The Thin Red Line

by James Jones

  Beyond the command post it was less crowded, but the damage was already done. They were too mixed up to be able to reform into any sort of formation without making a long stop. Stein could only curse with frustration and try to keep the sweat off his glasses. He was painfully aware of all the brass that was watching him today. His only consolation was that Able and Baker ahead of him and now crossing the brushy bottom, were in no better shape. Around him his own men moved forward steadily with set, curiously covert faces in which the eyes seemed to be trying to betray no expression which might ever be used against them. The men in front, without having to be yelled at by Stein, veered left after Able and Baker according to instructions. Stein was glad of that.

  One of these men in front was Pfc Doll, who was from the 2d Squad of the 1st Platoon. Doll didn’t know how he happened to be in front and it made him feel nervous and peculiarly exposed, but at the same time he was proud of his position and jealous of it. Whenever someone behind seemed to be narrowing the gap, Doll would quicken his pace for a moment so as to stay the same distance in front. It was he who, remembering Stein’s instructions, began the veering movement after Able and Baker, both of whom had now disappeared in the bottoms. Doll was carrying every bit of armament he had been able to get his hands on. His stolen pistol dangled on his hip fully loaded, cocked and on safety, and on his belt hung two knives now instead of one: his old one from home and the new bowie-type knife he had made from the Jap bayonet. Two grenades hung from his pocket flaps and two more reposed in his side pockets. He had not been able to get in on the Thompsonguns, like Charlie Dale, but he still had hopes of being able to get one later on, perhaps from a casualty. He walked steadily ahead with his stomach tingling very unpleasantly, almost sickly, glancing to left and right to make sure no one behind caught up to him.

  They were receiving very little fire. Now and then a single bullet would strike the ground in amongst them and bury itself or go shrieking off without touching anyone. Nobody could tell whether they were spent ricochets from Hill 209 or deliberately aimed fire. These hurt nobody, but the men blinked and jerked away from them. Every now and then a man would go to ground when one struck near him and commence to crawl until embarrassed by the fact that the others were still up walking.

  As they advanced down into the dry, treeless ravine they were able to see around the angle of The Elephant’s belly. Here G-for-George was having another go at the right side of Hill 209. Like Fox on the left they had set up a CP and base of fire on a lower subsidiary ridge and were now plugging away at the main crest with their mortars and machineguns, while receiving heavy mortar fire from the hill in return. Under cover of their fire two platoons of George were creeping close to the crest past the huddled bodies of their former attempts. C-for-Charlie slowed down to watch, then stopped entirely as the two platoons leaped up, their tiny black bayonets visible on their rifles against the dun hillside, and rushed the crest. This time they went almost all the way. And a few of the men in front, perhaps a half dozen, actually got in among the Japanese who rose to meet them bayonet to bayonet. Here on the right side of the long ridge, where the reverse slope was not jungled and there were no trees along the crest, their struggle was clearly visible. Once again the heavy fire of the powerfully placed Japanese machineguns was too much. The two platoons broke and fled. Left alone, the little group engaged hand to hand attempted to break off their engagement and escape also, leaping and jumping and tumbling head over heels down the slope after their mates. Two however did not succeed. They were seen to be dragged alive and still struggling back over the crest by the Japanese.

  Below in the dry narrow valley C-for-Charlie stood watching this action open-mouthed. Pfc Doll, for one, felt his heart pounding slowly and thuddingly in his throat. With a raw honesty that was almost insupportable Doll wondered to himself how men could bring themselves to do such things, and what must it feel like when they did. To find yourself face to face with a screaming Jap bent on killing you and engage with him with naked bayonets. That was George Company up there. Doll knew a great many of them. He had a number of good friends in George Company. He had got drunk with them. But to find yourself being dragged back over the crest into the midst of those jabbering, Emperor-worshiping savages. Furtively his right hand sought his pistol. He meant to keep one round in at all times for his own head. But those guys there, they wouldn’t have had time to use a pistol if they had it. If he was using his rifle or bayonet, how could he keep his pistol ready in his hand. He couldn’t. Doll decided he would have to give this problem more thought, serious thought.

