The Thin Red Line

by James Jones

  Corporal Fife was one of those who had slept the least. He still could not get over little Bead’s having killed that Jap like that. What with that, the rain, the total lack of shelter from the rain, and his nervous excitation about the morrow, he had only dozed once for about five minutes. But the loss of sleep did not bother him. He was young, and healthy, and fairly strong. In fact, he had never felt healthier or in better shape in his life; and earlier in the day, in the first gray of early light, he had stood forth upon the slope and, exuding energy and vitality, had looked a long time down the ravine as it fell and deepened toward the rear until he wanted to spread wide his arms with sacrifice and love of life and love of men. He didn’t do it of course. There were men awake all round him. But he had wanted to. And now as he dropped over the ridge and into the beginning of the battle, he shot one swift look behind him, one last look, and found himself staring headon into the wide, brown, spectacle-covered eyes of Bugger Stein, who happened to be right behind him. What a hell of a last look! Fife thought sourly.

  Stein thought he had never seen such a deep, dark, intense, angrily haunted look as that which Fife bent on him as they dropped over the ridge, and Stein thought it was directed at him. At him, personally. They too were almost the last to go. Only Sergeant Welsh and young Bead remained behind them. And when Stein looked back, they were coming, hunched low, chopping with their feet, sliding down the shale and dirt of the slope.

  Stein’s dispositions had been the same today as in the two previous days. They had done nothing much and he saw no reason to change the march order: 1st Platoon first, 2d Platoon second, 3d in reserve. One of the two machineguns went with each forward platoon; the mortars would stay with the Company HQ and the reserve. That was the way they had moved out. And as Stein slid to the bottom of 209’s short forward slope he could see 1st Platoon pass out of sight beyond one of the little folds of ground which ran across their line of advance. They were about a hundred yards ahead and appeared to be deployed well.

  There were three of these little folds in the ground. All of them were perpendicular to the south face of Hill 209, parallel to each other. It had been Stein’s idea, when inspecting the terrain with Colonel Tall the evening before, to utilize these as cover by shoving off from the right end of the hill and then advancing left across them and across his own front—instead of getting himself caught in the steeper ravine immediately between the two hills, as had happened to Fox Co. Tall had agreed to this.

  Afterward, Stein had briefed his own officers on it. Kneeling just behind the crest with them in the fading light, he pointed it all out and they looked it over. Somewhere in the dusk a sniper’s rifle had spat angrily. One by one they inspected it through binoculars. The third and furthest left of these three folds was about a hundred and fifty yards from the beginning of the slope which became the Elephant’s Neck. This slope steepened as it climbed to the U-shaped eminence of the Elephant’s Head, which from five hundred yards beyond commanded and brooded over the entire area. This hundred and fifty yard low area, as well as the third fold, was dominated by two lesser, grassy ridges growing out of the slope and two hundred yards apart, one on either side of the low area. Both ridges were at right angles to the folds of ground and parallel to the line of advance. With these in their hands plus the Elephant’s Head, the Japanese could put down a terrible fire over the whole approach area. Tall’s plan was for the forward elements to move up onto these two ridges, locating and eliminating the hidden strong points there which had stopped 2d Battalion yesterday, and then with the reserve company to reinforce them, work their way up the Elephant’s Neck to take The Head. This was the Bowling Alley. But there was no way to outflank it. On the left it fell in a precipitous slope to the river, and on the right the Japanese held the jungle in force. It had to be taken frontally. All of this Stein had lined out for his officers last evening. Now they were preparing to execute it.

  Stein, at the bottom of the shale slope, could see very little of anything. A great racketing of noise had commenced and hung everywhere in the air without seeming to have any source. Part of course was due to his own side firing all along the line, and the bombardment and the mortars. Perhaps the Japanese were firing too now. But he could see no visual signs of it. What time was it, anyway? Stein looked at his watch, and its little face stared back at him with an intensity it had never had before. 6:45; a quarter to seven in the morning. Back home he would be just—Stein realized he had never really seen his watch. He forced himself to put his arm down. Directly in front of him his reserve 3d Platoon were spread out and flattened behind the first of the three little folds of ground. With them were the Company HQ and the mortar section. Most of them were looking at him with faces as intense as his watch’s face. Stein ran crouching over to them, his equipment bouncing and banging on him, shouting for them to set up the mortars there, motioning with his hand. Then he realized that he could only just barely hear his own voice himself, with all this banging and racketing of doom bouncing around in the air. How could they hear him? He wondered how the 1st Platoon—and the 2d—were doing, and how he could see.

