Worm said, “Ain’t this a goddamn shame? And the man has the nerve to call us lucky—”
Solly said, “You’re the luckiest bastards in the world.” He was melting with perspiration and itching all over and imagined every bug on the island crawling underneath his clothes, up his legs in between his legs on his neck in his armpits—crawling crawling.
Worm said, “Thank you, Cap’n Charlie. I reckin we lucky you let us live, white folks.”
Solly said, “Colored folks’re the most ungrateful people the world has ever known. You’re probably the first outfit in the war to come ten thousand miles over the biggest ocean in the world, through enemy waters completely unescorted, but you didn’t get sunk to the bottom of the deep blue sea, and if that ain’t luck I don’t know the meaning of the word. And when you get over here you’re not expected, nobody sent for you, nevertheless, the man at Quartermaster is kind enough to give you lodging for the night. But you are never satisfied.”
Worm stared at Solly unbelievingly, and Solly started to laugh and swallowed four or five mosquitoes. He tried to spit them out and clapped his hands in front of his face and each time must have killed a dozen of them, but it made no dent in the population. His hand was red with mosquito blood and he felt like vomiting.
Worm lay on his cot and stared at the stars. Some of the men were telling jokes, some were playing the dozens. All of them were killing mosquitoes. Millions of them.
Worm said, “Why in the hell didn’t we get off the ship when we first got here? At least we’d been able to set up light housekeeping before night came.”
Solly said, “The man didn’t want you to disembark in the heat of the day. He waited till the cool of the evening. Looking out for your comfort all the time.”
Worm said, “You know what you can do for me in the cool of the mother-loving evening.”
Hopjack was loud-talking to a group of the men about how it was going to be when the lights went on again—all over the world. “Man,” he said, “I’m just waiting for the day this shit is over. I want to be one in that number in my full-dress uniform marching down Fifth Avenue with that white shit falling from them windows. Me and General Grant gon do ourself some strutting. We gon step higher than a mama-jabber.” He threw back his head and marched a few proud spry steps toward the noisy jungle. The men looked at him as if they didn’t believe it. Grant stared at him and shook his angry head. Solly thought, when I get back home I’m going to come into the house pulling off my uniform and never put it on again.
He heard Worm snoring on the cot next to him and he almost fell asleep himself despite the anger and the itching and the active perspiration, when suddenly the black emerald sky seemed to move in over them and lower the ceiling and black out the stars, and everything seemed to be holding its breath, even in the noisy jungle. Then Solly heard a deep rumbling building up somewhere on the island, culminating in an explosion that shook the island, and then another and then another and flash after flash of fiery comets racing madly across the lowered sky, and then the sky erupted and overflowed and emptied cascade after cascade onto this lonely South Sea island, as if it would wash it into the Coral Sea. Some of the men got up and started running through the rain toward the great trees in the jungle. A sharp flash of lightning streaked across the edge of the jungle, followed immediately by the loudest clap of thunder that ever thundered and one of the palm trees broke in two and coconuts fell as if the sky was raining them, and giant fruit bats (flying foxes) flying every which way. The men did a speedy “to the rear march” and sloshed quietly back to their cots.
Solly sat up on the side of his cot. Through it all, Bookworm remained where he was, drenched to the skin and lying on his cot with the back of his head in the palms of his hands. The harder it rained the louder he sang.
“We’re special men . . .
Am-phib-bi-ens.
We’re special men . . .
Am-phib-bi-ens.”
For almost an hour the black sky wept its bitter tears and suddenly dried them up again.
