Nor was my squad troubled by racial or religious bigotry. We had no “inner conflict,” as the phrase goes. These things happen most often in the imagination of men who never fought. Only rear echelons with plenty of fat on them can afford such rich diseases, like an epicure with his gout.
We could not stand dissension, and we sank all differences in a common dislike for officers and for discipline; and later on, for the twin enemies of the Pacific, the jungle and the Jap.
The squad, as the sociological sample, squirming under the modern novelist’s microscope or pinioned on his pencil, is unreal. It is cold. It is without spirit. It has no relation to the squads I knew, each as gloriously different from the other as the men themselves were separate and alone.
Lew Juergens (“Chuckler”)
2
Sergeant Thinface took over our platoon. Lieutenant Ivy-League, our platoon leader, would join us a few days later. But, for the present, Thinface was in charge. He could not have been much older than I—perhaps a few months—but he had been in the Marines for three years. That made him ages my senior.
“All right, here it is,” he told us. He brushed back his lank blond hair quickly. His thin boy’s face was screwed up earnestly, as it always was when he was giving the troops the straight. “Here it is. We’re moving out to the boondocks. Enlisted men”—how N.C.O.’s love that phrase—“enlisted men will fall out tomorrow morning in full marching gear. Sea bags will be locked and left in the huts. Check your mess gear. Be sure your shelter half is okay. You better have the right amount of tent pegs or it’ll be your ass.
“All liberty is canceled.”
We grumbled and returned to our huts. We fell to assembling our packs. And then, for the first time, the officers began to amuse themselves at playing-with-soldiers. Every hour, it seemed, Sergeant Thinface burst in on us with a new order, now confirming, now contradicting his earlier marching instructions.
“C.O. says no tent pegs.”
“Battalion says to take your sea bags.”
“Belay that—get those tent pegs in your shelter halves.”
Only the Hoosier, who had the born private’s calm contempt for officers, refused to join the general confusion. Each time the harried Thinface came panting in with a fresh order, Hoosier arose from his cot and listened to him with grave concern. But when Thinface disappeared, he shrugged and returned to his cot to sit there, smoking, surveying us with a superior look.
“Hoosier,” I said. “Aren’t you going to pack?”
“I got my stuff out,” he said, pointing to an array of socks, shorts, shaving cream and other impedimenta. “Aren’t you going to pack it?”
“Hell, no, Lucky! I’ll pack it in the morning—soon’s they make their silly minds up.”
Chuckler’s husky voice cut it, that quality of mirth softening the rebuke.
“You’d better. They’ll have an inspection and it’ll be your ass. They’ll throw you so far back in the brig, they’ll have to feed you with a slingshot.”
Hoosier snorted derisively, lapsing into a wide-mouthed grin. All afternoon he watched us, smoking, pulling away at two cans of warm beer he had secreted the night before, certain all the while he would be proven right.
He was. We put and took incessantly, veering like weather vanes in the shifting wind of orders blowing down from officer’s country. But Hoosier was right. In the morning the final order came from the battalion commander. He had abstained from playing soldier. But when his order came through it was like none of the others, because it was official.
We tore our packs down, reassembled them, and then swung the whole bulky business onto our backs.
I do not recall how much the marching order weighed. Maybe twenty pounds. Even in this, men are so different. I carried the barest minimum, exactly what the colonel prescribed. But a man concerned for cleanliness might slip in a few extra bars of soap or carry a bottle of hair oil; another might cache two cans of beans in the bottom of his pack; a third could not bear to come away without a bundle of letters from home.
A soldier’s pack is like a woman’s purse: it is filled with his personality. I have saddened to see the mementos in the packs of dead Japanese. They had strong family ties, these smooth-faced men, and their packs were full of their families.
We fell in in front of the huts. The packs had a warm comfortable heavy feeling.
“Forrr-ward—harch! Route step—harch!” Off we went to the boondocks.