  Above on the slope the remnants of the two platoons had gone to ground and were hugging the earth under the mortar and MG fire being thrown at them.

  Behind them C-for-Charlie heard a shout. Turning to look, they saw a man standing on the 2d Battalion knoll waving his arms at them. At first they simply stared. The man continued to shout and wave his arms. Slowly they came out of their trance. Bugger Stein who had been as guilty as the rest suddenly cleared his throat and said, “All right, men, let’s move out.” Glancing stealthily at each other, because no one wanted to betray what he was feeling, they began to move again and Doll, still in the lead, jumped to move out in a sudden fear that somebody might pass him.

  Sighing loudly, the artillery shells were still arching overhead to crash against the ridge. 155 and 105 shells were bursting on the crest and on both sides of it with an almost continuous roar. Underneath them C-for-Charlie walked on nervously. There seemed to be so many potentially dangerous objects floating around loose everywhere today.

  One of the most nervous was young Corporal Fife. Fife had gotten away late because Stein had sent him to Battalion HQ with a message about the spot Bugger had chosen for his CP. Except for the two Signal Corps men stringing the wire for the company’s sound power phone some distance behind him, Fife was the last man in the crowd. Because he was moving so slowly he remained the last man. Ahead of him he could see Storm marching along with his big jaw set, carrying his Thompsongun in one hand with his rifle slung from his shoulder and surrounded by Dale with his Thompson and the other cooks. Not far from them walked Welsh, Stein and Band and the two clerks Bead and Weld. Fife wanted to catch up to them, but he found it hard to move any faster when he was looking this way and that all the time to see if there was something or someone about to shoot at him.

  When Fife had come over the lip of the hill down onto the slope, he had experienced a singular feeling of exposure. Only once before in his life had he had a similar sense of such total exposure and that was one time on a patrol on maneuvers when he stood on a mountaintop and looked down to see how far he could fall if he should lean over too far. But today the feeling of exposure was accompanied by another of total isolation and helplessness. There were too many things to watch out for. One man simply could not take care of them all to protect himself. It was about as easy to get killed by accident as by enemy deliberation. Trying to look everywhere at once, he stumbled ahead tripping now and then on the tough grass stems or on rocks. When first one bullet and then moments later a second kicked up puffs of dust in front of him, he went to ground and began to crawl, convinced some Japanese sniper had signaled him out to shoot at. The crawling was hard work. The kneehigh grass made it hard for him to see where he was going. Sweat poured down his forehead and over his glasses. He had to stop repeatedly to wipe them. Finally he tied his grimy handkerchief across his forehead. This helped a little. But there was something else bothering him: his grenades. Fife had caught two of the handgrenades Welsh had passed into the crowd and had spread the pins and buttoned them under his pocket flaps. Now as he crawled they bounced and bumped along the ground, catching on grass stems. Terrified by the aspect of one of them pulling off and igniting its three-second fuse underneath him, ashamed of himself for what he considered his cheap cowardice, but not so ashamed that shame could wash away the imagined picture, Fife unbuttoned his pocket flaps from over them and rolled them away from him, left t
hem and crawled on. But when he raised up his head to look around he could see that the company, all of whom appeared to be standing up walking, was alarmingly far ahead of him, and gaining.

  It was then that Fife had had to make a heroic decision. Terrified as he was of standing up and being shot at by some invisible party, he was more terrified of being accused for his cowardice. His back muscles crawling, he stood up and took one tentative step, then another. Nothing happened. He began to jog toward his company trotting bent over at the waist and carrying his rifle at high port. When another bullet kicked up dirt in front of him and went screaming off, he shut his eyes, then opened them and trotted on.

  It was just then that the entire company had stopped to witness George Co’s attempt on the crest, and Fife was able to catch up to them. He too saw the attack. He stood with the others, wide-eyed, slack-mouthed, disbelieving, until the arm-waving shouter on the knoll reminded them that they were not here simply as spectators. Then he picked himself a spot in amongst the Company HQ and stayed with them, comforted unreasonably to be in a crowd. The brushy bottom of the ravine was just in front of them.

