《纽约客》报道二战

之前偶然发现一系列书，以十年为单位收集不同时代在《纽约客》上刊登的文章，从1940年代出到1960年代。于是我就买了1940年代这本，想看一下当年美国人是如何报道二战的。

读了前言才知道，《纽约客》创刊自1925年，但是直到二战之前，杂志都没有涉足严肃新闻的报道。但是当战争来临，记者们被派驻到世界各地的前线，从此改变了杂志的基调。

这本书里收录了9篇关于战争的报道，不过很遗憾，这些文章关注的都是欧洲和太平洋战争，里面并没有中国大陆对日战争的文章。下面是一些摘抄，中文是chatgpt翻译的，我觉得有点怪怪的，远没有英文原文要好。

Paris Postscript: On the fall of France

巴黎后记：法国的沦陷
Aug 3-10， 1940

There was no immediate danger in Paris unless the Germans bombed it, and when the news was in any degree encouraging I did not think of bombing at all. When the news was bad I thought of bombing with ap-prehension. It helped me understand why troops in a winning army are frequently brave and on the losing side aren’t. We heard anti-aircraft fire every night now, but there were no air-raid alarms, because the planes the guns were firing at were reconnaissance planes. The heaviest shooting would begin in the gray period just before dawn. You wouldn’t really settle down to sleep until the morning shooting was over, and you wouldn’t wake up until noon.

除非德国人发动轰炸，否则巴黎并无迫在眉睫的危险。 而只要传来的消息稍带几分振奋，我便全然不会去想轰炸这回事。 可一旦消息恶劣，轰炸的念头便会带着不安盘桓心头。 这让我明白了，为何胜方的士兵常常英勇无畏，而败军之中英勇者寥寥。 我们如今每夜都能听见高射炮开火的声音， 却没有响起过一次空袭警报， 因为那些被炮火瞄准的，只是侦察机而已。 最密集的炮火往往在黎明前那段灰暗的时光里响起。 直到清晨的枪声平息，你才算真正安下心来入睡； 而醒来时，往往已是正午时分。

Incredibly, beginning the day after the Belgian surrender, there was a great wave of exhilaration, based on the heroic action of the British and French armies fighting their way out of Flanders. People with relatives in the northern armies had, when they heard of the capitulation, resigned themselves to the capture or death of the trapped men. The German government, in radio broadcasts, had threatened that even if the Allies were able to make a stand at Dunkirk the Germans would sink every boat that tried to embark troops. It was one German threat that didn’t come off. People in Paris began to receive telegrams from relatives who had safely arrived in England. Several of my acquaintances received such messages, so we assumed that the number of troops saved was very large.

My old friends Henri and Eglée had not worried about their son Jean-Pierre, because, having seen him on leave since the Germans drove the wedge between the Allied armies, they knew he was south of the Somme. But Henri’s brother Paul, who at fifty had been called back into service as a lieutenant of artillery, was with the army in Flanders. One evening shortly after the Belgian surrender, I climbed up to the Rue Gabrielle, just under the crest of Montmartre, to visit Henri and Eglée, and found them in a happy mood, because Paul had reached England. I tried to talk to Eglée about what she and her husband would do if the Germans turned toward Paris after they finished the Dunkirk job. Her answer was simply that she had an order from the Galeries Lafayette for five dozen of the soldiers’ muslin money belts she manufactured at home and that after she completed the order she would have to wait eight days for pay-ment, so how could she think of leaving Paris? As for Henri, he said he now constituted the whole office force of the textile-design company he worked for and couldn’t leave without giving a month’s notice. Peacetime thought patterns were mercifully persistent.

Everyone now was doing his best to forget that the Allied forces had had too few tanks and guns to begin with, and that now the evacuated armies had lost what little they had. We consoled ourselves with stories of individual heroism and with the thought that the Allies, after all, controlled the sea. Only when the evacuation was completed did the enthusiastic French suddenly take cognizance of the fact that there were no more British troops on their side of the Channel. As if spontaneously, the German gibe, “England will fight to the last Frenchman,” swam into the popular consciousness and began to seem like a portent.