Perhaps we walked ten miles; not much by the standards of veterans, but it was a great distance then. The route was through the pine woods, over a dirt road barely wide enough to admit a jeep. A whole battalion was on the march, and my poor squad was tucked away somewhere at center or center rear. Clouds of red dust settled upon us. My helmet banged irritably against the machine gun that was boring into my shoulder, or else it was bumped forward maddeningly over my eyes by the movement of my pack. A mile or so out, I dared not drink any more from my canteen. I had no idea how far we had to go. My dungarees were saturated with sweat, their light green darkened by perspiration. There had been joking and even some singing the first mile out. Now, only the birds sang; but from us there was just the thud of feet, the clank of canteens, the creak of leather rifle slings, the occasional hoarse cracking of a voice raised and breath wasted in a curse.
Every hour we got a ten-minute break. We lay propped against the road bank, resting against our packs. Each time, I reached under my pack straps to massage the soreness of my shoulders where the straps had cut. We would smoke. My mouth was dusty dry, my tongue swollen. I would moisten them with a swig of precious water, and then, stupidly, dry the whole thing out again, instantly, with a mouthful of smoke. But it was blissful lying there against the road bank, with all the pain and strain and soreness gone—or at least suspended—and our nostrils filled with the mistaken pleasures of tobacco.
Then came the command: “Off and on!”
It means off your behind and on your feet. Cursing, hating both command and commandant, straining, we rose to our feet and began again the dull plodding rhythm of the march.
This was how we came to where the Higgins Boats were waiting for us. It was where the road arrived at one of those canals which interlace this part of North Carolina and are part of the Inland Waterway System. It was like a live thing, this watery labyrinth, curving and darting through the pine wood, seeming to cavort on its way to the sea.
We climbed stiffly into the boats, sitting with our heads just above the gunwales, our helmets between our knees.
Hardly had our boat begun to move than the man on my left threw up. He was Junior, a slender, timid kid, much too shy for the Marines. Junior was from Upstate New York and was no sailor: leeward or windward were all one to him. He vomited to windward. It came back upon us in a stringy spray, unclean, stinking. Curses beat upon Junior’s head unmatched in volume even by the thin cry of the gulls wheeling overhead.
“Cain’t you use your helmet,” Hoosier growled. “Cripes, Junior. What do you think it’s fer?”
By this time others were sick and were making full use of their helmets. Poor Junior smiled his timid smile of appeal, obviously glad that he was not the only culprit. By the time we had reached the sea and were wallowing offshore in the deep troughs of the surf, half of the boat had become sick, to the immense glee of the boatswain.
Endlessly, with the finality of judgment, the boat lifted and dropped; the desolate ocean swelled and subsided; and above it all stood the boatswain behind his wheel, compassionate as a snake, obviously rehearsing the gleeful tale with which he would regale his swab-jockey buddies—of how the stuck-up marines survived their first ordeal with the great salt sea.
We were circling, I know now, while awaiting word to head shoreward in what was to be our first amphibious maneuver. When it came, our boat’s motor roared into full voice. The prow seemed to dig into the water and the boat to flatten out. Mercifully, the rocking motion was abated.
“Down!”
The boats fanned out into assault line. We roared shoreward. The spray settled coolly on my face. There was nothing but the sound of the motors. There came a rough jolt, followed by the crunching sound of the keel beneath us plowing into the sand. We had landed.
“Up and over!”
I held my rifle high, grasped the gunwale with the other hand, and vaulted into the surf. I landed in cold water just above my calves. But the weight of my pack and weapons brought me almost to my knees. I was soaked. Weighted now by water as well as gear, we pelted up the beach.
“Hit the deck!”
We did. When we arose, after working our weapons against an imaginary defender, the sand clung to us like flour to a fillet.
The sweat of the march already had enflamed the moving parts of the flesh; the salt of the sea was into it, burning, boring; now to this was added the ubiquitous sand. The order came to fall in and to march off to our new camp, about a mile farther on, and as we did, the pain was excruciating. Each step, each thoughtless swing of the arm, seemed to draw a ragged blade across crotch and armpits.