The next morning they took axes and buzz saws and machetes and sweat and elbow grease and moved the jungle back about fifty feet. The jungle residents gave ground before the onslaught of civilization—pythons, rats, dog-sized lizards, scurrying crawling flying screeching. The sleeping flying foxes hanging head down from the fruit trees. They were miserable-looking creatures, biggest bats in all the world, with a wing span of five to seven feet. Their faces looked like shrunken bears, and they were irritable and vicious when you disturbed them in the daytime. An apple-cheeked boy of the Third Platoon stood next to Solly, head-high in grass and bamboo, swinging his machete, when suddenly he fell as if chopped down by his own machete. Solly thought him victim of sunstroke, but when he died six hours later, the official rumor was typhus, infected by a rat flea. A couple of men were felled by sunstroke and one from a falling coconut. But nevertheless they beat back the jungle and its inhabitants, but where in the hell was World War II? And where were the Ducks for the Special men? The men were assigned to the waterfront, unloading ships, doing labor-battalion work.
The third evening he was summoned to the captain’s tent for a conference with Rutherford and Lieutenant Samuels. Rutherford stood up nervously and sat back down. “Here we are over here in the combat zone, and the Army wants us to have orientation courses. It seems they’re worried we don’t know how come we’re over here.”
Samuels said, “They might have something there, Captain.”
And Solly wondered, why was I invited to this tête-à-tête?
Rutherford stood up again and sat back down. “Well, I think it’s a waste of time, but orders are orders. It seems the base commander is specially worried about colored soldiers understanding why they fight. I told them over at base headquarters, the Negro was the most loyal American of them all. Am I right or wrong, Saunders?”
Solly said, “Yes, sir.” He couldn’t believe the man was joking at a time like this. Yet how could he be serious?
The captain said, “Well, we got to do it anyhow, and I’m putting you in charge of Information and Education, Lieutenant Samuels, and you’ll be the non-com-in-charge, Sergeant Saunders. Y’all can work it out between you.”
Solly answered without thinking, “No, sir—I mean I’d rather not, sir. I really would.” The sticky heat, the mosquitoes, the crawling sweat, the fire burning in his stomach. And please don’t call me Sergeant Saunders.
The captain said, “What’s the matter, Saunders? All you have to do is to read this War Department propaganda and help Lieutenant Samuels break it down for the men.” His face was flushed with heat and anger and yellowish from atabrine. He picked up pamphlets on his table. “‘Map Talk’—’Our Heroic Allies’—’Racial Prejudices, the Roadblock to Progress’—and ‘After We Win the War, Can We Also Win the Peace?’ I thought you would go for this kind of crap. What’s the matter?”
Solly said, “Sir, I’m very busy getting the company records straight and helping the supply sergeant and—and like you say, why waste time on a lot of crap? I mean—”
The captain slapped the table and waved his arms. “That’s your goddamn trouble, Saunders. You—you think you’ve got more sense than all the men who run this Army put together. You’re too goddamn biggedy!”
Solly said, “But, sir, you’re the one who called it crap. I’m just agreeing with you.”
The captain’s high voice trembling now. “Saunders, I could have you up for insubordination. Don’t push me too far. Don’t depend too much on my good nature. The stockades over here are not like those Stateside.”
“But, sir, you yourself said it was War Department crap. You yourself said there was no need for it, the Negro troops are the most loyal, you said—” He was playing with hand grenades that might go off in his face, but he felt a curious kind of satisfaction.
The captain said in a tired voice, “They are having a little trouble ever now and then over here with one or two agitators like you, go
ddammit, and we’re not going to tolerate it in 913, and that’s why we want you and the lieutenant to tell the men about patriotism and peace and freedom and stuff like that.”
“Sir, I—”
Samuels said, “The morale of the men is primary, especially in the combat zone, and Corporal Saunders is the non-com for the job. No question about it.”
Solly thought, yes, the men’s morale is primary, but let somebody else explain it to them. Let Samuels find that MP colonel from Ebbensville and let them run the class together. I just want to do a job and get it over with and go home and forget it.
The captain said, “I don’t have to ask you, Saunders, you know that. I can order you, and break you if you refuse, but it’s a job you got to believe in or you’ll mess it up, and I’m giving you one more chance to consider. You’ll have a few additional duties and you’ll get a T-4 rating. Now what’s your answer? You gon be a private or a sergeant?”