  When they emerged from the brush of the bottom and began to climb, they were not far from the protection of the subsidiary ridge which held Fox’s command post. In a very few minutes they would pass into complete cover behind it, out of view of Hill 209 entirely. And it was just here that the first man in the company was wounded. Whether deliberately or by accident no one could tell, because no one could tell whether the desultory fire they were getting was aimed or was simply stray bullets from the ridge.

  The man’s name was Peale and he was an older man, perhaps thirty-five, one of the draftees. He was moving in the middle of the crowd, not far from John Bell and not far from Fife and the Company HQ either, when he suddenly clapped his hand to his thigh and stopped, then sat down holding his leg, his lips trembling, his face white. Bell ran over to him pulling at his first aid pack.

  “Are you all right, Peale?”

  “I’m hit,” Peale said thickly. “I’m wounded. I’m hit in the leg.”

  But before Bell could get his first aid packet out one of the company’s medics was there with a gauze compress and looking very serious at this first opportunity of exercising his trade in combat. While Bell and Peale watched he tore open the pantsleg and inspected the wound which was bleeding only superficially. A little rill of dark blood ran down the white leg. Peale and Bell stared at it. The medic salted the compress with sulfa powder and wrapped it onto the wound with a roll of gauze. The bullet had gone in but had not come out.

  Peale had begun to grin stiffly. His face still white, his lips still trembling, his mouth was nevertheless stretched into a stiff but happily cynical grin.

  “Can you walk?” the medic asked him.

  “I don’t think so,” Peale said. “I think my leg hurts pretty bad. You better help me. I think it’s goin’ to be a long time before I can walk good again.”

  “Well, come on. I’ll take you back,” the medic said and grunting, hoisted him up onto his one good leg.

  Behind them, coming up with the Company HQ, Bugger Stein was already calling to the men who had stopped to move on, keep going, don’t stop. First one then another they began to turn away back to the climb.

  “So long, Peale.”

  “Take it easy, Peale.”

  “Good luck, Peale.”

  “So long, you guys,” Peale called after them, his voice rising as they moved away. “So long. You guys take it easy. So long. Good luck, you guys. Don’t worry about me. It’ll be a long time before I can walk good. No doctor’s goin’ to tell me I can walk on this leg. Good luck, you guys!”

  All of them had passed him now moving up the slope and he suddenly stopped calling as though he knew it was futile and stood looking after them, his grin fading. Then with his arm around the neck of the medic he turned to descend. Fife, who was one of the very last to pass him, heard what he said as he turned away.

  “I got me a Purple Heart,” Peale said to the medic, “and I been in combat. I never even seen a Jap; but I don’t care. No doctor’s gonna tell me I can walk on this leg for a long time. Come on, let’s get out of this. Before I get hit again and get killed. That’d be hell, wouldn’t it?”

  Fife, too dumbfounded by the events of the day and still in a state of shock, did not know what to think of this and, in fact, did not think anything. His ear simply recorded it.

  A little further in front John Bell, as he climbed on, knew only that he had about Peale a curious double feeling of grinding envy and at the same time a great relief that it was not himself who had been injured, hurt, like that.

  Whether Peale made good his promise about the doctors or not no one ever found out, but C-for-Charlie did not see him again.

  They had now passed behind the subsidiary ridge. The sense of relief it gave them was enormous, unbelievable. From the look on their faces they might have just been removed clean away, all the way back to the real safety of Australia. In front of them B-for-Baker in battalion reserve, and equally relieved, had spread out over the only level space available on the slope and were already digging their slit trenches for the night. C-for-Charlie passed through them with an exchange of greetings that was near-hysterical in its happy relief to be out of the line of fire. Behind them and out of sight now on Hill 209, though not out of hearing, the fight went on.

