We'll Meet Again, Don't Know Where (PT | ATTN DAYA)

[Organized States]

Camp Redoubt, A'olafa Islands
15 February 1945
+4 Days from D-Day

"This is Takena Rose, broadcasting to you live once again with a very special shoutout to the Three-Hundrenth and Fourteenth Bomb Group, who just failed miserably in another bombing run on Takena. Better luck next time boys! Reception okay? Why, it better be, because this is All-Requests night. And I’ve got a pretty nice program for my favorite little family, the wandering boneheads of the A'olafa Islands. The first request is made by none other than the boss. And guess what? He wants Vera Lynn in We'll meet again. My, what taste you have, sir, she says." the loudspeakers blared the radio, ironically playing the enemy's propaganda. "Takena Rose" was more than likely a dozen different girls, all of whom who attempted to demoralize the Columbians however they could. Most of the time, however, and the Marines of Headquarters Company, 25th Marines, in particular, found it humorous. The brass had tried to jam the broadcasts multiple times, worried about the enemy's effect on morale. After a while, they just gave up on that effort and some officers even found themselves listening to it as well. It reminded many of them of home.

Not for Joseph Hayes, however. Nothing that the white men could do, nor what the Nips could do, could remind him of home. It couldn't remind him of his mother's frybread baking in the Hornos. It couldn't remind him of when his tears when he was eight when the BIA men came to take him away from his mother to put him into a boarding school in Phoenix. It couldn't remind him of the beatings for speaking Dine and it couldn't remind him of the days in the hot sun in the woolen uniform where he was forced to march just as his grandparents were to the reservation. No, it couldn't remind him of home. However, in a profound twist of irony, he found himself once again in a uniform, speaking Dine because the white man had asked him to.

"Sergeant Hayes!" the voice broke him out of his train of thought as he walked with the rest of the Marines, all burdened down by the blazing tropical sun and their gear as they loaded onto the LSTs to take them to whatever else godforsaken island that the Dayashinese had occupied. Private First Class Ira Johnson trotted up alongside Hayes. He was one of the other five Codetalkers within the Division and the newest out of all of them, fresh out of Boot Camp and the Schoolhouse. The kid was young, barely 18. By no measure back home would Hayes be considered old, but out here, the 22 year-old was practically ancient.

"What do you need, Ira?" Hayes asked, having a hard time masking his annoyance with him, as he continued walking towards the LST with Ira alongside him. There was nothing wrong with asking questions, but Ira had a whole other idea of what combat would be like. He appeared to have thought it was something like the movies, except this time he was the cowboy instead of the Indian. Instead, however, a look of dread appeared on his face.

"Sarge, they say we're going into combat, and well, I have to admit. I'm afraid." The reality had just hit him. He would be going into combat for the first time.

"Ira, everyone getting on this boat is afraid. What you're feeling is natural. Anyone who says they're not afraid is a fucking liar. You're gonna be alright. Just stick by me and we'll get through it. Together." Hayes responded, feeling sorry for the kid.

"Sarge, I promised shimá I'd be home again. Help me keep that promise." Ira responded, looking at the slightly older man with huge eyes, not unlike those of a begging dog.

"I promise you." Hayes responded to him with a smile as they both entered the darkness of the LST's loading bay.

OSS LST 951
18 February 1945
+1 Day from D-Day

"Gentlemen..." the Regimental Commander, Colonel Blakeley stood atop of a jeep conveniently located above the hastily constructed sandtable map of Shogazu, it's twin volcanic islands of Soyu and Yarunto impossible to mistake. The place was damn near mythical. Nearly every Nip propaganda piece Takena Rose ever put out mentioned it. "Tomorrow, we will be landing on the island of Soyu, one of two islands in the Shogazu Chain. The enemy, believed to be a force of around 40,000, is believed to be heavily dug in and entrenched. The Navy's photo recon birds have spotted a number of Nip tanks on the island as well." He paused.

