LATE TO WORRY. JJ’s stomach flipped, but he nudged Bertinelli, pointed the lettering out to him, and the two of them smirked.

There were hundreds of LVTs in the water now, circling like street gangs about to rumble, and the shells wailed overhead. When all at once the noise stopped, the sudden silence pounded in JJ’s ears. But then Navy fliers streaked in from all corners of the sky and dove screaming toward the island, firing rockets, dropping bombs, strafing the hills with machine gun fire. There must have been a hundred of them. JJ cheered them with his men; it was a hell of a show. “Won’t be a damn thing left to that island when they’re done!” someone shouted.