When we had hobbled the distance, we came to a thick pine wood. On one side of the road the secondary growth had been cleaned out, and there the wood was more of a glade. In it were erected three pyramidal tents—one for the galley, another for sick bay, a third for the company commander. They fell us out here and told us this was our camp.
A cold rain had begun to fall as the compound began to be divided and subdivided into platoon and squad areas. Pup tents began to appear—not in careful, precise rows as in the old days, but carefully staggered à la the new passion for camouflage.
Exhausted as we might have been, suffering from the irritations of the march and the sea, hungry, shivering now in this cold rain—the business of setting up camp should have been a grim and cheerless affair. But it was not. We did not even curse the officers. Suddenly the thing became exciting, and the heat of the excitement was far too much for cold rain or empty stomachs or aching bones.
Soon we were limping about in search of pine needles to place beneath our blankets.
What a bed! Dark green blanket above, another below, and beneath it all the pliant pungent earth and fragrant pine needles.
As I say, we hurried about, and soon the glade resounded to our calls, the shouting back and forth and the good-natured swearing at the clumsy ones who could not then, or ever, erect a pup tent. And the rain—that baleful, wet intruder—perhaps confused at being the only mournful one among our carefree company, alternated between a drizzle, a drip and a downpour.
When we had ditched our tents—that is, dug a trough around them so that the ground within the tent would remain dry—we heard the call for chow. The food was hot, as was the coffee, and men living in the open demand no more. It had grown late, and it was in darkness that we finished our meal and washed our metal mess gear.
Returning to our company, we came through F Company’s area, tripping over pegs, lurching against tents and provoking howls of wrath from the riflemen within.
Penetrating references were made to machine gunners, and there were lucid descriptions of the lineage from which all gunners sprang. But such maledictions, though there is about them a certain grand vulgarity, are unprintable.
So ended—in rain, in darkness, in a volley of oaths—our first day in the field. We had qualified for the ranks of the gloriously raggedy-assed.
Next day I met Runner. He had been in Hoosier’s squad for the past few days, a late arrival, but I had not encountered him. He was coming away from Chuckler’s tent, laughing, tossing a wisecrack over his shoulder, and we bumped into each other. He almost knocked me over, moving with that brisk powerful walk. That was the thing about Runner: those strong, phenomenally developed legs. He had been a sprint man in prep school—a good one, as I learned later—and the practice had left its mark in those bulging calves.
Runner fitted us like a glove. His admiration for Chuckler was akin to hero worship. But Chuckler had the strength to prevent that without offending the Runner, and I suspect that he took a human delight in the adulation of the dark-haired boy from Buffalo, who spoke so knowingly of formal dances and automobiles, a world quite apart from Chuckler’s Louisville rough-and-tumble.
As friendship became firmer among us four, it became clear that Chuckler’s word was going to carry the most weight, simply because he could rely on Runner’s support.
So Chuckler became the leader, a fact which neither Hoosier nor I ever admitted and which Runner indicated only by his deference to him.
It is odd, is it not, that there should have been need of a leader? But there was. Two men do not need a leader, I suppose; but three do, and four most certainly, else who will settle arguments, plan forays, suggest the place or form of amusement, and generally keep the peace?
This was the beginning of our good times here in the boondocks. We slept on the ground and had but a length of canvas for a home, but we had begun to pride ourselves on being able to take it. Under such conditions, it was natural that the good times should be uproarious and, often, violent.
A day’s training could not tire such young spirits or bodies. If there were no night exercises, or company guard, we were free from after chow until reveille. Sometimes we would gather around a fire, burning pine knots and drinking from a bottle of corn liquor bought from local moonshiners. The pine knots burned with a fragrant brilliance, as did the white lightning in our bellies.
