by James Jones
As the trucks passed through the new, Married NCO Quarters that had been added onto Pearl Harbor recently, women and children and an occasional old man standing in the yards cheered them. The troops rode on through in silence, staring at them dully.
Going through the back streets of town, all along the route, men, women and children stood on porches fences cartops and roofs and cheered them roundly. They waved Winnie Churchill’s V-for-Victory sign at them, and held their thumbs up in the air. Young girls threw them kisses. Mothers of young girls, with tears in their eyes, urged their daughters to throw them more kisses.
The troops, looking wistfully at all this ripe young stuff running around loose that they could not get into, and remembering the old days when civilian girls were not allowed—and did not desire—to speak to soldiers on the street in broad daylight let alone at night in a bar, gave them back the old one-finger salute of the clenched fist jabbing the stiff middle finger into the air. They returned Winnie Churchill’s V-for-Victory sign with an even older one of their own, in which the fist is clenched and the middle finger and thumb are extended and pinched repeatedly together.
The ecstatic civilians, who did not know that this last was the Old Army sign for pussy, or that the first meant “Fuck you!” cheered them even more roundly and the troops, for the first time since they’d left Schofield, grinned a little bit at each other, slyly, and redoubled with their saluting.
From Waikiki on east, the trucks in the Company’s convoy began to peel off to deliver the various three- and four-man details each with its noncom to their various beach positions. By the time they reached the rise up over the Koko Head saddle where the road turned off down to the CP at Hanauma Bay, there were only four trucks left. The two for Position 28 at Makapuu Head, one for the CP personnel and Position 27, and the kitchen truck. The first two, the CP truck and the kitchen truck, pulled off onto the side road and stopped and the last two bound for Makapuu went on, then, past them. They had all had their big day with the civilians, which most of them had waited from two to five years for, and now they were preparing to pay for it.
Among the troops in the trucks there was a certain high fervor of defense and patriotism that exploded into a weak feeble cheer in the heavy perpetual wind, as they passed Lt Ross and The Warden who had climbed out of the jeep on the road-shoulder to watch them go past. A few fists were shaken in the air up between the bare truck ribs and Friday Clark, current-rifleman and ex-apprentice-Company-bugler, shook a wildly promising two-finger V-for-Victory sign at Lt Ross from over the tailgate of the last truck as they pulled on away.
This general patriotic enthusiasm lasted about three days.
Lt Ross, standing beside his jeep to watch his men go off to possible maiming and death, certainly off to a war that would last a long time, looked at Friday sadly and without acknowledgment from across a great gulf of years pity and superior knowledge, his eyes set in a powerful emotion, a look of great age and fearful responsibility on his face.
1st/Sgt Warden, standing beside his Company Commander and watching his face, wanted to boot his Company Commander hard in the ass.
It was perhaps the stringing of the barbed wire, more than anything else, that ate into the patriotism of the troops in the next few days. The men who had acquired the new unknown disease of aching veins in their arm joints from the building of these positions now found it coming back on them doubly powerfully from putting up barbed wire to protect these positions. So that even when they were not pulling guard at night, they couldn’t sleep anyway. The stringing of the barbed wire, after the first day, was an even more powerful astringent to the patriotism than their getting crummy with no prospect of a shower, or their getting itchy with beard and no prospect of a shave, or their having to sleep on the rocks with nothing but a single shelterhalf and two blankets over them when it rained.
Actually, this war that had started out so well Sunday morning and given them such high hopes of the future, was turning out to be nothing more than an extended maneuvers. With the single difference that this showed no prospects of ending.
It was five days before things were organized enough to allow the sending of a detail back to Schofield for the rest of their stuff, that they had not thought they’d need, and the Company’s quota of pyramidal tents. But even these didnt do the men at Makapuu any good since out there there werent any trees to set them up under.
Warden, armed with the request list of each man which altogether covered an entire pad of legal-size scratch paper, led the detail of three trucks. Pete Karelsen, who was the only man in the Company who had been anywhere near comfortable in the five days, was his second-in-command. They pulled into the quad with their three trucks to find another outfit already moved into the barracks and the footlockers and wall lockers of G company thoroughly rifled. Their lists were useless. Peter Karelsen, again, had been practically the only man in the Company who had bothered to lock either his foot-locker or wall locker that Sunday morning. But even Pete’s extra set of false teeth, which had been out on the table, were gone.
And, of course, none of the new tenants they talked to knew a damn thing about it.
Warden’s records and player were gone, also his $120 Brooks Bros. suit, saddle-stitched Forstmann jacket, and the white dinner jacket and tux pants he had bought but never worn yet, together with all of his uniforms. Also, the brand new $260 electric guitar, still less than half paid for, that Andy and Friday had bought while Prew was in the Stockade, was gone too, speaker jackplug and all.
If it had not been for 1st/Sgt Dedrick of A Company, who was about his size and had remembered to lock his wall locker, he would not have even been able to scare up two whole field uniforms. Just about the only thing that had been left untouched were the folded pyramidal tents in the supply room.
