The Thin Red Line

by James Jones

  More and more things had been getting on Stein’s nerves, more and more increasingly. In the first place he could never be sure that what he did was right, mightn’t have been done better and with less cost in some other way. He felt that way about the attack he was preparing to mount now. In addition there was his own nervous fear and apprehension, which kept eating into his energy more and more. Danger flickered and blinked in the air like a faulty neon tube. Whenever he stood up he might be struck by a bullet. Whenever he moved a few feet he might be moving under a descending mortar shell. Hiding these apprehensions from his men was even more fatiguing. Also, he had already finished off one of his two canteens of water, and was a third through the other, without ever having allayed his thirst. And in addition to all of this that was wearing him down there was something else coming increasingly to attention, and that was inertia. His men would do what he told them to if he told them explicitly and specifically. Otherwise they would simply lie with their cheeks pressed to the ground and stare at him. Except for a few volunteers like Dale; and Doll. Initiative may have been the descriptive word for the Civil War; or enthusiasm. But apparently inertia was the one for this one.

  Stein had already talked to Tall about the Japanese evacuation of the lefthand grassy ridge, and had informed him that it was being occupied by C-for-Charlie’s 3d Platoon; so he was dumbfounded when the Colonel began to shout at him over the sound power phone that he was too far to the right. He was not even given an opportunity to explain his proposed attack. The sound power phone was a great invention for explanations and one-sided conversations, because the listening party could not speak until the other turned it over and released the button; but somehow Tall seemed able to make this work for him, while Stein could not do the same.

  “But I don’t understand. What do you mean too far to the right? I told you they’ve evacuated the lefthand grassy ridge. And my 3d Platoon’s occupied it. How can I be too far to the right? You agreed to attack from the right across our front. Over.”

  “God damn it, Stein!” the Col’s cold thin angry voice cried. “I’m telling you your left flank’s exposed.” Because of the phone Stein could not protest that it wasn’t, and the Col went on with rhetoric. “Do you know what it is to expose your left flank? Did you ever read in a tactics manual about exposing your left flank? Your left flank is exposed. And damn it, you’ve got to move down there. You’re not moving! Over!”

  The moment for protesting was past, lost while Tall’s thumb depressed the button. Stein could only defend, harassed fury burning in him. “But God damn it, Colonel, that’s why I called you! I’m trying to! I’m preparing to attack the righthand grassy ridge right now.” He stopped, forgetting to say ‘over’, and there was a long silence. “Over,” he said. “God damn it.”

  “Stein, I told you you’re too far right already,” the Col’s voice came from the faroff areas of safety. “You’re sideslipping to the right alla time. Over.”

  “Well, what do you want me to do? You want me to withdraw the rest of my company to the lefthand grassy ridge, too? Over.” That, he knew, would be insane.

  “No. I’ve decided to commit the reserve company on your left—with orders to attack. Orders to attack, Stein, you hear? orders to attack. You stay where you are. I’ll have Baker Company’s commander send your reserve platoon back to you. Over.”

  “Do you want me to go ahead with my attack?” Stein asked, because it wasn’t plain from what he’d heard. “Over.”

  “What else?” the Col’s thin, outraged voice piped at him. “What else, Stein? You’re not supposed to be down there on a goddamned asshole vacation. Now, get cracking!” There was a pause and Stein could hear electrical whinings and what sounded like polite mumblings. He heard one distinct, respectful “Yes, sir” in Tall’s voice. Then the Colonel’s voice came back on again, much kinder now, more jovial. “Get cracking, boy! Get cracking!” Tall said heartily. “Over and out.”

  Stein came back to himself to find himself looking into the wide, nervous eyes of Fife. He handed him the phone. Well, that was that. He had not even got to explain his attack plan, and he would have liked to because once again he could not be sure that he was right. But the big brass had arrived at the phone station, obviously. There was no point in trying to call back while Tall had those people clustered around him.