不可思议的是，从比利时投降的第二天起，巴黎突然掀起一阵莫名的兴奋浪潮——这股情绪源自英法联军在法兰德斯浴血突围的英勇事迹。 那些在北方部队中有亲人的巴黎人，在听闻比利时投降时，已经接受了亲人被俘或战死的命运。 德国政府在广播中威胁说，即使盟军得以在敦刻尔克集结，德军也会击沉每一艘试图撤离士兵的船只。 但这一次，德军的威胁并未成真。 巴黎人开始收到远在英格兰的亲人发来的电报，报平安的消息四处传开。 我的几位熟人也都收到了类似的讯息，于是大家都确信，这次被救回的士兵数目，想必极为可观。

我的老朋友亨利与埃格蕾并不担心他们的儿子让－皮埃尔。 自从德军将联军一分为二后，他们曾在休假时见过他，知道他已退至索姆河南岸。 但亨利的哥哥保罗——年已五十，却被重新征召入伍，担任炮兵中尉——仍随军滞留在法兰德斯。 比利时投降后不久的一个傍晚，我登上蒙马特山，来到嘉布里埃尔街，去看望亨利和埃格蕾， 发现他们情绪颇为轻快，原来是收到了保罗已安全抵达英格兰的消息。 我试图与埃格蕾谈谈：若德军在敦刻尔克之后转向巴黎，他们夫妻打算如何应对。 她的回答异常简单：她接了老佛爷百货的一笔订单，要做五打士兵用的细纱腰包， 订单完成后还需等上八天才能结款，这种时候，怎能轻言离开巴黎？ 至于亨利，他则说，自己如今已是公司里唯一的纺织图案设计师，若要离职，也得提前一个月递交辞呈。 战时的现实，被这固执的和平年代思维顽强地抵挡住了。

大家现在都在尽力忘记一个事实：盟军本就缺乏坦克与火炮，如今撤退之后，连残存的武器也一并丢了。 我们靠着散落的英雄事迹自我安慰，也靠着那句“好歹盟军还掌控着海洋”来壮胆。 直到撤退行动全部结束，那种兴奋才倏然冷却。 法国人才猛然意识到——现在，海峡这边，已再无英军留守。 就在这时，那句德国人的讥讽，“英国将战斗到最后一位法国人”， 仿佛突然浮上集体意识，令人不寒而栗，竟像是某种预兆。

Letter from London: On the Blitz

伦敦来信：关于闪电战
Sep 14, 1940

Up to yesterday, the raids on London had not been developed beyond a point which indicated that they were merely reconnaissance or training flights to accustom enemy pilots to night work over the capital. Sirens had become tiresome interruptions which Londoners learned to expect at fairly regular intervals during the day, roughly coinciding with the morning and evening traffic rush and with the lunch hour. Unless shooting accompanied the alarms, they were ignored, as far as possible, except by especially nervous individuals. The dislocation of office and factory work schedules was more or less remedied by the posting of spotters on rooftops to give the warning when things really become dangerous lo-cally. Until that warning comes, workers have been getting on with the job, sirens or no sirens. No part of the Premier’s speech last week was better received, by the way, than his statement that the whole of the air-raid-warning system is to be drastically revised and a new ruling concerning it announced in the near future; what he described as “these prolonged banshee howlings” are apparently more alarming to a great many people than an actual bombardment.

直到昨天，伦敦所遭受的空袭尚未升级到实质性的程度，看来不过是敌方进行侦察或训练飞行，用以让飞行员熟悉夜间在首都上空的飞行作业。 警报声已变得令人烦厌，伦敦人几乎能按时钟预测它们的出现——大致出现在早晚通勤高峰时段，以及午饭时间。 只要警报没有伴随炮火，大多数人都会尽量无视，除了那些本就神经脆弱的人。 办公室与工厂的工作节奏因警报而被打乱，但这种混乱在一定程度上已经通过设置屋顶观察员得到缓解—— 只有当确有局部危险时，他们才会发出真正的预警。 在那之前，不管警报响不响，工人们照常干活。

顺便一提，上周首相的演讲中最受欢迎的一段， 就是他宣布整个空袭警报系统将进行彻底改革，并将在近期发布新的规定； 他所称的“这些漫长如女妖哀嚎般的警笛声”，对许多人而言， 竟比真正的轰炸还要令人惊恐。

The calm behavior of the average individual continues to be amazing. Commuting suburbanites, who up to yesterday had experienced worse bombardments than people living in central London, placidly brag to fellow-passengers on the morning trains about the size of bomb craters in their neighborhoods, as in a more peaceful summer they would have bragged about their roses and squash.

