14
Hill 281
Billy Martens
Billy had watched Johnny take the big machine gun and hose the Jap fighter and its pilot as if he were looking at a movie on the silver screen.
He hadn’t felt a thing.
He was flat.
But when King Company crawled down the nets, he thought he’d lose his breakfast, not because of the ocean swells, but because fear had knotted its fingers around his throat. He could hardly breathe. He tried to time his drop into the Higgins boat with it bobbing up with the roll of the sea, but he waited too long and fell farther than was good for him, banging up his knee bad enough to make him limp once he waded into the surf around Tulagi.
Sergeant Zarate quickly had his squad take the point for the platoon and the company, setting them up in the two fire teams, and Bud the Cor
