by James Jones
Stein, still holding the glasses on him, waited. He could not escape a feeling that something more important, more earthshaking should happen. Seconds ago he was alive and Stein was talking to him; now he was dead. Just like that. But Stein’s attention was pulled away before he could think more, pulled away by two things. One was Tella, who now began to scream in a high quavery babbling falsetto of hysteria totally different from his former yells. Looking at him now through the glasses—he had almost forgotten him entirely in watching the medic—Stein saw that he had flopped himself over on his side, face pressing the dirt. Obviously he had been hit again, and while one bloodstained hand tried to hold in his intestines, the other groped at the new wound in his chest. Stein wished that at least they had killed him, if they were going to shoot him up again. This screaming, which he ceased only long enough to draw sobbing breath, was infinitely more bad than the yells for everyone concerned, both in its penetration and in its longevity. But they were not firing more now. And as if to prove it deliberate a faint faraway voice called several times in an Oriental accent, “Cly, Yank, cly! Yerl, Yank, yerl!”
The other thing which caught Stein’s attention was something which caught the corner of his eye in the glasses as he lay looking at Tella and wondering what to do. A figure emerged from the grass on the righthand ridge plodding rearward across the flat and began to mount the forward slope of the fold. Turning the glasses on him, Stein saw that it was his Sergeant McCron, that he was wringing his hands, and that he was weeping. On his dirty face two great white streaks of clean skin ran from eye to chin accentuating the eyes as if he were wearing the haunting makeup of a tragic actor in some Greek drama. And on he came, while behind him Japanese MGs and smallarms opened up all across the ridge, making dirt puffs all around him. Still he came on, shoulders hunched, face twisted, wringing his hands, looking more like an old woman at a wake than an infantry combat soldier, neither quickening his pace nor dodging. In a kind of incredulous fury Stein watched him, frozen to the glasses. Nothing touched him. When he reached the top of the fold, he sat down beside his Captain still wringing his hands and weeping.
“Dead,” he said. “All dead, Capn. Every one. I’m the only one. All twelve. Twelve young men. I looked after them. Taught them everything I knew. Helped them. It didn’t mean a thing. Dead.”
Obviously, he was talking only of his own twelve-man squad, all of whom Stein knew could not be dead.
From below, because he was still sitting up in the open beside his prone Captain, someone seized him by the ankle and hauled him bodily below the crest. To Corporal Fife, who had seen the vomiting Sico go and who now lay looking up at McCron with his own fear-starting eyes, there was some look not exactly sly about his face but which appeared to say that while what he was telling was the truth, it was not all the truth, and which made Fife believe that like Sico McCron had found his own reasonable excuse. It did not make Fife angry. On the contrary, it made him envious and he yearned to find some such mechanism which he might use with success himself.
Stein apparently felt somewhat the same thing himself. With only one further look at the handwringing, still weeping, but now safe McCron, Stein turned his head and called for the medic.
“Here, sir,” the junior medic said from immediately below him. He had come up on his own.
“Take him back. Stay with him. And when you get back there, tell them we need another medic now. At least one.”
“Yes, sir,” the boy said solemnly. “Come on, Mac. That’s it. Come on, boy. It’ll be all right. It’ll all be all right.”
“You don’t understand that they’re all dead,” McCron said earnestly. “How can it be all right?” But he allowed himself to be led off by the arm. The last C-for-Charlie saw of him was when he and the medic dropped behind the second fold, now seventy-five to a hundred yards behind them. Some of them were to see his haunted face in the Division’s hospital later, but the company as a whole saw him no more.