普通人的镇定举止，依然令人惊叹。 郊区通勤者——他们直到昨天为止所经历的轰炸，甚至比住在伦敦市中心的人还要猛烈—— 如今在早班火车上，依旧从容地向同车乘客夸耀自家街区里炸弹坑的大小， 仿佛在某个更安宁的夏日里，他们夸耀的不过是自家种出的玫瑰花和南瓜。

Cross-Channel Trip: On D Day

穿越英吉利海峡：诺曼底登陆日
Jul 8, 1944

We made our way out to a transport called the Dorothea Dix that had a hospital ward fitted out. We went alongside and Rigg yelled that we had four/casualties aboard. A young naval doctor climbed down the grapple net hanging on the Dix’s side and came aboard. After he had looked at our soldier, he called for a breeches buoy and the soldier was hoisted up sitting in that. He had been hit in one shoulder and one leg, and the doctor said he had a good chance. The three others had to be sent up in wire baskets, vertically, like Indian papooses. A couple of Negroes on the upper deck of the Dix dropped a line which our men made fast to the top of one basket after another. Then the man would be jerked up in the air by the Negroes as if he were going to heaven. Now that we carried no passengers and were lighter, the sea seemed rough. We bobbled under the towering transport and the wounded men swung wildly on the end of the line, a few times almost striking against the ship. A Coastguardsman reached up for the bottom of one basket so that he could steady it on its way up. At least a quart of blood ran down on him, covering his tin hat, his upturned face, and his blue overalls. He stood motionless for an instant, as if he didn’t know what had happened, seeing the world through a film of red, because he wore eyeglasses and blood had covered the lenses. The basket, swaying eccentrically, went up the side. After a couple of seconds, the Coastguardsman turned and ran to a sink aft of the galley, where he turned on the water and began washing himself. A couple of minutes after the last litter had been hoisted aboard, an officer on the Dix leaned over her rail and shouted down, “Medical officer in charge says two of these men are dead! He says you should take them back to the beach and bury them.” Out there, fifteen miles off shore, they evidently thought that this was just another landing exercise. A sailor on deck said, “The son of a bitch ought to see that beach.”

我们驶向了一艘名为“多萝西娅·迪克斯号”的运输船，上面设有临时的医疗舱。我们靠近后，里格大声喊道我们船上有四名伤员。 一位年轻的海军军医顺着“迪克斯号”一侧的缆网爬了下来，跳上我们这艘小船。 他检查了一名士兵后，叫来了滑轮吊带，把那名士兵用吊椅送了上去。 那士兵肩膀和腿上都中弹，医生说他还有很大希望活下来。 另外三人必须用钢丝吊篮垂直吊上去，就像印第安婴儿被裹在背篓里那样。 “迪克斯号”的上层甲板上有两个黑人水手抛下绳索，我们的士兵把绳索一一固定在吊篮的顶端。 然后那些水手就猛地拉起吊篮，把伤员提向空中，仿佛要把他们送上天堂。 现在船上没有乘客，变得轻盈许多，海面反而显得更加汹涌。 我们的小艇在高大的运输船下剧烈颠簸， 吊在半空中的伤员随绳剧烈摆动，几次几乎撞上那艘巨大的船体。 一名海岸警卫队员伸手去托住一个吊篮的底部，好稳住它往上升的方向。 顿时，一大滩鲜血顺着吊篮泼洒下来，淋了他一身——他的钢盔、仰起的脸、和蓝色工作服全被染红。 他僵立在原地，仿佛还没意识到发生了什么。 他的眼镜片上也糊满了血，他透过一层红色的薄膜看世界。 吊篮在空中剧烈摆动，最终被拉上了“迪克斯号”的舷侧。 几秒钟后，那名海岸警卫队员转身冲向厨房后方的水槽，打开水龙头开始冲洗自己。 最后一副担架吊上船后几分钟，一名“迪克斯号”的军官从甲板上探出身来，大声喊道： “随船的军医说，这里面有两个人已经死了！他说你们该把他们送回海滩埋了！” 在这片离岸十五英里的海域上，他们显然以为这只是又一次普通的登陆演习。 甲板上一名水手低声骂道： “那狗娘养的该亲眼看看那片海滩。”