  Yes, the big brass. The observers. Today they even had an Admiral. Stein had a sudden and unholy, heartfreezing picture, which transfixed him for a moment, bulge-eyed, of an identical recurrence up there now of the scene he himself had witnessed on Hill 207 two days ago. The same harassed, apprehensive Battalion Colonel with field glasses; the same diffident, but equally apprehensive little knot of eagles and stars peering over his spiritual shoulder; the same massed mob of pawns and minor pieces craning to see like a stadium crowd; all were up there right now, going through the identical gyrations their identical counterparts had gone through two days ago. While down below were the same blood-sweating Captains and their troops going through theirs. Only this time he himself, he Jim Stein, was one of them, one of the committed ones. The committed ones going through their exaggerated pretenses of invoking the cool calm logic and laws of the science of tactics. And tomorrow it would be someone else. It was a horrifying vision: all of them doing the same identical thing, all of them powerless to stop it, all of them devoutly and proudly believing themselves to be free individuals. It expanded to include the scores of nations, the millions of men, doing the same on thousands of hilltops across the world. And it didn’t stop there. It went on. It was the concept—concept? the fact; the reality—of the modern State in action. It was so horrible a picture that Stein could not support or accept it. He put it away from him, and blinked his bulging eyes. What he had to do right now was get his Company Hq over behind the third fold with Keck and the 2d Platoon.

  From the top of the third fold there was really very little to see. Stein and his sergeants lay behind the crest and looked as they talked. In front of them perhaps a hundred yards away the waiting grassy ridge rose, apparently devoid of life. Behind it at some distance the upper reaches of The Elephant’s Head, their real objective, rose still higher. The stony open ground, thinly grassed, fell gently in a rolling motion for fifty yards, then leveled out.

  Tactically Lt Whyte (whose body still lay just beyond the crest) had served no good purpose at all with his charge, Stein saw immediately. Whyte’s platoon, situated further to the left where the white eyeballs and sweating faces of 2d Platoon now lay watching Stein, had rolled forward in a long wave not directed at either ridge but with its ends lapping against both, while the main strength bulged out into the open center which served only to funnel the fire from both ridges and the Hill itself. It couldn’t have been handled worse.

  But that was that. This was this. Stein’s problem now as he saw it, his first problem anyway, was the getting of his men from the comparative safety of here down that fucking outrageous bareass slope to the comparative safety of the foot of the ridge, where they would be defiladed from the MGs and protected from the mortars by their closeness to the Japanese. Once they were there—But getting them there—

  Stein had already decided to use only two squads of his 2d Platoon, augmented by the men already hiding down there. He was not sure this was enough, and he had not got to discuss it with Col Tall, but he did not want to commit more men until he had some idea of what was against him. He had also decided how to choose the two squads. In fact, he had given more thought to this than to the other. He was obsessed by a feeling of moral culpability about choosing which men to send in. Some of them would surely die, and he did not want to choose which ones. Rather than do that he decided simply to take arbitrarily the first two squads on the right of the line (they were the closest), and thus let Luck or Chance or Fate or whatever agency ran the lives of men do the choosing. That way no agent of retribution could hold him responsible. Lying on the slope, he told Keck which ones he wanted. Keck, who certainly would kno
w, who always knew just where his men were, nodded and said that that would be McCron’s and Beck’s squads, the 2d and the 3d. Stein nodded back, feeling sorry for them. McCron the motherhen, and Milly Beck the martinet. John Bell was in McCron’s squad.

  But before he could do anything with his two squads he must, Stein felt, know more about the men already down there. They were already there, and wouldn’t have to run the gauntlet, but what sort of shape were they in? Were any of them wounded? Did they have a noncom with them? Was their morale unbroken? Stein felt he had to know, and the only way to find out was to send somebody. He sent Charlie Dale.