Deep where his guts lived he wanted to say, Let me be a private—let me be a private! Let you and Samuels Bee-Ess the men about the Democratic War. But there was the other thing in him that wanted to be a sergeant and wanted to believe that the war time was not a total loss and that the War Department crap was not crap at all, but the truest meaning of the war. He had to hold on to something or go crazy in the jungle heat. When he spoke he hardly heard himself. “When do we have the first session, sir?”
“Friday.” Solly heard the triumph in the captain’s voice. “And you’ll get your promotion tomorrow.”
“May I have the material, sir, to look it over?” It had nothing to do with alternatives of promotion-or-demotion, he told himself, although that was part of it. And why not, goddammit, why not? The war was a great game and everybody with any sense was trying to run as far and as fast as he could until the game was over. And maybe if you shouted the slogans of the war loud enough and often enough, maybe it would help to make them come true. Maybe this was one of the ways to make sure to win the peace. Horseshit, Solly Saunders.
He hardly knew when the captain put his hand on his shoulder and handed him the material and left Samuels and him in the orderly room.
Samuels said, “We heard at headquarters today about a Negro outfit with Southern officers. They were in the first wave of a recent invasion and carried the fighting into the jungle, and when they stopped to count the cost, all of their white officers had been mysteriously killed, and even including their colored first sergeant.”
Solly looked up at Samuels and started to laugh. “That was just to show that they weren’t prejudiced. The Topkick must’ve been a white folks’ colored man.” He laughed and laughed till his stomach hurt, as Samuels stood there with his tan face turning red.
That Friday afternoon they had their first session. The topic was “Racial Prejudice, the Roadblock to Progress.” The men listened to Samuels and Solly politely, but during the question period they tended to stray away from the topic. They wanted to know where were the Ducks, and how come they were brought way over here to do labor-battalion work at the waterfront. They were an evil angry unreasonable bunch, and Sergeant Saunders felt like a fool, and Worm and Scotty were among the foremost agitators.
But even Worm agreed and shook his big face up and down when Solly argued that there was nothing wrong with the War Department propaganda. The thing was, it was never put into practice.
“This is good stuff. This is how our country has never been, but this is how we want it to be. If we can use their propaganda to make things better for us—now—and after the war is over, what’s wrong with that?”
Worm shouted from the Amen Corner: “Ain’t nothing wrong with that.”
Solly said, “We can say, ‘Here it is in black and white—in your own words. Now let us practice what we preach!”
Worm said, “Ain’t nothing wrong with that.”
Later, after the session Buck Rogers said it was Communist propaganda. “I oughta know. I used to write that crap when I was president of the Young Stinkers League in Harlem.”
Worm said, “You still stink.”
Rogers said, “Watch that shit!”
Worm said, “I’m tired of looking at you.”
Scotty said, “And I’m tired of that goddamn labor battalion.”
That evening Hopjack strutted down the company street dressed to kill and sharp as a tack, going to play checkers with Grant in the mess tent. “Let me at ‘em! Let me at ‘em! Bring me way over here in the middle of nowhere to tote dat barge and lift dat bale. I’d ruther kick a Jap in the ass than go home on rotation!”
Somebody from one of the tents yelled, “Hopjack!” And he cut a quick fancy step and shouted, “Scat! Scat! Let me at them squeenchy-eyed mama-hunchers!”
But there were no Japanese to fight, there were no Ducks for the Special men; there was only the labor battalion at the waterfront. Tote dat barge and lift dat bale.
The next day a bulletin came across the captain’s desk from the base Red Cross. Without reading it, Rutherford passed it onto Samuels, who read it and passed it on to Solly. It was an invitation to the enlisted men on the base (five to be selected from each Company) to attend a party at the Red Cross Recreation Center. Thirty beauties of the USO had come all the way from the U.S.A. the day before and would be present and hostessing and boosting the GI morale.