"Now, obviously, we won't know until we get onto the beach. Because I don't trust a Navy flyer to know the difference between a Nip tank and a box of Corn Flakes!" the grizzled Colonel said, leading to a few hushed and murmured laughs from the Marines, most of whom were veterans already of the horror on the reefs of Cape Espiritu and in the mud of Port Arreau. "Now, we know the Nips sure do love mines and we know that he loves to use machine guns on his beaches. So more than anything gentlemen, I want you, as soon as we get off the Amtracs, to find yourself some cover. Don't leave yourself exposed and if it looks suspicious, don't use it. Period. Gentlemen, more than anything, stay safe. Not all of us will survive this. Not all of us will make it through this unharmed. But have faith in your buddy to the left and the right of you, in the artillery, and in Almighty God. Thank you, gentlemen." the Colonel stepped down from his improvised Jeep podium. There was no applause, just a piercing silence, broken only by the sounds of Navy airplanes flying high overhead. It was not lost on the 25th Marines what tomorrow would look like.

100 yards from the Shogazu Shoreline
19 February 1945
0700 D-Day

"When we hit the beach, keep your heads down and your weapon out of the water!" yelled Captain David Franklin, the Headquarters Company Commander, as Hayes held tightly onto the M1 .30 caliber rifle that had been with him since Cape Espiritu with one hand and his pack containing the top secret Codebook in the other. The Amtracs, known officially as LVT-4s, didn't go very fast, only giving a speed of about 7.5 miles per hour while in the water, obviously making anyone who was under the imminent threat of Dayashinese guns very nervous, even as thousands of rockets from the Landing ships roared overhead and the Navy's guns fired seemingly just above their heads. The shockwaves of naval gunfire did not help the sea sickness of many of the Marines within the Amtrac. Hayes watched as both "Doc" Martinez, the Navy Corpsman attached to the company, and Ira lost their breakfast of oranges, eggs, and steak onto the floor of the Amtrac. It took a lot of getting used to the smell, especially at first. However, for many of the veterans, the smell of vomit had become bearable. However, what wasn't bearable was the waiting. You never knew if this was going to be the one where your Amtrac got hit on the way in. Maybe you'd strike a mine. Maybe you'd get machine gun'd getting out of the landing craft. Maybe you'd make it off the beach only to be killed by a sniper. You never knew if this was going to be the one, and that was the only thing that still made Hayes squirm about these landings. You never knew when your time was up and the only way to find out was to wait and see what happened. Not exactly very reassuring at this point in time.

Despite the roar of gunfire, airplanes, and rockets overhead, the eerie silence was deafening. No one talked. Perhaps they were waiting to hear the Dayashinese counter battery fire. Perhaps the chatter of their machine guns and yet there was nothing, even as they inched closer and closer to the black beaches of the "Twins of Shogazu". Shogazu was volcanic in origin, with an ancient pair of undersea volcanoes having created the islands a millennia ago, and providing the basis for the black sand beaches that reeked of sulfur, smelling not quite unlike rotten eggs, particularly as the Marines inched closer and closer to their section of shoreline.

"Christ almighty, what is that fucking smell?" A murmured voice in the back of the Amtrac broke the silence, obviously one of Headquarters Company's newest replacements who had never been to a volcanic island before. After having spent about 20 minutes on the water, the Amtracs of the 25th Marine Regiment finally reached their centrally-placed section of shore, codenamed Red Beach. The thousands of Marines in the Amtracs almost immediately began to dismount from their Amtracs, puzzled by the odd silence and a lack of fire from Nip guns as they inched forward slowly, carefully watching their steps for land mines, towards a sand-covered embankment carved out by thousands of years worth of waves pressing up onto these shores.

"Ira, get over here!" Hayes whispered, calling for his younger counterpart to bring the company's radio he held with him. "Give me the telephone. I have to transmit to division that we've hit the shore, Skipper's orders." Hayes continued, as Ira handed him the radio telephone. Hayes reached into his bag and pulled out his codebook, quickly beginning to use the codebook to speak into the microphone.

