30
Mas Kimora
The Corpsman
The fighting was already red hot by eight in the morning. It was that crazy Tulagi scramble again, the way we’d started in August, tons of ravines and caves and hills crawling with snipers and Nambu machine guns and—a new wrinkle for King Company—that ugly Jap knee mortar, the 50mm, with its distinctive POP! throwing bad news at us from 50 to 100 to 200 yards away. Garowski was down, peppered with mortar shrapnel, and Levy, and Over Easy Brian too, all within the first hour of combat as the boys rooted the enemy out of their holes yard by yard. They all lived, they all got Purple Hearts. But what an unholy mess. The combat intensity was insane. No wonder they wanted vets going in first before they brought up relief.
I didn’t get any sleep the night before the