Wilber “Bud” Conley (“Runner”)
We would sing or wrestle around the fire. There would be other fires; and sometimes rival singing contests, which soon degenerated into shouting matches, developed. Occasionally a luckless possum would blunder into the circle, and there would arise a floundering and a yelling followed by a frantic shucking of shoes, with which life was pounded out of the poor little animal. Then the men who loved to sharpen their blades would whip out these razor bayonets and skin the beast. Its tiny, greasy carcass would be consigned to the flames, and a pitiful few mouths it was that ever got to taste of the poor thing.
At other times, Hoosier and Chuckler and Runner and I would gather after chow and walk the two miles from camp to the highway, the sound of our going muffled by the thick dust underfoot; sometimes silent in that violet night with the soft pine wood at either side; sometimes boisterous, dancing in the dust, leaping upon one another, shouting for the sake of hearing our voices flung back by the hollow darkness; sometimes sober, smoking, talking in low voices of things at home and of when or where we would ever get into action.
The highway was a midway. It was lined with honky-tonks. To reach it was to sight a new world: one moment the soft dark and the smell of the wood, our shoes padding in the dust; in the next, cars and military vehicles hurtling down the cement strip, the crude shacks with their bare electric bulbs shining unashamed, their rough joints plastered with Coca-Cola and cigarette ads.
There were no girls, though. Sex was farther up the road, in Morehead City and New Bern. Here it was drinking and fighting. There was a U.S.O. at Greenville, but marines from the boondocks, clad in their dungarees, rarely went there except at the risk of being picked up by the M.P.’s for being out of uniform. Chuckler and I chanced it, once, and were rewarded with delicious hamburgers.
The Green Lantern became my battalion’s hangout, probably because it stood closest to us on that garish highway, on the corner where the dirt road met the concrete and seemed to slip beneath it. It had the attraction that banks advertise, conveniently located.
Fights were common in The Green Lantern. They were always just ending or just beginning or just brewing no matter when you arrived. Every morning at sick call the evidence was plain: gentian violet daubed with a sort of admiring liberality over bruised cheekbones and torn knuckles.
We had our first adventure in another of the shacks. It was on a weekend and we were in full uniform, having come back to the huts and been given a rare liberty. The four of us were en route to Morehead City
at night and drinking along the way. We hitchhiked because we could not afford the exorbitant taxi fares. But we tired of fruitlessly thumbing for rides and frequently crossed the road into the shacks. In one, when we had discovered our money was getting low, I proposed stealing a case of beer. The cases were stacked up at the back of the room in full view.
“You’re nuts,” Chuckler growled in a low voice. “You’ll never make it. He can see every move you make.”
I persisted. “No. We’ll go to the head—it’s right near the beer. The door opens inward. We’ll crawl out and work one of the cases loose. He can’t see over the counter. We’ll push it right under his nose, and when we get near the door—we’ll just jump up and run for it.”
Chuckler grinned. “Okay.”
It was smooth. We worked a case free, and, worming on our bellies, silently conveyed it to the door beneath the very nose of the proprietor. We were as two caterpillars connected by the case of beer, a sort of copula. Only the endurance of the boondocks enabled us to hold that bulky, heavy case a few inches from the floor, so that it would emit no telltale scraping while we squirmed doorward.
When we had arrived there, we got our knees under us, secured the case between us, came halfway erect and shot through the open door like Siamese twins.
It was exhilarating. The night air was like a buoyant tonic as we streaked for the highway, then across it impervious to the breakneck traffic streaming up and down. On the other side, we dropped the case on the shoulder of the road and rolled down the bank, laughing, whooping gleefully, half hysterical. We would all be six bottles of beer richer, and the night seemed to stretch out in time.
Chuckler crawled back up to the road, while I remained to relieve myself. When I returned I saw he was not alone. A man was with him, and he spoke to me as I approached.
“Take that damn case back,” he said. It was the proprietor.
Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific Page 4