"This is bad," the sergeant continued, "but it ain't nothing like yesterday, Lieutenant, nothing like it at all. Yesterday was all flying metal and GIs screaming as guys died. The Japs had troops in bunkers near the water that had to be burned out with flamethrowers. Sometimes a Jap would pop out from behind us and throw a grenade. Lieutenant, this is a walk in the park."

Paul took a deep breath and felt the smoke from the Chesterfield scorch his lungs. It felt good. As he smoked, two of his lost lambs sheepishly reported in. As the beachmaster had guessed, they'd run off the beach with the wrong group of GIs. The other two arrived a couple of moments later, shaken but okay. Paul took another drag on his cigarette.

"How far away's the front?" he asked the beachmaster. After all, the man was a veteran who'd been there a whole day and a night.

The sergeant looked about nervously. "Between ten feet and a mile. Kinda depends on who's counting and measuring. Snipers and infiltrators can be anywhere, so keep your guard up at all times. The big front's about a mile away. You're gonna see it real soon."

Morrell finished the cigarette and threw the butt away. I'm in Japan, he again thought in disbelief. I'm in Japan and thousands of Japanese are going to try and kill me. He looked at his men and saw similar fears reflected on their pale and frightened faces. He had landed and his platoon hadn't yet lost a man. It couldn't continue that way. The devastation in the ocean and on the shores told him that their turn was coming. And all he had to do was survive it.

Marshall arrived at the White House with Gen. Omar Bradley in tow. Bradley, who had returned from Europe a few months earlier to take charge of the recently formed Veterans Administration, felt ill at ease in the White House. As a result of his new appointment, he no longer considered himself a full-time military man, and he found the change unsettling. The VA assignment was a chore Bradley had taken on with great reluctance.

Bradley thought it was incongruous to be worried about assimilating returning veterans when a climactic campaign was under way in Japan. Earlier in the year he had led a million and a half men into battle against the Nazis, and he felt he should still be their commander. However, his president had thought otherwise, and the lanky, popular, fifty-two-year-old West Point graduate had complied with the wishes of his commander in chief.

Bradley had grudgingly obeyed. He was also mildly concerned by Marshall's admonition that he should listen rather than comment during the meeting with Truman. It was what he would have done anyhow. Not only was he the junior member of the trio, but he had little knowledge of what was transpiring in the Pacific. He knew the general plans, of course, but not the details.

A few moments later, Admiral Leahy arrived and greeted the others with formal cordiality. He seemed surprised at Bradley's inclusion, which did nothing for Bradley's state of mind.

Truman bade the men to sit around a small table. He waved a piece of paper in their direction. "Gentlemen, I certainly hope you can shed more light on the situation than this imperious little pronouncement from General MacArthur does."

Marshall smiled tightly. The pronouncement had gone out from MacArthur's headquarters and to all members of the press as well as the White House. It was almost as if the president were included on the distribution list as an afterthought.

The message itself was painfully short: "On the morning of November 10, 1945, American ground forces under the command of General Douglas MacArthur commenced landings at several points on the shores of Kyushu, the southernmost of the four main Japanese home islands. Even though confronting stiff, and at times fanatical, resistance, General MacArthur's armies are pushing steadily inland. With God's blessing and through the bravery of our young men, we pray that the will of the United States will prevail."

Truman laid the paper on the table and looked about in exasperation. "This doesn't tell me a damned thing about the battle. It's a press release, nothing more. It also implies that only the army is fighting and ignores the efforts of the navy and, once again, the marines."

The latter issue was a sore point. The navy was separately commanded by Nimitz and could take care of its own press releases. On the other hand, MacArthur commanded three divisions of marines, who technically belonged to the navy but who were under his control for this campaign. The marines had landed on the southwestern side of the island while the army assaulted the southeastern part, and all were involved in bitter fighting. By implication, MacArthur had snubbed the marines.

He had done this before. Earlier in the war when the various units that had fought for him at Bataan and Corregidor were recommended by him for citations, he had left out the 4th Marine Regiment. The men of the 4th had fought with incredible bravery and had endured terrible casualties before ultimately having to surrender along with the other forces under Wainwright's Philippines command. When questioned, MacArthur had said that the marines already had enough medals. The intentional oversight had been corrected in Washington.

"Typical of that fella MacArthur," Marshall said, using his favorite phrase for MacArthur. It was not a compliment. He'd seen the statement before and concurred with Truman's assessment. "General Krueger is the field commander in charge of the Sixth Army, but you'd never know it from this statement."

"General," snapped Truman, "I really don't care how eccentric MacArthur is, or even if his ego is bigger than mine, just so long as he wins and wins quickly. Unfortunately, this scrap of paper doesn't tell me a damned thing. What is going on in Japan? Are we indeed pushing inland, and what are the costs?"

Marshall grimaced. "The landings are a little more than two days old and there is still an enormous amount of confusion. I can, however, tell you what we do know. At all three main landing sites, some penetrations have been made in the Japanese defenses for distances up to two miles. In other cases we are still stuck near the shore and the Japs are defending their positions furiously. It is going about as we figured. We do not have a beachhead in any depth, and we have not yet established a continuous front from which we can break out from the beachhead. At best that will take several more days."

"Casualties?" Truman asked softly.

"These are not firm figures," Marshall responded, "but we suffered between twenty-five and thirty thousand on the first day with between seven and eight thousand on the second. The first day of an attack such as this is always the worst. If history is our guide, about a third of the casualties will be dead or dying."

Truman moaned softly and looked toward the ceiling. In two days the United States had lost the equivalent of more than two divisions, almost an entire corps. No wonder putting the reserve forces in as soon as possible was urgent. The number of dead and wounded was far in excess of those suffered during the landings at Normandy in June 1944. But then, as he'd been reminded so often, the attacks on Kyushu were much greater in scope.

"MacArthur said the Japs would break," Truman said softly. "Has that happened?"

Marshall shook his head, while Bradley gazed in silence at a map on the wall. "No, sir, and in all fairness to General MacArthur, it is far too early to expect that to happen. There are some signs that the resistance will not be as fanatic as it has been in the past. In a few instances there have been withdrawals, and a small number of Japanese soldiers have actually surrendered. Only a couple of hundred so far, but it's a trickle that might someday become a flood. We think it's attributable to both the war-weariness of the rank and file, as well as to the poor quality of training that the newer conscripts have been getting."