  The 1st Platoon, at that particular moment, was spread out and flattened behind the middle of the three little folds of ground. Behind it the 2d Platoon was spread out and flattened in the low between the folds. Nobody really wanted to move. Young Lt Whyte had already looked over the area between this fold and the third and seen nothing, and he already had motioned for his two scouts to proceed there. Now he motioned to them again, using an additional hand-and-arm signal meaning “speed.” The booming and banging and racketing in the air was bothering Whyte, too. It did not seem to come from any one place or several places, but simply hung and jounced in the air, sourceless. He too could see no visual end results of so much banging and exploding. His two scouts still not having moved, Whyte became angry and opened his mouth and bellowed at them, motioning again. They could not hear him of course, but he knew they could see the black open hole of his mouth. Both of them stared at him as though they thought him insane for even suggesting such a thing, but this time, after a moment, they moved. Almost side by side they leaped up, crossed the crest of the little fold, and ran crouching down to the low where they flattened themselves. After a moment they leaped up again, one a little behind the other, and ran bent almost double to the top of the last fold and fell flat. After another moment and a perfunctory peek over its top, they motioned Whyte to come on. Whyte jumped up making a sweeping forward motion with his arm and ran forward, his platoon behind him. As the 1st Platoon moved, making the crossing as the scouts had: in two rushes, the 2d Platoon moved to the top of the middle fold.

  Back at the first fold of ground Stein had seen this move and been a little reassured by it. Creeping close to the top of the fold among his men, he had raised himself to his knees to see, his face and whole patches of his skin twitching with mad alarm in an effort to call his insanity to his attention. When nothing hit him immediately, he stayed up, standing on his knees, to see 1st Platoon leave the middle fold and arrive at the crest of the third. At least they had got that far. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. He lay back down, feeling quite proud, and realized his flattened men around him had been staring at him intently. He felt even prouder. Behind him, in the low of the fold, the mortar squads were setting up their mortars. Crawling back to them through the infernal racketing still floating loose in the air, he shouted in Culp’s ear for him to make the lefthand grassy ridge his target. At the mortars Private Mazzi, the Italian boy from the Bronx, stared at him with wide, frightened eyes. So did most of the others. Stein crawled back to the top of the fold. He arrived, and raised himself, just in time to see 1st Platoon and then 2d Platoon attack. He was the only man along the top of the first fold who did see it, because he was the only man who was not flattened on the ground. He bit his lip. Even from here he could tell that it was bad, a serious tactical blunder.

  If tactical blunder it was, the fault was Whyte’s. First Whyte, and secondly, Lt
Tom Blane of the 2d Platoon. Whyte had arrived at the top of the third and last fold of ground without a casualty. This in itself seemed strange to him, if not highly overoptimistic. He knew his orders: he was to locate and eliminate the hidden strong points on the two grassy ridges. The nearest of these, the righthand one, had its rather sharply defined beginnings about eighty yards to his right front. While his men flattened themselves and stared at him with intense sweating faces, he raised himself cautiously on his elbows till only his eyes showed, and inspected the terrain. Before him the ground fell, sparsely grassed and rocky, until it reached the beginnings of the little ridge, where it immediately became thickly grassed with the brown, waist-high grass. He could not see anything that looked like Japanese or their emplacements. Whyte was scared, but his anxiety to do well today was stronger. He did not really believe he would be killed in this war. Briefly he glanced over his shoulder to the ridge of Hill 209 where groups of men stood half-exposed, watching. One of them was the corps commander. The loud banging and racketing hanging sourceless in the air had abated somewhat, had raised itself a few yards, after the lifting of the barrage from the little ridges to the Elephant’s Head. Again Whyte looked at the terrain and then motioned his scouts forward.

