Leon Uris Read Online Free PDF Page B

Paddy said, “maybe a little too optimistic.”
    “Well, before the war is over maybe somebody upstairs will recognize just how difficult and tricky a landing is.”
    All the hatches, doors, and portholes had been opened to allow any breezes that might happen by to circulate. From the bowels of the Tuscarora, several decks down, came the clear and beautiful voice of Corporal Luigi Pastore.
    Just before the battle, Mother,
    I am thinking most of YOU,
    While upon the field we’re watching,
    With the enemy in view . . .
    and he was joined:
    Comrades brave around me lying,
    Filled with thoughts of home and God,
    For well they know that on the morrow,
    Some will sleep beneath the sod . . .
    Farewell, Mother, you may never
    Hold me to your heart again,
    But oh, you’ll not forget me, Mother,
    If I’m numbered with the slain . . .

• 4 •
THE USS TUSCARORA
    Ten brigantines moved into Charleston Bay, followed by a hodgepodge of barks, schooners, sloops, and steam-powered gunboats, until sight of the redoubt came clearly into view. A rocket flared from the command ship, now arrayed with sails clewed up but prepared to get under way.
    One girds for battle with fear and fantasy.
    The reality of the coming hell split the air with the first salvo. Thunderclaps and lightning flashes rose to a level of unreality. Pain of the crackling concussions mixed the real and the unreal into a quagmire of noise. Recoil of cannon bucked the ship and it rose and dropped on swells. On and on and on and on it belched and powed and snorted until ship and man creaked from the twists, until a numbed dream state took over.
    A bosun’s whistle pierced. “Now hear this! Marine Company, man your stations!”
    “Okay, rats! Let’s get out of this hole!”
    Up the ladder, guns and kits banging bulkheads and Paddy’s whistle pierced.
    “Fucking Rebs are catching it tonight!”
    “Man the whalers!”
    A swell spray at waterline and the Tuscarora leaped on the water, popping and jumping and dancing and rising too damned high and tilting too damned low.
    “Aweigh all boats!”
    Seven boats were lowered from their davits, fourteen to sixteen men to a boat.
    A cable popped on number three, hurling the men into the sea, leaving the whaler dangling miserably, helplessly. Men were fished from the water; some were drowned by the weight of their load.
    Men in the six remaining boats rowed hard to get around to the safe side of the Tuscarora and rendezvous with their steam barge. Working by flashes of cannon light and rockets, one after the other passed and hooked to the barge, but the final boat rode a chop right across the others’ lines.
    Ben Boone made an instant decision to untangle. He barked through his megaphone, “Number four, cut your line!”
    Number four replied and began to row in behind. The steam launch was like a dog walker holding five leashes.
    Shouts of confusion in the water were heard between bursts. Eight steam launches pulling fifty whalers arrayed and chugged slowly toward the shore.
    Paddy tapped the lieutenant’s shoulder. “Rocket from the beach! Sergeant Layton has landed with the recon squad!”
    As the launches moved in, the bombardment finally quit, but there was too much filth in the air to see.
    At break of day, the launches detached and the whalers rowed into a surf turned nasty by the night’s bombardment.
    Shit!
    The number two boat twisted on a high wave, its bow plunged, and the boat broke. The lieutenant’s boat rode in hard and waggled onto the sand.
    Boone and his first sergeant were in knee-deep water. Ben took quick count. “Looks like about half the company got in. Number four is still out there rowing in!”
    A company of sailors had no better luck getting their people in. It was chaos in their area, half the sailors stumbling and being washed in afoot.
    Ben saw a small inlet, bank and brush to his right. “Paddy! Have four men pull one of these boats over there and secure it, then survey the