  It was an extraordinary performance. The little man licked his lips in their mean, dull grin, hitched up his rifle and Thompsongun, and nodded his head. He was ready to go. Stein, who had never liked him, and didn’t like him now, watched him go with a growing admiration which only increased his dislike. He went dogtrotting and unblinking (the thick set of his back made you know he was not blinking) in a straight line down the open slope toward the grassy ridge. He ran bent over at the waist in that peculiar fashion everybody instinctively adopted, but he did not zig or zag. Nothing touched him. Arriving, he dived into the thicker grass and disappeared. Three minutes later he reappeared, and came dogtrotting and unblinking back. Stein could not help wondering what he thought about, but would not ask.

  Charlie Dale would have been pleased to have been asked. But he really did not think much of anything. He had been told that all Japs had bad eyes and wore glasses and were poor marksmen, anyway. He knew nothing could hit him. Going down, he concentrated his eyes and all his attention on the foot of the ridge. Coming back, he concentrated on a spot at the crest of the fold. The only thing he really thought about or felt was a querulous irritation that Storm and the other cooks had been sent off to the 3d Platoon and so weren’t here to see him. This, and the fact that after he had completed one or two more of these things, he ought to be able to move into a rifle platoon as at least a corporal or perhaps even as a sergeant, and in this way get out of the kitchen without having to become a private. This had been his secret plan from the beginning. And he had noted that casualties among the noncoms were already pretty heavy.

  Dale arrived back at the third fold a hero. In its way it was quite a feat, what he had done. Even from the crest of the fold it was possible to see the amount of MG and rifle fire which had been hitting the ground all around him. Everybody who had not wanted to go, and would not have gone, was pleased with him; and Dale was pleased with himself. Everyone within reach slapped him on the back as he made his way to Stein to make his report, which was that they were all okay down there, that their morale was unimpaired, but that they did not have a noncom with them. They were all privates.

  “All right,” Stein said, still lying beside Keck on the reverse slope. “Now, listen. They haven’t got a noncom with them, and I can’t send anybody here away from his own squad. If you want to go back down there with the others when they go, I’ll make you an acting sergeant right now, and you’ll be in command of that extra squad. Do you want to do that?”

  “Sure,” Dale said at once. He made his mean grin and licked his lips. “Sure, sir.” He bobbed his head on his perpetually hunched shoulders, and his expression changed to one of patently false humility. “If you think I’m capable, sir. If you think I can do it.”

  Stein looked at him with distaste, not very well concealed. But it was concealed enough for Charlie Dale’s acumen.—Or was it? “Okay,” he said. “I make you acting sergeant. You’ll go down with the others.”

  “Aye, sir,” Dale said. “But don’t you have to say hereby?”

  “What?”

  “I said: Don’t you have to say hereby? You know, to make it official.” In some slow-stirring, labyrinthine depth of his animal’s mind Dale seemed to be suspicious of Stein’s honesty.

  “No. I don’t have to say hereby. Hereby what? I don’t have to say anything but what I’ve said. You’re an acting sergeant. You’ll go down with the others.”

  “Aye, sir,” Dale said and crawled away.

  Stein and Keck exchanged a glance. “I think I better go down, too, Cap’n,” Keck said. “Somebody should be in charge down there.”

  Stein nodded, slowly. “I guess you’re right. But take care of yourself. I need you.”

  “I’ll take care of myself as good as anybody can around here,” was Keck’s humorless answer.

  Around them the tension over the attack was beginning to mount and be felt. It showed plainly on the faces of 2d Platoon, white-eyed and sweating, and all turned toward the little group of leaders like a row of sunflowers turned toward the sun. On the left the first elements of the 3d Platoon had reappeared in the low between the second and third folds and were making their way toward Stein running bent over at the waist, the others following strung out behind them. Over the top of the second fold behind him another, lone figure came hurrying toward Stein, also running bent over at the waist. It was Witt returning, this time with his rifle and some extra bandoliers. Everything seemed to be concentrating. The moment of truth, Stein thought and looked at his watch, which said 12:02. Moment of truth, shit. My God, could it have been that long? It seemed like only seconds. And yet it seemed like years, too. It was at this moment that Pfc Doll—or his fate for him—chose to return from his hazardous mission to 1st Platoon.