  The spot Bugger had picked for his CP was a tiny spur a hundred yards below the crest. Here the Company HQ and the mortar squads dropped off, Culp going on up with the rifle platoons to place his two machineguns. While they waited for him to come back and place the mortars, Mazzi and Tills, who were members of the same mortar squad, engaged in a discussion with Fife and Bead about the day’s events and the walk the company had made under their first fire.

  The overly gay mood of relief and safety still prevailed in everybody. But underneath it lurked the unspoken awareness that today had not been tough at all, that this protection was only temporary, that eventually the good luck would run out and people would die. It was visible in the dark depths of everyone’s eyes.

  “This Tills,” Mazzi sneered squatting by the 60mm baseplate that he carried. “He spent more time on his belly on the fuckin ground than he did up on his feet. I don’t see how he managed to keep up with the rest of us.”

  Tills, looking sheepish, did not answer.

  “Ain’t that right, Tills,” Mazzi said. “Didn’t you?”

  “I guess you never hit the dirt any, did you?” Tills said.

  “Did you see me?”

  “No, I never,” Tills admitted lamely.

  “You fucking A you never, Tills. What was the use, I say? Anybody could tell that fire wasn’t aimed fire. It was stray stuff from the ridge. So it could hit you just as well layin down as standin up. Maybe better.”

  “And I guess you wasn’t never scared even once?” Tills said angrily.

  Mazzi merely grinned at him without answering, his face crinkled up around his eyes, his head on one side.

  “Well, I was,” Fife said clearly. “I was scared shitless. All the time. From the moment I stepped onto the slope till I got here. I was crawlin around on my belly like a snake. I never been so scared in my life.”

  But it did not help him to tell it. He found that no matter how he overstated it he could not convey the true extent of his fear. It became only funny, when you said it. It wasn’t the same thing at all.

  “So was I,” little Bead put in in his child’s voice. “Scared to death.”

  Bugger Stein happened to be standing not far away, with Lt Band and one of the platoon lieutenants who had come down from the ridge to ask something, and Fife saw him stop what he was saying and look over straight at him, Fife, with a surprised look of reluctant approval. It was as though Bugger would have liked to have said the same thing himself but couldn’t, and at the same time had not expected anything so honest to come from Fife. For a moment Fife felt a fleeting resentment.
Then taking Bugger’s look of approval as his cue, he began to elaborate his adventure of the walk under fire. He had not meant to tell anyone about the grenades, but now he did, making himself the buffoon. Before very long he had all of them laughing hard, even the three officers and Mazzi the New York hep guy. He was the ‘honest coward.’ If you wanted to make people like you, play the buffoon whom they could laugh at without having to admit anything about themselves. It still did not make him feel any better: did not alleviate his shame, did not cause to cease the misery of fear he felt right now.

  “As a matter of fact,” he said, utilizing even this point, “I’m still scared shitless, right now.”

  As if to prove him right, there was an instant’s fluttering sound in the air, not unlike a man blowing through a keyhole, and three geysers of dirt spouted into the air thirty-five yards away, followed instantly by one loud clap of sound. There was an antlike scramble on the little spur as everyone tried to hit the dirt on the slope away from the surprise. Private Mazzi, if not the foremost, was certainly not the last among them, and Tills had the last word.

  “Not even once you weren’t scared?” he asked loudly, as they all began to get up with sheepish faces when no more shells arrived. Everyone was glad to laugh at Mazzi and turn the ridicule away from their own sheepishness. But Mazzi did not laugh.

  “And I guess you stood up there like a big fat fucking hero, fuckface,” he said and glowered sullenly at Tills.

  There was some muttering about short rounds, but it was soon stopped by Stein. Everybody knew that the Japanese had a habit of dropping their heavy mortar shells in, to upset the troops, whenever there was an American artillery barrage. However, the arrival of the mortar shells did put a stop to the discussions. Everyone decided at the same time to unship their entrenching tools and start digging their slit trenches, the heavy work of which they had been putting off. Bead and Weld were designated to dig the holes for Stein and Band, who decided it was time they inspected the ridge. Corporal Fife was put in charge of them.