Solly asked his buddy, “How am I going to pick five men for such a detail?”
“I’ll show you at supper,” the lieutenant said.
In the middle of supper Samuels stood up from the officers’ table and got the men’s attention. “I want four volunteers for a special detail tonight.”
Some of the men stared quietly at their plates; some looked sideways to see if any other poor fool would bite; some cleared their throats significantly and bit into the bully beef. But nobody bit. Not even eager-beaver Sergeant Rogers.
The lieutenant said, “I don’t think you men understood me clearly. I said Sergeant Saunders needs four volunteers for special duty and not a single soldier stood up.” He paused and looked from soldier to soldier. This time in addition to cleared throats and side glances and plate-staring, he got some significant moving of feet beneath the tables. Samuels said, “You men would sit there with your bare faces hanging out and suffer a soldier like Sergeant Saunders to go on a dangerous mission like this all by himself?”
There were uneasy looks on some of their faces now, and guilt and perspiration, as Worm got slowly to his feet, and then Lanky Lincoln, then Scotty, then the Quiet Man. Others started slowly to rise, but the lieutenant said, “Good enough. We have all that’s necessary. Now, Sergeant Saunders, you read the orders.” Solly got up and read the orders and the men who were standing laughed out loud, and most of the rest of them looked like they had been taking too many atabrine pills.
That night the five volunteers bathed in a creek near their camp and got GI-sharp and went with flashlights into the humid South Pacific night for about a mile and a half over a snakelike path through the noisy scary jungle. And with all the other noises, the particular screech of the flying foxes as they swooped down out of the fruit trees and hedgehopped along the flash-lighted path like P-38’s night-fighting, and the five special men ducked their heads so many times their necks got sore.
The Red Cross Recreation Center was lit up like Broadway with a real live band of colored musicians swinging like crazy “The One O’Clock Jump.” The joint was leaping. The place was jammed with American soldiers with a few Australians dressed in their knee breeches. A gracious wide-smiling American middle-aged Red Cross lady met the Special men at the door. She had every tooth she ever had.
“The party for you boys is down the road about a mile past the gasoline dump and into the woods about a quarter of a mile over near the Quartermaster. You cawnt miss it.”
Solly was numbed. Maybe not even surprised—just numbed. He felt a heat begin in his eyes and spread through his face and down through his shoulders and over his back. He heard Scotty grumbling beh
ind him, “If these mama-jabbers don’t want us over here, why don’t they send us home?” He heard Worm mumble something about the Roadblock to Progress and the Darktown Strutters’ Ball. He heard the colored band playing and saw the white folks balling. Sweat dripped down into his eyes and he could see nothing but the lady’s smiling teeth which were probably false, come to think of it.
He said politely, “There must be some mistake, Miss. This is the party we were invited to.” He took the invitation out of his pocket and handed it toward her.
She looked at it as if it were a snake that would surely bite off her hand. Her beaming face was still benevolent and gracious though. She was a great white lady. “There is a mistake, Sergeant. That’s what I’m trying to explain to you. The colored boys are—”
Worm said, “We are not interested in the Darktown Strutters’ Ball.”
The gracious lady said, “Beg pardon?”
Solly said, “Madam, we are not going over to the Quartermaster. We just arrived on the island a few days ago, and our commanding officer detailed us to spend the next couple of hours right here at this Red Cross Recreation Center. Are you going to supersede his order?” He hated her and her false teeth and her false face and her pretended civility. Hated her for making him come ten thousand miles to fight to come into a crummy crowded funky-smelling joint like this.
The lady took off her smiling mask and motioned to the MPs, and two large-sized handsome plug-uglies came over.
“All right, boys, we don’t want no trouble and we ain’t going to have none.” The big broad dark-haired MP looked like a bouncer at a gangster shindig. “But if you’re looking for it, I figure we can give you more than you can handle.”
And Then We Heard the Thunder Page 32