  Doll came running up the slight slope at about the middle of the 2d Platoon, dove over the crest and fell, then scrambled along the reverse slope to where Stein was, to report. He had found Sgt Culn. But arriving at the knot of leaders he collapsed, sobbing for breath for almost a minute. There was no giggling this time, and no arch display of insouciance. His face was drawn and strained, the lines beside his open mouth deeply etched. He had run along the uneven line of holes calling for Skinny Culn, with fire being put down all around him. Men had looked up at him from their holes with startled disbelief on their faces. His body, abetted by his imagination, had quickly reached the point where it was threatening to disobey him. Finally three holes in front of him a hand and arm had shot into the air, the hand describing the old circular hand-and-arm-signal for ‘Gather here.’ Doll had pulled up to find Culn lying placidly on his side and grinning up at him ruefully, his rifle hugged against his chest. “Come right in,” Culn said; but Doll had already dived. The hole wasn’t big enough for two men. They had huddled together in it while Doll brought Culn up to date on the casualties, told him Stein’s plan, told him 1st Platoon’s part in it. Culn had scratched his reddish stubble. “So I got the platoon. Well, well. Okay, tell him I’ll try. But you tell Bugger we’re sort of de-morale-ized down here, as it says in the field manuals. But I’ll do the best I can.” Seconds later Doll had been back behind the third fold in what seemed to him to be enormous safety, and then reporting to Stein. He made his report proudly.

  Doll did not know what kind of reception he had expected from them, but it was not the one that he got. Charlie Dale had already returned before him, and from a tougher mission, and with much less display of nerves. 3d Platoon was in the act of arriving, and had to be taken care of by Stein. And the mounting tension of the coming attack made everybody rather preoccupied, anyway. Bugger listened to his report and nodded, gave him a pat on the arm as one might toss a fish to a trained seal after its act, and dismissed him. Doll had no choice but to crawl away, his bravery and heroism ignored and unappreciated. Wondering that he was still alive, he ached to tell somebody how narrowly he had escaped death. And then, as he sat down and looked up, there adding salt to his wounds was Charlie Dale, sitting nearby and grinning a rapaciously superior grin at him. While he sat and stared back at him, Doll was forced to listen to little Private Bead, lying beside him, recount the tale of Dale’s exploit.

  Nor was Dale all. Witt, the mad volunteer, the crazy sentimental Kentuckian who wanted to come back to a rifle company under fire, had been crouching behind Doll all during Doll’s report, waiting his own turn at Stein. Now he reported too
and when Stein briefly explained the impending attack to him, he immediately asked permission to go along. Stein, unable to hide his stunned disbelief entirely, nodded his agreement and sent Witt over to Milly Beck’s squad. It was this final straw, this blow in the face by Fate, added to the knowledge that Charlie Dale was going—and as an acting sergeant yet, which made Doll open his mouth and speak up. As much a reflex as the yell of a man pricked with a knife, Doll heard his voice. With horror he listened to himself asking, in a clear, bell-like, resolute, confident tone, if he could not go along himself. When Stein said yes and sent him to McCron’s squad, he crawled away biting the inside of his lip so hard that it brought tears to his eyes. He was wishing he could do worse: bang his head up and down on a rock; bite a whole chunk out of his arm. Why did he do things like this to himself? Why did he?

  There was nothing to keep them now. Everything was arranged. They could get on with it any time. Stein and Keck lay side by side behind the little crest, with 1st Sgt Welsh lying beside them in a flat-faced, uncommunicative silence, and looked it over one more time. Stein had placed 3d Platoon about thirty yards behind and below them on the slope, in two echelons of two squads each; they were to be ready to attack and exploit any advantage which arose. He had sent word back to his mortar section to raise their fire further up the ridge. He had his one remaining machine gun placed behind the crest of the third fold. Off to the left on the lefthand grassy ridge a lot of fire was being put forth but Stein did not see any of B-for-Baker moving. As he watched, two Japanese mortar rounds landed and went up, there. It was impossible to tell if they hurt anyone.