Long was having a look at the damage the shell had done to our ship, and I joined him in tracing its course. It had entered the starboard bow well above the waterline, about the level of the ship’s number, then had hit the forward anchor winch, had been deflected toward the stern of the boat, had torn through the bulkhead and up through the cover of the escape hatch, then had smashed the ramp winch and Rocky and Bill. It had been a seventy-five-millimetre anti-tank shell with a solid-armor-piercing head, which had broken into several pieces after it hit the ramp winch. The boys kept finding chunks of it around, but enough of it stayed in one piece to show what it had been. “They had us crisscrossed with guns in all those pillboxes that were supposed to have been knocked off,” Long said. “Something must have gone wrong. We gave them a perfect landing, though,” he added with professional pride. “I promised the commander we would land him dry tail and we did.” Long has been in the Coast Guard twenty years and nothing surprises him; he has survived prohibition, Miami and Fire Island hurricanes, and three landings. He is a cheerful soul who has an original theory about fear. “I always tell my boys that fear is a passion like any other passion,” he had once told me. “Now, if you see a beautiful dame walking down the street, you feel passion but you control it, don’t you? Well, if you begin to get frightened, which is natural, just control yourself also, I tell them.” Long said that he had seen the commander start off from the ship at a good clip, run well until he got up near the first line of sand dunes, then stagger. “The commander was at the head of the line about to leave the ship when young Vaghi, that big ensign, came up and must have asked him for the honor of going first,” Long said. “They went off that way, Vaghi out ahead, running as if he was running out on a field with a football under his arm. Miller led the soldiers off the other ramp, and he stepped out like a little gentleman, too.” The space where the starboard ramp had once been gave the same effect as an empty sleeve or eye socket.

It was Frankel, a signalman who had been on the bridge, who told me sometime that afternoon about how the wounded soldier had come to be on board. Frankel, whose family lives on East Eighteenth Street in Brooklyn, was a slender, restless fellow who used to be a cutter in the garment centre. He played in dance bands before he got his garment-union card, he once told me, and on the ship he occasionally played hot licks on the bugle slung on the bridge. “A shell hit just as we were beginning to pull out,” Frankel said, “and we had begun to raise the ramps. It cut all but about one strand of the cable that was holding the starboard ramp and the ramp was wobbling in the air when I saw a guy holding on to the end of it. I guess a lot of us saw him at the same time. He was just Clutching the ramp with his left arm, because he had been shot in the other shoulder. I’ll never forget his eyes. They seemed to say, ‘Don’t leave me behind.’ He must have been hit just as he stepped off the ramp leaving the ship. It was this soldier. So Ryan and Landini went out and got him. Ryan worked along the rail inside the ramp and Landini worked along the outside edge of the ramp and they got him and carried him back into the ship. There was plenty of stuff flying around, too, and the ramp came away almost as soon as they got back. That’s one guy saved, anyway.” Ryan was a seaman cook who helped Fassy, the commissary steward, in the galley, and Landini was the little First Avenue Italian who had made up a special song for himself-“I’m going over to France and I’m shaking in my pants.”