Stein sighed. With this last, new crisis out of the way and taken care of, he could turn his attention back to Tella. The Italian was still screaming his piercing wailing scream and did not seem to show any indication that he was ever going to run down. If it kept on, it was going to unnerve them all. For a fleet second Stein had a lurid romantic vision of taking up his carbine and shooting the dying man through the head. You saw that in movies and read it in books. But the vision died sickly away, unfulfilled. He wasn’t the type and he knew it. Behind him his reserve platoon, cheeks pressed to earth, stared at him from their tense, blank, dirty faces in a long line of white, nerve-racked eyes. The screaming seemed to splinter the air, a huge circular saw splitting giant oak slabs, shivering spinal columns to fragments. But Stein did not know what to do. He could not send another man down there. He had to give up. A hot unbelieving outraged fury seized him at the thought of McCron plodding leisurely back through all that fire totally unscathed. He motioned furiously to Fife to hand him the phone, to take back up the call to Colonel Tall which Tella’s first screams had interrupted. Then, just as he was puckering to whistle, a large green object of nature on his right, a green boulder topped by a small metallic-colored rock, rose up flapping and bellowing. Taking earthly matters into its own hands, it bounded over the crest of the fold growling guttural obscenities before Stein could even yell the one word, “Welsh!” The First Sergeant was already careering at full gallop down into the hollow.
Welsh saw everything before him with a singular, pristine, furiously crystal clarity: the rocky thin-grassed slope, mortar- and bullet-pocked, the hot bright sunshine and deep cerulean sky, the incredibly white clouds above the towering highup horseshoe of the Elephant’s Head, the yellow serenity of the ridge before him. He did not know how he came to be doing this, nor why. He was simply furious, furious with a graven, black, bitter hatred of everything and everybody in the whole fucking gripeassed world. He felt nothing. Mindlessly, he ran. He looked curiously and indifferently, without participation, at the puffs of dirt which had begun now to kick up around him. Furious, furious. There were three bodies on the slope, two dead, one alive and still screaming. Tella simply had to stop that screaming; it wasn’t dignified. Puffs of dirt were popping up all around him now. The clatterbanging which had hung in the air at varying levels all through the day had descended almost to ground level, now, and was aimed personally and explicitly at him. Welsh ran on, suppressing a desire to giggle. A curious ecstasy had gripped him. He was the target, the sole target. At last it was all out in the open. The truth had at last come out. He had always known it. Bellowing “Fuck you!” at the whole world over and over at the top of his lungs, Welsh charged on happily. Catch me if you can! Catch me if you can!
Zigzigging professionally, he made his run down. If a fucking nut like McCron could simply walk right out, a really bright man like himself in the possession of his faculties could get down and back. But when he skidded to a stop on his belly beside the mutilated Italian boy, he realized he had made no plans about what to do when he got here. He was stumped, suddenly, and at a loss. And when he looked at Tella, an embarrassed kindliness came over him. Gently, still embarrassed, he touched the other on the shoulder. “How goes it, kid?” he yelled inanely.
In mid-scream Tella rolled his eyes around like a maddened horse until he could see who it was. He did not stop the scream.
“You got to be quiet,” Welsh yelled, staring at him grimly. “I came to help you.”
It had no reality to Welsh. Tella was dying, maybe it was real to Tella, but to Welsh it wasn’t real, the blueveined intestines, and the flies, the bloody hands, the blood running slowly from the other, newer wound in his chest whenever he breathed, it had no more reality for Welsh than a movie. He was John Wayne and Tella was John Agar.
Finally the scream stopped of itself, from lack of breath, and Tella breathed, causing more blood to run from the hole in his chest. When he spoke, it was only a few decibels lower than the scream. “Fuck you!” he piped. “I’m dying! I
’m dying, Sarge! Look at me! I’m all apart! Get away from me! I’m dying!” Again he breathed, pushing fresh blood from his chest.
“Okay,” Welsh yelled, “but goddam it, do it with less noise.” He was beginning to blink now, and his back to crawl, whenever a bullet flipped up dirt.
“How you going to help me?”
“Take you back.”
“You can’t take me back! You want to fucking help me, shoot me!” Tella screamed, his eyes wide and rolling.
“You’re off your rocker,” Welsh yelled in the noise. “You know I can’t do that.”
“Sure you can! You got your pistol there! Take it the fuck out! You want to help me, shoot me and get it over with! I can’t stand it! I’m scared!”
“Does it hurt much?” Welsh yelled.
“Sure it hurts, you dumb son of a bitch!” Tella screamed. Then he paused, to breathe, and bleed, and then he swallowed, his eyes closed. “You can’t take me back.”