"ASHIH-HI, ASHIH-HI. TWO FIVE TABAHA JO IL-DAY. NA-NETIN WO-NAS-DI AH-HA-TINH, Over." He spoke in Dine into the radio, knowing that another one of his comrades would pick up at Divisional headquarters and provide him and by extension, Colonel Blakeley, with further orders.

"TWO FIVE TABAHA, TWO FIVE TABAHA. TA-A-TAH TA-AKWAI-I. TA-A-TAH TA-AKWAI-I." The voice from headquarters crackled back, leaving the two Dine speakers simply confused as the Regiment in its entirety seemed to hold on the beach, along with the rest of the first wave it seemed, as the eerie silence continued to hold over the island.

[New Hayabusa]

At least half of the IDA men on the island were not fighters by nature. Instead, they were students, writers, economists, musicians, young politicians, cooks - regular men who had lived fairly normal lives throughout the war. However, when Dayashina started to lose ground abroad, imperial officials inevitably deemed it necessary for all men of age to be “forcibly volunteered” into service in the military of Imperial Dayashina.

Through this policy, Private Genki Yamada was “forcibly volunteered” for service in the Imperial Dayashinese Army. Before that, the 21 year old had been a writer and a highly credited student in the University of Matsuko, one of the nation’s most elite and expensive schools. He, like everyone in Dayashina at the time, had truly believed that his nation was going to triumph in the war without issue, and thus had continued on with his life as normal. It was believed that the writing was on the wall. With Themiclesia and Maverica on the brink of defeat, Meridia subjugated, and with IDN fleets at the gates of Tol Galen, a losing scenario had been almost rendered inconceivable.

Yamada’s life changed drastically following the battles of Tol Ereb and Tol Uinen. After the IDN struck a massive blow to the Royal Galenic Navy at the battle of Tol Ereb, the RGN was promptly reinforced by various elements of the Tyrannic Home Fleet. Brilliantly, the RGN had screened for the RTN at Tol Ereb, and later formed a united command with the RTN. This united command, completely unknown to IDN at the time, was able to catch the IDN fleets off guard and out of position, striking a truly tide-turning blow to the IDN, which sent shockwaves rolling throughout the world, beginning with Dayashina. It was at this time that the conscription policy was enforced, and Yamada was brought into the IDA after military officials stormed the University of Matsuko, demanding that all young men report to them at once.

Yamada hesitantly made his way to the university’s commons, and submitted himself for selection for service in the Imperial Dayashinese military. As a student who was secretly opposed to various elements of Dayashinese nationalist politics and wrote many private papers in critique of their rhetoric, he was quite frightened at the prospects of the IDA searching his office, where those papers were stowed away. The troopers had been sweeping the entire university, making sure to search every corner for fit-for-service males, and had undoubtedly looked through Yamada’s housing accomodation. He presumed that the papers were not found because an issue was never made of it in the commons, unlike some other students who were critical of the war or, like Yamada, elements of Dayashina’s government. Those who were found with such documents were removed from the crowd of men lined up in front of the recruitment officer, and executed behind the building. It was then that Yamada realised what he was being thrown into, and nearly vomited at the thought of killing and dying for a government which he almost completely disagreed with.

The young writer had been immediately transported from Matsuko to the base at Takena, where he went through the basic training that was reportedly designed from the ground up to enable the armies of Dayashina to triumph against those of Casaterra. No amount of academic, social, or workplace hardship could have prepared Yamada for what he experienced at that base in Takena. IDA basic training was the roughest, lowest, and most trying experience of his life, without question. They had beaten the natural student of him and molded him into a form of being that was not his - that of a killer. He was a completely different person, weighed down by the level of physical and mental hardship that he had to endure for months. What set him apart from most of the men on base, though, was that he had not succumbed to the brainwashing programme that the IDA had set up to make it’s soldiers believe that they were wholly superior and invincible to whatever enemy they would be fighting. He had simply exercised the same methods he used when High Command’s racist teaching started to seep into his classrooms, being taught as fact. However, this occasion was immeasurably harder and almost completely mind numbing, as it was constant, and combined with the incredible physical rigour of every day training. Alas, he was able to resist, and his well-tested resolve had not yet been broken.