朗正在查看炮弹对我们船体造成的损坏，我也走过去和他一起沿着弹道找线索。 炮弹从船体右舷的船头射入，位置远高于水线，大概就在船号的高度； 接着击中了前锚绞盘，被弹偏向船尾，穿透了舱壁，又从逃生舱口的盖板中破出； 然后撞碎了舷梯绞盘，也打中了洛基和比尔。 那是一发75毫米的反坦克炮弹，带有实心穿甲弹头，撞击舷梯绞盘后碎成了几块。 伙计们四处捡到了不少碎片，但还留有一块足够完整的弹体，能看出它本来的模样。 “那些碉堡里都还架着枪，原本是该清除干净的。”朗说。 “肯定是哪里出了差错。 不过我们确实完成了一次漂亮的登陆，”他又带着一丝职业的自豪补充道。 “我答应指挥官让他‘干着地’登陆，结果确实做到了。” 朗在海岸警卫队干了二十年，什么也吓不倒他； 他活过了禁酒令、迈阿密和火岛的飓风，还参加过三次登陆。 他是个乐观派，还有一套独特的“恐惧理论”。 “我常跟我的小伙子们说，恐惧其实就是一种激情，跟其他激情一样，”他曾告诉我。 “你在街上看到一个漂亮姑娘时会激动，但你会克制自己，对吧？ 那么如果你开始感到害怕——这很自然——你也要控制自己，我就是这么跟他们讲的。” 朗说他看到指挥官离船时跑得很快，一路冲到第一道沙丘前面才开始踉跄起来。 “指挥官本来排在队伍最前头准备下船， 结果那个大个子的少尉瓦吉上前请求‘率先登陆’的荣誉。”朗说。 “于是他们就并排冲了出去，瓦吉冲在最前，就像怀里夹着橄榄球冲进球场一样。 米勒则带着士兵们从另一侧的舷梯下去，步伐也像个小绅士。” 右舷舷梯如今不见踪影，那里留下的空隙就像一只空袖子，或是一个失明的眼窝。

是弗兰克尔告诉我那个伤员是怎么出现在船上的。 那天下午某个时候他说起这事。 弗兰克尔是船桥上的信号兵，家住布鲁克林东18街，瘦瘦的，总带着点躁动的劲儿， 曾在服装业做裁缝，还没拿到工会证之前，在舞厅乐队里拉过小提琴。 他跟我说，他有时候还会在船桥上吹一段热辣的军号曲。 “炮弹打过来时，我们正要启航，”弗兰克尔说， “舷梯已经开始升起。 炮弹几乎把右舷舷梯的钢缆全切断了，只剩下一股还连着。 我看到一个人吊在舷梯尽头——应该大家当时都看到了。 他是用左手抱着舷梯的，因为另一边的肩膀已经中弹。 我永远忘不了他的眼神，像是在说：‘别把我丢下。’ 他大概是在刚下舷梯那一刻中弹的。” “就是这个士兵。 所以瑞安和兰迪尼冒着炮火把他救了回来。 瑞安在舷梯内侧扶着，兰迪尼在外侧， 他们合力把那人抱了回来。 当时四周的弹片飞得到处都是， 而他们刚回来没多久，舷梯就彻底脱落了。 总算救回了一个人。” 瑞安是厨房帮厨，协助储藏室的法西工作； 兰迪尼则是个来自第一大道的小意大利人， 曾为自己编了一首歌：“我要去法国啦，裤子都吓湿啦。”

The Suspended Drawing Room： on the post-blitz London

悬空的起居室：关于“闪电战”之后的伦敦
Jan 27, 1945

An English editor I met on the plane had told me that the day after I arrived would provide one of the biggest news stories of the war: Lon-don, for the first time in five years, was to have light. That night, how-ever, the blackout was still to be on, and I deposited my fifty-five pounds of luggage in Claridge’s and went for a walk while there was still some daylight. I made for Berkeley Square. Soldiers and sailors, English and American, were walking with their girls in a faint, intermittent drizzle. Most of the women wore no stockings. I had been seeing this all summer in New York. But the American legs were tanned and agreeable, whereas these English ones were muddy and streaked bluish and red with the cold. (A young woman later told me that she was embarrassed at having to go without stockings. “I hate the unusual,” she said. As she had been going barelegged for five years, I wondered how long it took for the unusual to become the usual.) The façades of the houses leading into the square have a strangely quiet look; at a casual glance, you might think the houses were shut up for the weekend, but a closer inspection shows you that they have been shut up for longer than that. I peered in through a grimy, narrow, leaded window at the side of a fine oaken street door. Behind it was a great, obscene shambles of shattered brick and mortar and twisted iron. A huge sheet of what had been a fluted ceiling lay against a section of stairway, as if propped up on one elbow. I looked down the row. Several places in the long vista of wreckage had been cleared for the pools— for emergency use against incendiaries-which are now a common feature of the London scene. These dark, liquid ob-longs, fine-meshed in the rain, reflected jagged back walls and gargoyles of contorted pipes. I remembered going out to the set in Hollywood where Leslie Howard was making the motion picture of Berkeley Square. Those reproductions of eighteenth-century façades had not much less behind them than this one had.

