The barge-like mostly wooden craft, only thirty-six feet long and ten feet wide, slapped into the trough of each wave in the midst of the stubborn williwaw. The slushy water crashed up along the sides again. There was no telling how many trips this particular little craft had already made between Attu’s beach and the attack transports far out in Massacre Bay. It was Day Two in the invasion of Attu, and the iced-up Higgins boat showed the telltale signs of continual use.
The air was heavy laden with the odors of diesel exhaust, stale vomit and urine and feces, and the stink of unbathed bodies that seemed to cling to the boat’s interior like a coating of paint. The stench filled the nostrils of every man despite the frigid wind, which could not blow away the stink. There were few words on the quivering, frozen lips of the thirty-five some odd soldiers who cowered shoulder to shoulder. The craft was somehow still keeping afloat, sparing them from the watery grave. All that could be heard of the human sound were the lowly moans of men about to be delivered into the jaws of battle. Men in war who come face to face with pending death experience a fear that is all but indescribable. Their bodies were no longer capable of self-control. Their minds could barely think. Despite the frozen air, the cold sweat of fear engulfed each of them. The icy wind stabbed at each soldier like needles through a thin veil. No amount of clothing could keep out the hellish pricks of the extreme cold.
And there was the eternal fog. It was like no other on earth. The fog that is always an integral part of the williwaw in the Aleutian Islands was like a curtain of thick, gray soot. Walls of it moved across the ocean as if they were solid masses, not billowing in bundles like fog was supposed to do. It got so thick in places that you could barely see ten feet around. And the fog seemed to be frozen, which human senses told you couldn’t be possible. It made the world surreal, deceiving all a man’s senses…
…There was only one consoling factor, and it suddenly went through Dad’s head, if it meant anything at all. It was early afternoon, and the first thrust of the assault to land at Massacre Bay on Attu had gone in yesterday, May 11th. Most of the ten thousand troops from the four attack transports were already there, Dad supposed. Or dead, maybe. Nobody had told them a damn thing about what was going on since the assault started. They could still hear the roar from the guns of the big ships, but that was of little consolation. Right now, they might be the last lambs being delivered to the slaughter for all they knew. Infantry soldiers are like ants in a colony anyway, Dad thought. You move en masse at the whim of a clarion call, and this day was no different. The clarion’s call had come for them at four o’clock that morning in dawn’s early light. They were fed the traditional steak dinner, which they were pushed to quickly consume. Then they waited again for hours on the deck of the ship for the winds of the williwaw to subside so they could climb down into the Higgins boats.