“We’ll see,” Welsh yelled grimly. “You stick with old Welsh. Trust old Welsh. Did I ever give you a bum steer?” He was aware now—he knew—that he wouldn’t be able to stay much longer. Already he was flinching and jerking and jumping uncontrollably under the fire. Crouching he ran around to Tella’s head and got him under the armpits and heaved. In his own arms Welsh could feel the body stretch even before Tella screamed.
“Aaa-eeeee!” The scream was terrible. “You’re killing me! You’re pulling me apart! Put me down, goddam you! Put me down!”
Welsh dropped him quickly, by simple reflex. Too quickly. Tella landed heavily, sobbing. “You son of a bitch! You son of a bitch! Leave me alone! Leave me alone! Don’t touch me!”
“Stop that yelling,” Welsh yelled, feeling abysmally stupid, “it ain’t dignified.” Blinking, his nerves already fluttering like fringe in a high wind now and threatening to forsake him, he scrambled grimly around to Tella’s side. “All right, we’ll do it this way, then.” Slipping one arm under the Italian’s knees and the other under his shoulders, he lifted. Tella was not a small man, but Welsh was bigger, and at the moment he was endowed with superhuman strength. But when he heaved him up to try and carry him like a child, the body jackknifed almost double like a closing pocketknife. Again there was that terrible scream.
“Aaa-eeeee! Put me down! Put me down! You’re breaking me in two! Put me down!”
This time Welsh was able to let him down slowly.
Sobbing, Tella lay and vituperated him. “You son of a bitch! You fucker! You bastard! I told you leave me alone! I never ast you to come down here! Go away! Leave me alone! You shiteater! Stay away from me!” And turning his head away and closing his eyes, he began his desperate, wailing, piercing scream again.
Five yards above them on the slope a line of machinegun bullets slowly stitched itself across from left to right. Welsh happened to be looking straight at it and saw it. He did not even bother to think how all the gunner had to do was depress a degree. All he could think about now was getting out of here. And yet how could he? He had come all this way down here. And he had not saved Tella, and he had not shut him up. Nothing. Except to cause more pain. Pain. With sudden, desperate inspiration he leaped across the prostrate Tella and began rummaging in the dead medic’s belt pouches.
“Here!” he bellowed. “Tella! Take these! Tella!”
Tella stopped screaming and opened his eyes. Welsh tossed him two morphine syrettes he had found and began to attack another pouch.
Tella picked one up. “More!” he cried when he saw what they were. “More! Gimme more! More!”
“Here,” Welsh yelled, and tossed him a double handful he had found in the other pouch, and then turned to run.
But something stopped him. Crouched like a sprinter at the gun, he turned his head and looked at Tella one more time. Tella, already unscrewing the cap from one of the syrettes was looking at him, his eyes wide and white. For a moment they stared at each other.
“Goodby,” Tella cried. “Goodby, Welsh!”
“Goodby, kid,” Welsh yelled. It was all he could think of to say. For that matter, it was all he had time to say, because he was already off and running. And he did not look back to see whether Tella took the syrettes. However, when they were able to get to him safely later in the afternoon, they found ten empty morphine syrettes scattered all around him. The eleventh remained stuck in his arm. He had taken them one after the other, and there was an at least partially relaxed look on his dead face.
Welsh ran with his head down and did not bother to zigzag. He was thinking that now they would get him. After all of that, that run down, all that time down there, now they would have to get him, on the way back. It was his fate, his luck. He knew that they would get him now. But they didn’t. He ran and ran and then he fell headlong over the little crest and just lay there, half dead from exhaustion, Tella’s wild face and bulging blue intestines visible behind his closed eyes. Why in the Name of Foolish Bastardly God had he ever done it in the first place? Sobbing audibly for breath, he made himself a solemn unspoken promise never again to let his screwy wacked-up emotions get the better of his common sense.
But it was when Bugger Stein crawled over to him to pat him on the back and congratulate and thank him, that Welsh really blew his top.