Earlier the next year, in 1944, he had been transported to Verpletterant as a part of the small occupation force that remained there as the majority of the Eastern Meridian Army raped, pillaged, and burnt down cities across Maracaibo, a nation which turned its back on Dayashina following the battles of Tol Ereb and Tol Uinen. His experience in Meridia consisted of three activities - writing, sleeping, and collecting taxes from terrified Verpletteran farmers who were just trying to keep up their living albeit the destruction around them, not unlike Yamada before he had been drafted. There was no combat, and Yamada only fired his weapon once outside of the base, which was to scatter a small crowd of Verpletteran protesters, who appeared to be complaining about Dayashinese soldiers stealing their food. He was happy to walk away from that station knowing that he had not killed anyone.

After almost a year in Verpletterant, Yamada was transported to Shogazu. He was thrown into a new unit which consisted of other men like himself, but was led by an officer who had supposedly been with the IDA since the 1939. Amongst them were not only new units thrown together for the convenience of the occasion, but also some of Dayashina’s most infamous and acclaimed infantry units from the Meridian front. Particularly infamous was the 13th Yokona Infantry Brigade, known for their unbelievable exploits during the Dayashinese invasion of Victoria Isle in the early 40s. Yamada could easily tell the experienced apart from the fresh troopers, as they seemed to conduct themselves in a painfully disciplined manner and seemed to be far less talkative than their counterparts.

A couple of months passed by as the soldiers on the island were hard at work constructing fortifications on below the surface of the sacred ash. As communication with High Command began to increase in consistency and apparent seriousness (judging by the switch in conduct of the local officers), it became apparent to Yamada that he would not be leaving the islands alive. His thoughts were affirmed when the steel behemoths of OSN appeared on the horizon just days after he came to that realisation. From that moment forward, the island chain was under constant siege and bombardment from those behemoths and from airplanes above. For nearly two weeks, the tunnels became Yamada’s home. With the constant noise and shaking resulting from the rounds of the OS naval guns, Yamada found it tough to sleep, and so he jogged laps around his designated web of tunnels until he became tired and nearly collapsed out of fatigue.

A couple of the men in his unit, during the latter half of the bombardment, were driven insane out of lack of sleep and constant fear. One of them had ran out into the open screaming curse words at the vessels before being blown away just meters away from where he came out of, and another had disappeared into the dark of the tunnels on one night and hadn’t been heard from since. While the bombing had taken its toll on the men in terms of morale, it had limited effect on the fortifications on the island, with a small number of particularly exposed bunkers and gun emplacements destroyed. Like many of the men stuck down in the tunnels, Yamada grew increasingly angry as the bombardment raged on, day after day, night after night. The men gazed out at waters during the brief moments of silence, just hoping to see the landing craft pouring out of the behemoths so that it would end, only to be consistently disappointed until the morning of the 19th of February, 1945, the when the writer-turned-soldier and his comrades finally got their wish.

---

40,000 pairs of eyes peered out from the entrenchments of Soyu to look upon an unusually coloured wave slowly scattering its mass over the ashy shores of the island. It was not a wave of water, the giver of life, but rather a wave of death. Thousands of faceless, nameless, uniformed menaces, bearing their own instruments of destruction, were now trudging up the beaches of the Shogazu chain, an ancient land considered sacred to the Dayashinese people for centuries. The very presence of Organised States Marines on the island was an affront and direct insult to even the most moderate and rational thinkers out of the Dayashinese soldiers on the island, and they were determined to make that known.