我在飞机上遇到的一位英国编辑告诉我， 我抵达伦敦后的第二天，将迎来整个战争期间最重大的新闻之一： 五年来，伦敦将首次重见灯火。 不过在我抵达的那一晚，封灯令仍旧生效。 我把五十五磅的行李放在克拉里奇酒店，趁天还没黑，出门散步。 我朝伯克利广场走去。雨丝稀疏地飘着， 英美两国的士兵与水手与他们的姑娘并肩漫步。 大多数女人都没穿丝袜。这个夏天在纽约我也见过不少这样的情景， 不过那边的美国姑娘腿晒得微棕而健康， 而这些英国姑娘的腿则灰扑扑的，夹杂着一丝蓝与红的冷意，仿佛还沾着泥点。 （后来一位年轻女子告诉我，她为不得不光腿感到尴尬：“我讨厌不寻常的事，”她说。 可她已经这样光腿走了整整五年，我忍不住想，不寻常的事情，要多久才会变得习以为常？） 通往广场的那些房屋立面呈现出一种奇异的寂静感。 乍一看，你可能会以为这只是个周末，住户们暂时离开了。 可若凑近细看，你会意识到，它们早已被荒废得更久远了。 我从一扇窄窄的、蒙尘的铅框玻璃窗往里张望， 那扇窗嵌在一扇做工精良的橡木大门旁边。 门后却是一片淫秽而凄惨的废墟：砖石断裂、灰泥倾颓、铁件纠结如麻。 一整片原本属于雕花天花板的巨大板材倾斜着， 仿佛用手肘支着，斜倚在一段断裂的楼梯上。 我顺着街道望去。几处废墟的空地已被清出，用作应急水池， 以备突发燃烧弹袭击——现在，这些黑色的长方形水面， 已经成了伦敦街头的常见景致。 细雨中，水面仿佛罩着细密的网， 映出锯齿状的断墙、扭曲成怪兽般形状的管道。 我忽然想起好几年以前，在好莱坞参观过一个片场， 当时莱斯利·霍华德正在拍摄电影《伯克利广场》。 那些仿造十八世纪房屋立面的布景， 其背后所隐藏的虚空， 竟不比我眼前这片真正的废墟来得少多少。

Having been in London’s shelters, I can see readily why most people-at least those who have some alternative-will take their chance on being hit rather than go into them. There are three main types: surface shel-ters, which look like enlarged Nissen huts; shallow shelters, which vary in size and depth and are only fairly safe; and the deep shelters, of which there are five in London. Each of the last can accommodate eight thousand people. Then, of course, there are the subways, which are still favored by many. On the concrete platforms of the stations are built tiers of steel shelves somewhat like the ones used in American railway stations for checking baggage. On them you see men, women, and small children asleep with their clothes on. As a concession to light sleepers, the trains do not run after eleven-thirty at night, but no alarm clock is needed in the early morning. One morning, while I was waiting in a station for a train, I saw a little boy rather younger than my own, who is seven, lying asleep, his arm curved up over his eyes as if to shield them from the light. The train roared in. Just as I was caught in the crowd that sucked me aboard, quite in the New York fashion, I looked back at this child. The noise of the milling crowd must have penetrated the planes of sleep; he turned abruptly, huddling himself and his blanket against the glazed brick wall behind his bunk.