“Sergeant, I saw the whole thing through the glasses,” he heard, feeling the friendly hand on his shoulder. “I want you to know I’m mentioning you in Orders tomorrow. I’m recommending you for the Silver Star. I can only say that I—”
Welsh opened his eyes and found himself staring up into the anxious Jewish face of his Commander. The look in his eyes must have stopped Stein, because he did not finish.
“Captain,” Welsh said deliberately, between ebbing sobs for breath, “if you say one word to thank me, I will punch you square in the nose. Right now, right here. And if you ever so much as mention me in your fucking Orders, I will resign my rating two minutes after, and leave you to run this pore, busted-up outfit by yourself. If I go to jail. So fucking help me.”
He shut his eyes. Then as an afterthought he rolled over away from Bugger, who said nothing. As a second afterthought, he got to all fours and crawled away, off to the right, by himself. Shutting his eyes again, he lay in the sun-tinged dark, listening to the mortars that were still dropping every couple of minutes, groaning over and over to himself his one phrase of understanding: “Property! Property! All for fucking property!” He was terribly dry, but both his canteens were bone empty. After a while he took out the third one and took one precious swallow of its precious gin without opening his eyes.
The lack of water was getting to everyone. Stein was thirsty, too, and his canteens were as empty as Welsh’s. And Stein had no gin. In addition, he still had his call to put through to Colonel Tall at Battalion CP. He was not looking forward to it, and Welsh’s reaction just now in crawling away from him like that was not especially heartening or confidence inspiring. Slowly he crawled back to Fife and the sound power phone. He understood that his crazy First Sergeant, mad or not, wanted to be alone. He must be terribly wrought up. After having just helped a mutilated man to kill himself? And not even counting the danger to himself, to Welsh. His reaction was quite normal. But in spite of that, just for a moment, when Welsh had opened his eyes with that look and had said what he did, Bugger Stein could not escape a fleeting impression that it was because he Stein was Jewish. He thought he had gotten over all that sort of stuff long ago. Years and years ago. He made a grim inward smile. Both because of what he had just thought, and because of what he thought next: It was that fucking infuriating outrageous Anglo-Saxon Tall, with his cropped blond head and young-old boyish face, and his tall spare soldierly frame. West Point, class of ’28. Whenever Stein was forced by the duties of his military life to have contact with that commanding gentleman, Stein always somehow came away from it made doubly aware of being of Jehovah’s Own, a Jew. He motioned to Fife to give him the phone.
When Stein took the phone, he received the e
xtraordinary impression that his arm, his whole body, was too tired, too weak, to lift the almost weightless little tin instrument to his ear. Astonished, he waited. Slowly the arm came up. Already worn out, the affair of Tella’s death had taken more out of him than he realized. How long could he go on? How much longer could he watch his men being killed in agony like this without ceasing to function entirely? Suddenly, for the first time, he was terribly afraid that he might not be able to cut it. This fear, added to the already heavy burden of simple physical fear for himself, seemed almost too much of a load to bear, but it jerked a renewed energy up out of some deep in him. He whistled into the mouthpiece.
Scattered around him, as he whistled and waited, the mixed remnants of his CP force plus a smattering of 2d and 3d Platoon men lay huddled to earth, watching him with white eyes and those drawn in-turned faces, as if all were looking to him and hoping he could in some way get them out of this bind, this mess, so that they might go on living. Stein could grin, and did, at the looks on the faces of Storm and his cook force, which seemed to say clearly that they had had their fill of this volunteering for combat, that if they ever got out of this one they would most certainly never do it again. They were not alone in it, either. Supply Sergeant MacTae and his clerk wore the same look.
Stein did not have long to wait; almost before his whistle had ended the phone was answered on the other end, and it was Colonel Tall himself, not any communications clerk. It was not a long conversation, but in a way it was one of the most important conversations in Stein’s life up to now. Yes, Tall had seen the little three squad attack, and had thought it fine. They had made a good lodgment. But before Stein could say anything further, he demanded to know why Stein had not already followed it up and exploited it? What was the matter with him? Those men should be reinforced immediately. And what were they doing? Tall could see them through his glasses, just lying there behind that ledge. They should be already up and out and at work cleaning out those emplacements.