By the end of the seventh day, when they had got the tents back downtown and distributed out to the positions and set up ready to occupy, every man on the Company roster—including the two men serving time in the Stockade who had been released with the rest of the prisoners—had shown up and reported for duty. With the single exception of Prewitt.
Chapter 51
PREWITT SLEPT THROUGH the entire attack. He had gotten even drunker than usual the night before while the girls were at work because Saturday night is always supposed to be holiday. He did not even find out there had been an attack, until the insistently dynamic voice from the radio talking on and on tensely finally beat a hole through the thick, very dry, dehydrated hangover in his mouth that, even while still asleep, he knew was there and did not want to wake up to.
He sat up on the divan in his shorts, (since he had moved out on the divan he had taken to sleeping in shorts for the sake of modesty,) and saw them both crouching before the radio in their dressing gowns tensely.
“I was just going to call you!” Alma said excitedly.
“Call me for what?” The strongest thought in the dry eye-ache that was his mind was to head immediately to the kitchen for water.
“. . . but the damage inflicted upon Pearl Harbor itself was by far the most serious,” the radio said. “Hardly a building appears to be left standing undamaged. At least one of the battleships that were resting in harbor is sunk to the shallow bottom with its superstructure awash in the still flaming oil-covered waters. Most of the high altitude bombers were concentrated there and upon Hickam Field right across the channel. Next to Pearl Harbor itself, Hickam Field appears to have suffered the worst damage.”
“Its Webley Edwards,” Georgette said.
“He’s broadcasting back to the Mainland,” Alma said.
“Either a very large bomb, or else a torpedo,” the radio said, “was dropped into the main messhall of the new Hickam Field barracks where four hundred of our unsuspecting airmen were seated at breakfast.”
Prew knew what it was by this time, but he was having a very hard time getting it through the mud of his head. He could not get it out of his head that it was the Germans; even later
on after he had learned it was the Japs, he still could not get it out of his head that it had been the Germans. They must have developed some totally new kind of bomber, that would be able to fly that far nonstop, even with a base on the east coast of Asia. Because they never could have gotten a carrier task force out into the Pacific past the British navy. What a hell of a time to be caught short with a hangover! Water would never help a hangover like this; the only thing would help a hangover like this was a couple of stiff drinks, and even that wouldn’t be quick enough.
“Wheres my pants?” he said, getting up in his shorts. A violent throb passed through his head like a concussion, and he headed across the room toward them and the bar in the top of the radio.
“They’re right there on the chair,” Alma said. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“No, not those. My uniform pants,” he said, opening the bar over their heads and pouring a stiff shot of scotch into one of the long-stemmed cocktail glasses. “I’ve got a uniform around here someplace. Where is it?”
He downed the shot, shuddering; but he could tell it was going to help.
“What are you going to do!” Alma demanded, inarticulately wildly. “What are you doing!”
“Going to put enough liquor in me so I can see past this hangover and then get the hell back to the Post. What the hell do you think?” he said, pouring another one and downing it.
“There is no denying that our Navy has suffered a great defeat,” the radio said. “Perhaps the greatest defeat in its history. It would . . .”
“But you cant do that!” Alma said frantically. “You cant go back!”
“Why the hell cant I? You nuts?”
“. . . but through it all,” the radio said, “through the hours of darkness and ignoble defeat, there remains a great shining light that shall forever be an example to all Americans: . . .”
“Because they’re still looking for you!” Alma said hysterically. “For a murder rap! You dont think they’ll dismiss a murder rap against you! Even on account of two wars.”
He had already poured the third drink, and his head was clearing some. The warm electric glow of the nerve-ends was beginning to dry out the sodden cells. He went on and downed the drink anyway.
“I forgotten all about that,” he said.
“. . . and that is the courage and heroism of our fighting men,” the radio said, “who, in the face of death and overwhelming odds, caught by surprise and without adequate equipage, stuck to their guns and fought back valiantly with all the greatness of spirit that has always been the hallmark of the United States Army and Navy.”
“Is he talking about the US Army and Navy?” Georgette grinned to nobody in particular.
“Well, you better remember it,” Alma said, a little more calmly. “If you go back now, they’ll only throw you in the Stockade, and then try you for murder. War or no war. That wont be helping to win the war any.”
Still holding the bottle in one hand and the glass in the other, he sat down on the footstool between them in front of the radio, looking like he had been rabbit-punched by a judo man.
“I forgotten all about that,” he said dully. “Clean forgotten all about it.”
“Well, you better think about it,” Alma said.
“By their quiet heroism under fire,” the radio said, “their devotion to duty no matter how trivial, and their silent uncomplaining bravery as they lie wounded and dying—even now, as I speak these words to you—in the hospitals and dressing stations, they are setting an example of faith and service and stoic heroism that we civilians here in Hawaii who have witnessed it will remember for a long long time. They are creating a legend, these men, these boys—and most of them are just that: boys—a legend of Democracy that will for long and long remain unequalled and unsurpassed, and that will strike fear into the hearts of the enemies of freedom.”