在伦敦待过几次防空洞之后，我完全能理解为什么大多数人——至少是那些还有别的选择的人——宁愿冒着被炸的风险，也不愿意进去。 防空洞主要分为三类： 地面防空洞，看起来像放大版的尼森小屋； 浅层防空洞，大小和深度各异，仅能提供有限的安全； 以及深层防空洞，全伦敦一共只有五个，每个可容纳约八千人。 除此之外，还有地铁——许多人至今仍偏爱它。 地铁站的水泥月台上，搭建起一层层金属床架，看起来就像是美国火车站里寄存行李用的货架。 床架上，男人、女人和小孩穿着衣服蜷缩着入睡。 为了照顾浅眠者，地铁在晚上十一点半之后停运； 但清晨并不需要闹钟叫醒——城市的节奏会自己把人推向白昼。 某个清晨，我正在站台上等车，看见一个比我自己七岁的孩子还要小的小男孩， 睡着了，一只胳膊弯起遮在眼睛上，像是想挡住那刺眼的光。 列车轰鸣而来，我像在纽约一样，被人潮裹挟着挤进车厢。 就在那一刻，我回头看了他一眼。 人群的喧嚣穿透了他的睡眠，他猛地一缩，把自己连同那条薄毯挪向铺位后的瓷砖墙壁，像是在向某种不安靠近。

D Day, IWO JIMA

硫磺岛登陆
Mar 17, 1945

D Day was Monday, February 19th, and H Hour was 0900. On D-minus-one, the regimental surgeon reported a hundred and twenty-five cases of diarrhea among the men and officers aboard. This had come from something they ate, but that evening the Navy cooks did better and served everyone a turkey dinner with ice cream. At the last meal, breakfast at o5o the morning of the nineteenth, there was steak and eggs. Everyone had dressed in his green combat blouse and trousers and had strapped on his pistol belt, with a long knife, ammunition, a bandage roll, and one or two canteens attached, and had checked his carbine. After breakfast, everyone put on his helmet, which had a camouflage cover simulating sand, and went out on deck and over to the ladder nets. The sun was just coming up, so Iwo Jima was visible from our line of debarkation, which was several miles out at sea. There the larger transports halted, to keep beyond the range of shore batteries, and put off their cargoes of Marines into small boats. On Suribachi, the volcano at the south end of the island, we could see bursts of fire and smoke from our naval shelling, which continued till H Hour. Some of the men stared at the island. Others remarked that the wind was running in our favor, from the northwest, and that the sea was calmer than it had been, though still difficult. Many could think of nothing but the immediate necessity of climbing the slick, flaccid web of rope down the ship’s side without looking silly or getting killed. Even young Marines have been killed on these descents when the sea has been rough, and for those over thirty-five the endless sequence of nets, Jacob’s ladders, bouncing gangways, and lurching boats is a hazard and nightmare which can occupy their minds to the exclusion of all other dangers. Admirals and generals can look ridiculous in these circumstances. They are well aware of it, and their tempers during amphibious operations are correspondingly short.

D日是2月19日星期一，H时为上午九点。 在D减一天这天，团部军医报告说船上的官兵中有一百二十五起腹泻病例。 这是吃了某样东西引起的，不过当天晚上海军的炊事员表现得好多了，为所有人准备了一顿火鸡晚餐加冰淇淋。 最后一顿饭，是十九日清晨五点的早餐：牛排和鸡蛋。 每个人都穿上了绿色战斗服和长裤， 系好手枪带，腰带上挂着长刀、弹药、止血绷带卷，以及一两个水壶， 还检查了自己的卡宾枪。 早餐后，所有人戴上了头盔，头盔上套有伪装罩，模拟沙地的颜色， 然后上了甲板，走向舷边的绳梯网。 太阳刚刚升起，从我们出发线所在的海面上，可以看到硫磺岛的轮廓， 我们距离海岸还有几英里。 大型运输舰在此停下，以避免进入岸炮射程， 将满载海军陆战队员的舢板一艘艘放入海中。 在岛南端的火山苏里巴奇山上，我们能看见海军炮击产生的火光与烟雾， 这种炮击一直持续到H时。 有些士兵凝视着岛屿； 也有人说，风向对我们有利，来自西北， 海面比前几日平静，虽然仍然难以应对。 许多人脑子里只剩下一件事： 如何在不出洋相、也不送命的情况下，爬下那张湿滑、松软的舷边绳网。 即使是年轻的陆战队员，在风浪大的时候，也有人在这段攀爬中丧命； 而对三十五岁以上的人来说， 一连串的绳网、舷梯、跳板和颠簸不已的小艇， 构成的是一种危险，也是一场噩梦， 足以暂时抹去他们对其他一切危险的意识。 在这种时候，海军上将与陆军将军也可能显得狼狈不堪， 他们对此心知肚明， 也因此，在两栖作战期间，情绪常常变得格外暴躁。