  Once again the two riflemen stared at him as though they thought he had lost his mind, as though they would have liked to reason with him if they hadn’t feared losing their reputations. Again Whyte motioned them forward, jerking his arm up and down in the signal for speed. The men looked at each other, then, gathering themselves on hands and knees first, bounced up and sprinted twenty-five yards down into the low area and fell flat. After a moment in which they inspected and found themselves still alive, they gathered themselves again. On hands and knees, preparing to rise, the first one suddenly fell down flat and bounced; the second, a little way behind him, got a little further up so that when he fell he tumbled on his shoulder and rolled onto his back. And there they lay, both victims of well placed rifle shots by unseen riflemen. Neither moved again. Both were obviously dead. Whyte stared at them shocked. He had known them almost four months. He had heard no shots nor had he seen anything move. No bullets kicked up dirt anywhere in front. Again he stared at the quiet, masked face of the deserted little ridge.

  What was he supposed to do now? The high, sourceless racketing in the air seemed to have gotten a little louder. Whyte, who was a meaty, big young man, had been a champion boxer and champion judoman at his university where he was preparing himself to be a marine biologist, as well as having been the school’s best swimmer. Anyway, they can’t get all of us, he thought loyally, but meaning principally himself, and made his decision.

  “Come on, boys! Let’s go get ’em!” he yelled and leaped to his feet motioning the platoon forward. He took two steps, the platoon with their bayonets fixed since early morning right behind him, and fell down dead, stitched diagonally from hip to shoulder by bullets, one of which exploded his heart. He had just time enough to think that something had hurt him terribly, not even enough to think that he was dead, before he was. Perhaps he screamed.

  Five others of his platoon went down with him almost simultaneously, in various states of disrepair, some dead, some only nicked. But the impetus Whyte had inaugurated remained, and the platoon charged blindly on. Another impetus would be needed to stop it or change its direction. A few more men went down. Invisible rifles and machineguns hammered from what seemed to be every quarter of the globe. After reaching the two dead scouts, they came in range of the more distant left ridge, which took them with a heavy crossfire. Sergeant Big Queen, running with the rest and bellowing incoherently, and who had only been promoted two days before after the defection of Stack, watched the platoon sergeant, a man named Grove, throw his rifle from him as though he feared it, and go down hollering and clawing at his chest. Queen did not even think about it. Near him Pfc Doll ran too, blinking his eyes rapidly as though this might protect him. His mind had withdrawn completely in terror, and he did not think at all. Doll’s sense of personal invulnerability was having a severe test, but had not as yet, like Whyte’s, failed. They were past the dead scouts now. More men on the left were beginning to go down. And behind them over the top of the third fold, suddenly, came the 2nd Platoon in full career, yelling hoarsely.

  This was the responsibility of 2d Lt Blane. It was not a particularly complex responsibility. It had nothing to do with envy, jealousy, paranoia, or suppressed self-destruction. He too, like Whyte, knew what his orders were, and he had promised Bill Whyte he would back him up and help him out. He too knew the corps commander was watching, and he too wanted to do well today. Not as athletic as his fellow worker, but more imaginative, more sensitive, he too leaped up and motioned his men forward, when he saw 1st Platoon move. He could see the whole thing finished in his imagination: himself and Whyte and their men standing atop the bombed out bunkers in proper triumph, the position captured. He too died on the forward slope but not at the crest like Whyte. It took several seconds for the still-hidden Japanese gunners to raise their fire, and 2d Platoon was ten yards down the gentle little slope before it was unleashed against them. Nine men fell at once. Two died and one of them was Blane. Not touched by a machinegun, he unluckily was chosen as target by three separate riflemen, none of whom knew about the others or that he was an officer, and all of whom connected. He bounced another five yards forward, and with three bullets through his chest cavity did not die right away. He lay on his back and, dreamily and quite numb, stared at the high, beautiful, pure white cumuli which sailed like stately ships across the sunny, cool blue tropic sky. It hurt him a little when he breathed. He was dimly aware that he might possibly die as he became unconscious.

  2d Platoon had just reached the two dead 1st Platoon scouts when mortar shells began to drop in onto the 1st Platoon twenty-five yards ahead. First two, then a single, then three together popped up in unbelievable mushrooms of dirt and stones. Chards and pieces whickered and whirred in the air. It was the impetus needed either to change the direction of the blind charge or to stop it completely. It did both. In the 2d Platoon S/Sgt Keck, watched by everyone now with Lt Blane down, threw out his arms holding his rifle at the balance, dug in his heels and bellowed in a voice like the combined voices of ten men for them to “Hit dirt! Hit dirt!” 2d Platoon needed no urging. Running men melted into the earth as if a strong wind had come up and blown them over like dried stalks.