Unluckily, Yamada had been positioned dangerously close to the beachhead, amongst the conglomeration of camouflaged bunkers, makeshift shooting slits, and tunnels that formed the front line of the defences on the island of Soyu. As soon as the landing craft were spotted, he had made multiple frantic runs from the munitions depot throughout the frontline tunnel system, being sure to drop crates full of ammunition in as many emplacements as he could in his sector. Now, as the OS Marines made landfall, Yamada was hunkered down in his own makeshift dwelling, complete with a cleverly camouflage shooting slit, with his Type 38 rifle trained on the jumbled mass of men and equipment now advancing towards him.

Outside, a noise akin to an awful thunderstorm sounded, with the machines of the OS terror roaring ahead and overhead, and the intensity of the barrage on Mount Soyu picking up. Despite this, Yamada found himself engulfed in silence, the sounds of war machines only a distant echo, similar to the pitter-patter of the raindrops landing overhead, as he waited for the universal order to open fire to sound through the radios. As the mass of men and machines ahead drew closer, it became visually apparent that Yamada and everyone around him were growing increasingly nervous. He was gripping his rifle so tightly that he thought he would shatter it’s frame, and had fixed his sights onto one unfortunate soul who happened to wield the Devil’s breath in the form of a flamethrower. The enemy was now close enough that one with good eyes could begin to pickout the eye colours of each of the individual soldiers/ Chatter began to flow through the tunnels, as the machine gunners around him and across the front line began to filter in requests to open fire to command. The chatter was abruptly interrupted by exactly what they wanted to hear. After what seemed like an eternity of suspense, the order finally came in.

“Ute!!!”

Yamada pulled the trigger, launching a round into the flamethrower operator’s chest. The bullet had punched straight through him and had punctured the tank, which erupted and sent everyone around it into a state of blazing combustion. A deafening wave of sound erupted from the tunnels as the multiple dozens of machine guns and other small arms began unloading into the gargantuan clump of men. The young writer watched in shock as the machine gun rounds ripped mercilessly through the enemies, an uncountable amount of bodies dropping lifelessly as the relentless bulletstorm continued on. After the opening salvo, the majority of the OS marines who were caught out in the open were now running back down the beach to find areas of relative cover, but those who were still frozen or panicked were gunned down without mercy.

After a couple minutes, the areas that had previously been filled with enemies were now covered in dead or wounded bodies, and the machine guns were still laying down the pain as the enemies made frantic runs for their life or attempted to return fire. After Yamada had gone through three five round clips, picking at random enemies with no particular method for prioritisation, much of the enemies had descended out of his line of sight, and he was able to sit back regain his breath as the MGs held them down with suppression. Distant booms sounded as friendly artillery pieces fired on the beach, occasionally sending dismembered bodies flying aimlessly through the air, or destroyed a landing craft in a grand explosion. Machine gun emplacements on Mount Soyu, which could still see the enemy with a perfect angle, were punishing the thousands of OS Marines who presumed themselves safe from the worst of it for just a moment.

Grabbing his rifle, Yamada rose from his position and started running around his sector to make sure all of the emplacements were still fine in terms of ammunition. He stopped briefly by each bunker to inspect the ammo and to assure his fellow man that he would be there for them when needed, no matter what the situation was. One of the guns had already jammed, so he had spent some time in that bunker holding down their sector to the best of his ability while the gunner and his assistant fixed what was wrong with their weapon, which took a few minutes. Finally, Yamada returned to his position and wrote down his findings on his small notepad. He reported that most of emplacements were still fine and had what appeared to be enough days if used conservatively. Despite this, he knew that this probably would not be the case and that his job was about to get much harder. It was inevitable that the enemy would eventually start inching closer to their line, and he would be in true danger, delivering ammo to emplacements that would surely be being targeted by enemy gunfire and advancements. It was inevitable that this line would be overrun at some point in time, and that Yamada would have to face his fate then and there. While he fronted an attitude of relative composure, he couldn’t help but feel desperately panicked inside. Of all fates, Genki Yamada never anticipated to ever be in a situation where his own could be realised at gunpoint.