“By God!” Georgette exclaimed suddenly and excitedly, “the yellow little bastards’ll learn they cant do that to us and get by with it.”
“I was asleep,” Prew said dully. “I dint even wake up.”
“Neither did we,” Georgette said excitedly. “We didnt even know about it. I just happened to turn the radio on.”
“And I was asleep,” Prew said. “Sound asleep.” He poured another drink from the bottle in his left hand into the glass in his right hand and swallowed it off. His head was completely clear now; his head was clear as a bell.
“Those goddam fuckin Germans!” he said.
“What Germans?” Georgette said.
“Them,” he said, pointing with the glass to the radio.
“I have stood in the wards of Tripler General, the Army’s new modern hospital here,” the radio said, “and watched them bringing them in, some in full uniform, some in their underwear, some in nothing at all, all of them horribly wounded, horribly burned.”
“What about Schofield?” Prew demanded rigidly. “What did he say about Schofield?”
“Nothing,” Georgette said. “Aint even mentioned it. Wheeler Field was bombed, and Bellows Field, and the Kaneohe Naval Air Base, and the Marine Base at Ewa. And Hickam and Pearl Harbor; they got the worst.”
“But what about Schofield?” Prew said. “What about Schofield, goddam it?”
“He hasnt even mentioned it, Prew,” Alma said soothingly.
“Not a tall?”
“She told you no,” Alma said.
“Then they must not of bombed it,” he said relievedly. “He would of mentioned it. They probly only strafed it a little. Thats what they would do,” he said. “They would be after the airfields. Thats what they’d be after. Of course they wouldnt bomb Schofield.”
“Tripler General is a large hospital,” the radio said, “equipped with every convenience and every modern device of medical science, but it was not designed to handle such an inconceivable catastrophe as this. There is not room for even a small percentage of the casualties I saw brought in, some of them already dead and dying on their improvised stretchers in the halls and corridors simply because there was neither the room nor the trained personnel to take care of their numbers. Yet nowhere in the whole hospital was there so much as a single whimper of pain, a single complaint. Here and there some terribly mangled lad of nineteen or twenty, his hair and eyebrows and lashes burned completely off, would say to the doctors when they got to him: ‘Take care of my buddy here first, Doc; he’s hurt lots worse than I am.’ But all else was silence. An accusative silence. An angry silence.”
“The dirty bastards,” Prew said dully. He was weeping. “Oh, the dirty bastards. Those motherfucking babyraping dirty German bastards.” He reached up with the hand holding the bottle and wiped off his nose with the back of his hand and poured another drink from the bottle into the glass.
“It was the Japs,” Georgette said. “The Japs. The dirty yellow-bellied little Japs. They sneaked in without warning and made a cowardly attack while their decoys was still in Washington crying peace.”
“It has been,” the radio said, “a tremendously uplifting spiritual experience to me, to see the manliness with which these boys are enduring their sufferings, it has richened and deepened my faith in a form of government that can produce heroes like these, not in tens and twenties, but in hundreds and thousands, and I only wish I could have taken every American citizen into the wards of Tripler General with me, to see what I have seen.”
“Is that Webley Edwards?” Prew said, weeping.
“We think so,” Alma said.
“It must be,” Georgette said. “It sounds like him.”
“Well, he’s a great guy,” Prew said. He gulped down his drink and refilled the glass. “A great guy, thats all.”
“You’d better lay off that liquor a little,” Alma said uneasily. “Its still early yet.”
“Early?” Prew said. “Early! Oh, those dirty bastardly Germans. What the hell difference,” he hollered, and paused, “does it make? If I get drunk. I cant go back, can I? What the he’ll difference, I’d
like to know? Lets all get drunk.
“Oh,” he said. “Oh, goddam them, goddam them.”
“The total extent of the damage,” the radio said, “is of course entirely unknown at the present time, and will probably be unknown for some time. Because an emergency exists, and to facilitate coordination and cooperation of all agencies, General Short has declared the Territory to be under Martial Law.”
“I’ll tell you something,” Prew wept, pouring another drink, “there aint no murder rap against me.”
“There isnt?” Alma said.
“There aint no murder rap against anybody. Warden told me, and he wouldnt lie.”
“Then you can go back,” Alma said. “But,” she said, “if you went back wouldnt they still put you in the Stockade for being AWOL?”
“Thats just it!” he said. “Now I cant go back anyway. Because I wont go back to no Stockade, see? If I went back, I’d get at least a Summary, and maybe a Special. But they’ll never send me back to that Stockade. Never! See?”
“If only you could go back without going to the Stockade,” Alma said. “But you cant. And you wouldnt help the war any in the Stockade.”
She put her hand on his arm.
“Please lay off the liquor, Prew. Let me have the bottle.”
“Git away from me!” he said, jerking his arm loose. “I’ll knock you on your goddam ass. Git away! and stay away! from me. Lee me alone.” He poured himself another cocktail glass full of whiskey and looked at her belligerently.