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"Why didn't you tell me that?" Dalleson...
Posted on 5/1/2010 at 12:59 AM
"Why didn't you tell me that?" Dalleson roared"Well, then, assign your forward observers to Able Baker Charley and Dog Companies of the 460th and to Charley of the 458th
"What about communications?"
"That's your worryI got enough goddam things to think about His back was itching from perspirationIt was one o'clock already and the sun was smoldering on the canvas slopes of the tent
Slowly the afternoon wore byIt took until three o'clock for the reserve battalion and Charley Company to complete their movements, and by that time Dalleson hardly cared any longerHe had almost a thousand men posted at the jumping-off point and no real idea of where to send themFor a few minutes he thought of turning them to the left and having them bear down to the seaIt would isolate half of the Japanese mulberry bags line, but he remembered too late that he pulled out a company from his left flankIf he squeezed the Japs there, he might endanger his own front-line positionsThe Major felt like butting his head against the deskIt was such a blunder!
He could send them to the right, toward the mountain, but after they cut off the Japs it would be difficult to bring up ordnance, and the troops at the end of the advance would have to be supplied over a long routeHe had the same kind of panic Martinez had felt on his soloThere were so many obvious things he was forgetting
The phone rang again"This is Rock and Rye (The commander of the 1st Battalion, 460th Regiment "We're going to be ready to jump off in fifteen minutesWhat is our mission? I have to brief my men
They had been asking him this for the past hour, and black chanel quilted bag each time he had roared back, "It's a mission of opportunity And now he had to give an answer"You're to proceed in radio silence up to the Japs' supply depot Dalleson gave the co-ordinates"When you're ready to attack, you're to send a message back, and we'll bring artillery downHandle it through your FOIf your radio won't carry, we'll let go on our side in exactly one hour, and you're to go in afterwardYou're to destroy the depot, and you got to move goddam fastI'll tell you what after that
He hung up, and stared at his watchInside the tent the heat hung in heavy draperiesOutside the sky was darkening and the foliage yawned flaccidly in the turgid suggestion of a breezeOn an afternoon like this, a half hour or so before a downpour, it was usually possible to hear every sound, but now there men's gucci wallet was nothingThe artillery was waiting, plotting their concentration targets, but he could not even hear a machine gun or a rifleThe only noise was the occasional jarring of the earth, the scattering of dust, when a tank moved byHe could not use them at the breach, for there were no roads, so he was sending them to cover up the weakened positions on his left flank
Abruptly Dalleson remembered he had given the attack battalion no antitank support and he groaned aloud this timeIt was too late to get them up in time for the attack on the supply depot but perhaps he could send them in time for a Jap counterattack if it were to developHe alerted the antitank platoon of 2nd Battalion, sent them after the first unitsHow many other things would come to mind?
And of course he waited, swearing to himself women gucci handbags as he grew more nervousHe was at the point where he was convinced everything would go wrong, and like a small boy who has kicked over a bucket of paint he hoped feebly that he would get out of it somehowWhat bothered him most at the moment was the thought of how long it would take to get all these men back and reasserted after the attack failedIt would be at least another full day -- two days lost on the roadThat was what bothered Dalleson mostWith surprise he realized he had mounted a complete attack
Ten minutes before the hour was up, the radio silence was-brokenThe attack battalion was two hundred yards from the supply depot, still unnoticedThe artillery began to fire and continued for a half hourAt the end of that time the battalion moved forward and captured the supply depot in twenty chanel shopping bags minute
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