  In the 1st Platoon, less lucky, reaction varied. On the extreme right the line had reached the first beginning slope of the right-hand ridge, long hillock really, and a few men—perhaps a squad—turned and dove into the waisthigh grass there, defilading themselves from the hidden MGs above them as well as protecting them from the mortars. On the far left that end had much further to go, seventy yards more, to reach dead space under the lefthand ridge; but a group of men tried to make it. None of them reached it, however. They were hosed to earth and hiding by the machineguns above them, or bowled over stunned by the mortars, before they could defilade themselves from the MGs or get close enough to them to escape the mortars. Just to the left of the center was the attached machinegun squad from Culp’s platoon, allowed to join the charge by Whyte through forgetfulness or for some obscure tactical reason of his own, all five of whom, running together, were knocked down by the same mortar shell, gun and tripod and ammo boxes all going every which way and bouncing end over end, although not one of the five was wounded by it. These marked the furthest point of advance. On the extreme left five or six riflemen were able to take refuge in a brushy draw at the foot of Hill 209 which, a little further down, became the deep ravine where Fox and George had been trapped and hit yesterday. These men began to fire at the two grassy ridges although they could see no targets.

  In the center of 1st Platoon’s line there were no defilades or draws to run to. The middle, before the mortars stopped them, had run itself right on down and out onto the dangerous low area, where they could not only be enfiladed by the ridges but co
uld also be hit by MG plunging fire from Hill 210 itself. Here there was nothing to do but get down and hunt holes. Fortunately the TOT barrage had searched here as well as on the hillocks, and there were 105 and 155 holes available. Men jostled each other for them, shared them. The late Lt Whyte’s 19th Century charge was over. The mortar rounds continued to drop here and there across the area, searching flesh, searching bone.

  Private John Bell of the 2d Platoon lay sprawled exactly as his body had skidded to a halt, without moving a muscle. He could not see because his eyes were shut, but he listened. On the little ridges the prolonged yammering of the MGs had stopped and now confined itself to short bursts at specific targets. Here and there wounded men bellowed, whined or whimpered. Bell’s face was turned left, his cheek pressed to the ground, and he tried not even to breathe too conspicuously for fear of calling attention to himself. Cautiously he opened his eyes, half afraid the movement of eyelids would be seen by a machinegunner a hundred yards away, and found himself staring into the open eyes of the 1st Platoon’s first scout lying dead five yards to Bell’s left. This was, or had been, a young Graeco-Turkish draftee named Kral. Kral was noted for two things, the ugliest bentnosed face in the regiment and the thickest glasses in C-for-Charlie. That with such a myopia he could be a scout was a joke of the company. But Kral had volunteered for it; he wanted to be where the action was, he said; in peace or in war. A hep kid from Jersey, he had nevertheless believed the four-color propaganda leaflets. He had not known that the profession of first scout of a rifle platoon was a thing of the past and belonged in the Indian Wars, not to the massed divisions, superior firepower, and tighter social control of today. First target, the term should be, not first scout, and now the big glasses still reposed on his face. They had not fallen off. But something about their angle, at least from where Bell lay, magnified the open eyes until they filled the entire lenses. Bell could not help staring fixedly at them, and they stared back with a vastly wise and tolerant amusement. The more Bell stared at them the more he felt them to be holes into the center of the universe and that he might fall in through them to go drifting down through starry space amongst galaxies and spiral nebulae and island universes. He remembered he used to think of his wife’s cunt like that, in a more pleasant way. Forcibly Bell shut his eyes. But he was afraid to move his head, and whenever he opened them again, there Kral’s eyes were, staring at him their droll and flaccid message of amiable good will, sucking at him dizzyingly. And wherever he looked they followed him, pleasantly but stubbornly. From above, invisible but there, the fiery sun heat of the tropic day heated his head inside his helmet, making his soul limp. Bell had never known such eviscerating, ballshrinking terror. Somewhere out of his sight another mortar shell exploded. But in general the day seemed to have become very quiet. His arm with his watch on it lay within his range of vision, he noticed. My God! Was it only 7:45? Defeatedly he let his eyes go back where they wanted: to Kral’s. HERE LIES FOUR-EYES KRAL, DIED FOR SOMETHING. When one of Kral’s huge eyes winked at him waggishly, he knew in desperation he had to do something, although he had been lying there only thirty seconds. Without moving, his cheek still pressed to earth, he yelled loudly.