Wornham’s Higgins boat, a rectangular little launch with a hinged landing ramp in the bow, pulled up on the starboard quarter of our ship, and those of us who were going ashore with the Colonel climbed down a ladder and jumped in. It was exactly ioo, or two hours after the first landings, and this was the fourteenth wave. I should say that we were the fourteenth wave. As far as I could see, no other boat was moving shoreward at that moment. As we cast off, Galeagon came to the ship’s rail and yelled something at us through a megaphone. Wornham, a short, stocky career Marine of about forty, smiling and convivial on our voyage north but now very taut and serious, leaned precariously over the stern of the boat, clutching at the rail, and cupped a hand to one ear. “Red One now under heavy mortar fire!” shouted the messenger. The Fifth Division’s share of beaches was Green Beach and Red Beaches One and Two. To the north, the Fourth Division had landed on Yellow One and Two and Blue One and Two. We were fifty feet from the control ship when Galeagon yelled another message. “Red Two under mortar fire,” he said, the sound of his voice seeming to bounce across the waves. “Heavy mortar fire on both Red beaches.” The others in the boat looked with expressionless faces at Wornham, who smiled wryly. “Head for a point about a hundred feet to the right of the line between Red One and Two,” he told the coxswain. Then he turned to the rest of us and said, “All right, be ready to bail out of here goddam fast when we touch that beach.” We all crouched, whether sitting or standing, as the boat moved in. Now and then we wiped spray off our eyes and noses, and we paid no attention to a battleship and a cruiser through whose shadows we passed. I had some trouble crouching, because of my length and because the shelf on which I sat was only a foot or so beneath the stern rail. There was no special need, however, for crouching now, while we were still on water. It was the beaches the Japs were mortaring. We crouched in a sort of instinctive, shrinking alarm at what we were about to meet.

沃恩汉姆的希金斯登陆艇靠上了我们船的右后舷， 那是一种小巧的长方形登陆艇，艇首有一扇可下放的舱门。 我们这批要和上校一起上岸的人顺着舷梯爬下，跳进艇里。 当时正好是上午十点，距离第一波登陆已经过去两个小时， 这是第十四波登陆——应该说，我们是第十四波。 放眼望去，似乎没有其他船只正在向岸边前进。 就在我们脱离母舰时，加利根跑到船舷，用扩音器对我们喊话。 沃恩汉姆——一个四十岁左右的陆战队军官，身材矮壮， 在我们北上途中还是一副笑容可掬的样子，现在却绷得紧紧的，神情严肃—— 他不稳地探身船尾，抓住舷栏，一只手捂在耳边。 “红一号滩正遭受猛烈迫击炮攻击！”加利根大声喊道。 第五师负责的滩头包括绿滩以及红一号和红二号滩。 往北，第四师在黄一、黄二和蓝一、蓝二滩登陆。 我们刚离开指挥舰五十英尺远，加利根又喊出第二条消息： “红二号滩正遭迫击炮攻击，”他的声音仿佛在波浪间弹跳回荡， “两个红滩都遭到猛烈炮击。” 艇上的其他人面无表情地看着沃恩汉姆， 他露出一个苦笑，说道：“向红一和红二之间那条线右侧一百英尺的地方靠。” 接着他转头对我们说： “好了，等我们一碰到滩头，大家就他妈的准备迅速跳船。” 艇继续向前开，我们不论坐着还是站着，都下意识地蹲低了身体。 时不时，我们用手擦去眼睛和鼻子上的水花， 并没有在意我们穿越阴影的那艘战列舰和巡洋舰。 我因为个子高、而且所坐的船尾板距舷栏不到一尺，蹲得颇为吃力。 不过在这时，蹲下其实还没什么必要——我们仍在海上。 敌人的迫击炮是打向滩头的。 我们此刻的蹲姿，更像是一种本能的收缩，一种对即将面对之事的直觉性戒备。