It's the vomit that wakes him up. The gurgle, the splatter, the unusually liquid consistency of it all. The way it runs down his trousers and into his boots. He feels it wriggling, slipping and sliding through his sock and then his toes. It's the smell, the sharp acrid smell that surges up at him even as the liquid drips down. It wraps itself around his head, even underneath the helmet, and forces its way into his nose and mouth. He feels himself suffocating, choking on it, and he claws desperately at his neck and the underside of his chin, as if unclasping the helmet would get him more air, would scare the fumes away, would make it all alright.
Snafu is impervious. To the sight, the smell, the cringing shame others might have felt – all of it. It seems almost a matter of routine. A silent offer of cigarettes (and comradeship) to a fellow marine, a polite but unheard of refusal, a sardonic "Yeah?", and then vomit. All over Eugene's leg and all around his head. It jolts him awake out of a sleep that never really was.
But Snafu barely notices. He sticks a cigarette in his mouth and tenderly slips the pack away into his innermost pocket, the same pocket where Eugene keeps his Bible. For a man who walks by the chance of a bullet and sleeps with a helmet for a pillow, for a man who may fall at any moment on any given stretch of no man's land, that little pocket, tucked close to the heart, as far away as possible from the guns and the knives and the grenades, is a treasure chest. There a man keeps his most precious belongings. There he carries his beloved.
He looks straight ahead and forgets already about Eugene, fumbling beside him, taking off his helmet, clumsy and confused from being pulled so jarringly out of sleep. If sleep is what you call it. He knows his eyes never close for longer than a blink, that he remains sitting upright, that he clutches his gun and clenches his jaw the same as all the other men crammed into the metal box. He knows that he smiles wanly at Bill Leyden and he knows that that when Snafu offers him a cigarette he replies with "I don't smoke". But the words are not his own and he hardly hears himself saying them out loud, so faded and far away. It's only after the mocking "Yeah?", the knowing grin, and the vomit on his shoe that his eyes snap into focus and his mind, off roaming the virginal Alabama fields, crashes back into consciousness. He feels himself drop from the infinite sky. It dumps him unceremoniously into this metal boat, whose jarring thrusts and puttering engines send up bursts of sea.
The water is cold and makes his teeth chatter, but he lifts his face into it and welcomes the spray. It clears the air. It dilutes somehow the tension, the thumping hearts, the muffled sobs of some faceless boy in the back, the vomit seeping into every pore and every crevice of his being. He can hardly comprehend why the air seems heavier and why his throat seems to have closed, but he feels it nonetheless. He feels the fear upon them, the brewing of an animal instinct that may save them once they're on land, that may tell them when to run, when to fire, when to bury their faces into the ground and pray for more time. It's a fine gift to have in battle, more precious than guns or God, but what does he know.
It's his first day of combat and all he knows is that it's filling up the already cramped boat with every breath of every marine. All he knows is that they're drowning in fear and that nothing will help but the cool sea spray. All he knows as they crawl towards the smoking beach is that there's something very wrong about the whole thing. Again, he has no name for it. All he knows is that the ominous tides of Peleliu feel just as soft as the simple Alabama streams that slip to him in sleep. But where there should be flowers there is blood. Where there should be birdcalls there are screams. And while he should be cradling a book, he clutches a gun. There is something very wrong, and it enrages him. He fumes as the gentle tides push him coolly along and he fumes more when they abandon him on the ravaged beach.
The boy who had been brave enough to cry is hit almost immediately. Eugene stares in horror as he crumbles. He lays still, right at the mystical point where water meets land. His face contorts in one final sob. Blood swirls in the water around him, more and more, until it seems he can sail home on that red tide. But the ocean is vast and endless. A few more waves, a few more boats, and the red is gone. The boy is embraced warmly, lifted gracefully into the open sea, far beyond the horizon, and there it sings lovingly to him and envelops him and takes him as its own.
No trace is left on the edge of Peleliu beach. The blue and the greens roll into eternity and the waves dance joyously and the mist sprays triumphantly, as if to say hey, it's all good again. Nothing to be afraid of here. As if to prove that nothing, not the pain or the death or the fear that swamps this tiny island can ever take from its serene enormity, can ever destroy its primeval calm. It murmurs and shouts to all who can hear that there is nothing, nothing that can take away from it that innate peace which a simple boy may find as he reads by the bank of a simple Alabama stream.
But Eugene's gone, lost in the smog and the ruins of the flaming speck of land. The ocean speaks in vain; there is no one left to listen. And then it stops speaking altogether. Peleliu is small and the sea is vast. It forgets about this tiny island and the trickles of red it sends out. There are no more boats coming to disturb its peace. It floats dreamily and hums to itself and hears nothing. Even the smallest whisper of such a large creature is enough to drown out any clashes and any shrieks and any prayers a young boy may sob during his first day of combat.