by James Jones
“But you said you’d have all the water for us we could drink when we got here,” Stein said, much too mildly, he thought, once the words were out.
“And we will!” Tall smiled. “If you’ll look down there, you’ll see them coming. When I saw what was happening, I sent James back to harangue the Regimental Commander, the Division Commander, the Commanding General—any and everybody he could get his hands on, and the more stars the better.”
Stein turned automatically to look. Far below toiling along the valley, where he and his men had lain in such fear and terror yesterday, he could just make out a long snakelike line working slowly toward them. If he looked at it directly, it disappeared; he had to glance at it from the corner of his eye.
“That’s the result,” Tall said cheerfully from behind him. “And they’ll have rations as well as water, Stein! Now I think we ought to see about getting a line organized along the crest. And get this mopping up operation organized a little better. What do you think about the possibilities of a counterattack, Stein?”
The last sentence was noticeably sharper and Stein turned back quickly, in time to catch again on Tall’s face that same odd look: smiling, but underneath not smiling at all. Gaff only looked unhappy.
“We found no signs of any enemy at all, Sir,” he said, then forced himself to add for accuracy: “except one four-man heavy MG which we reduced.” He tried very hard to make his voice completely factual, and not give any double entendre sound to it. No triumph. But then his ego got the better of him. “What about the wounded, Sir? You didn’t bring any medics with you?”
“Stretcher parties should be along with the rations,” Tall said; in his steely voice. “You don’t have any company medics?”
“One, Sir. The other’s dead.”
“We had three with us,” Tall said. “But they’ve been kept busy with our own casualties. I suspect that we’ve sustained more casualties than you have today.” He peered at Stein.
“Shall we have a look at that crest line, Sir?” Stein said.
“I’ll let you do that,” Tall said. “I’ll see to this mopping up exercise.”
“Yes, Sir,” Stein said, and saluted. “Beck! Welsh!” He left George Band with the other officers.
The blow fell late that afternoon. Stein could not honestly say he had not anticipated it. C-for-Charlie’s 1st and 3d Platoons, having effectively cleaned out the bivouac area and captured a number of heavy mortars as well as two 70 mm field guns, were placed into a line along the crest they had captured and which covered the dangerous Elephant’s Trunk. B-for-Baker plus Charlie’s 2d Platoon, organized by Colonel Tall, had continued with the mopping up. Once they had finished, and it took them the best part of the day, 2d Platoon went into reserve behind the 1st and 3d. Baker Company moved into the crest line on the right of Charlie with one of its own platoons as its reserve. Notable in the midst of all this activity was the arrival of the water, and rations, which suspended everything for a half hour. It was when all this had been accomplished, and the fierce sun heat was beginning to abate and prelude the first signs of evening, that Colonel Tall called Stein off to himself in the former Japanese bivouac area back down behind the crest.
“I’m relieving you of your command, Stein,” he said without preamble. His face, that face, that young-old Anglo-Saxon face, so much younger looking and so much handsomer than Stein’s, was set in stern lines.
Stein could feel his heart suddenly beating in his ears, but he did not say anything. He thought about how he had handled that move up The Trunk today. But of course a lot of that had been luck.
“George Band will take over for you,” Tall said when Stein didn’t answer. “I’ve already told him. So you won’t have to.” He waited.
“Yes, Sir,” Stein said.
“It’s a hard thing to do,” Tall said, “and a difficult decision to make. But I just don’t think you’ll ever make a good combat officer. I’ve thought it over carefully.”
“Because of what happened yesterday morning?” Stein said.
“In part,” Tall said. “In part. But it’s really something else. I don’t think you’re tough enough. I think you’re too soft. Too softhearted. Not tough-fibered enough. I think you let your emotions govern you too much. I think your emotions control you. As I said, I’ve thought it over carefully.”
For no reason Stein found himself thinking of young Fife, his clerk who got hit yesterday, and of his run-ins with him, and how he himself used to think of Fife. He had said to the G-l that he thought Fife too neurotic, too emotional to make a good infantry line officer. Perhaps that was the way Tall thought of him? That was strange. But what would his father the ex-World War I Major say to this? He still did not say anything, and suddenly the schoolboy feeling came over him again, the sense of guilt and of being dressed down. He could not shake it. It was almost laughable.
“In a war people have to get killed,” Tall said. “There just isn’t any way around it, Stein. And a good officer has to accept it, and then calculate the loss in lives against the potential gain. I don’t think you can do that.”
“I don’t like to see my men get killed!” Stein heard himself saying hotly in defense.
“Of course not. No good officer does. But he has to be able to face it,” Tall said. “And sometimes he has to be able to order it.”
Stein didn’t answer.
“In any case,” Tall said sternfaced, “it’s my decision to make, and I’ve already made it.”
Stein was studying his own reactions. There was, he found, a quite strong desire to describe for the Colonel the actions he had accomplished today: the long march, the taking of The Trunk, how he had come to Tall’s aid and broken open a way in for him—and then to point out that yesterday, as if Tall didn’t know it, was the first time he had ever really been under real fire, point out that today he had been much less concerned about seeing his men killed. Perhaps that was what Tall wanted him to say, in order to allow him to keep him? Or perhaps Tall didn’t want, did not intend to keep him in any case? But Stein didn’t say it. Instead, he grinned suddenly and said something else. He could feel it was a pretty stiff grin. “In a way, it’s almost a compliment then, isn’t it, Colonel, sort of?”
Tall stared at him exactly as though he had not heard what he said, or that if he had it did not apply to anything at all, and went on with what he obviously had already prepared to say. Stein did not feel like saying it again. Anyway, he was not sure—in fact, he did not believe—that what he had just said was true. He believed, with Tall, the opposite. It was no compliment.
“There’s no point in making a scandal,” Tall went on. “I don’t want it in the records of the Battalion while I commanded it, and there’s no point in your having it put down against you on your records. This has nothing to do with cowardice or inefficiency. I’m going to let you apply for reassignment to the Judge Advocate General’s Corps in Washington for reasons of ill health. You’re a lawyer. Have you had malaria yet?”
“No, Sir.”
“Doesn’t matter, really. I can fix that. Anyway, you probably will have it. Also I’m recommending you for the Silver Star. I will recommend it in such a way that it will definitely not be refused.”
Stein felt an instinctive, angry desire to protest the medal, and half-raised his hand. But then he let it drop. What the hell? What difference did it really make? And in Washington. Stein liked Washington.
Tall from behind his stern, set, expressionless face had noted the half-raised hand of protest. “You might as well have the Purple Heart, too,” he said.
“Why?”
Tall looked him over. “Well, for one thing,” Tall said expressionlessly, “I notice a pretty deep scratch on your left cheek from hitting those goddamned fucking rocks back there yesterday.” He raised his hand. “And if that’s not enough, I also note a couple of blood streaks from scratches on your hands, underneath all that goddam fucking mud.” He stared at Stein expressionlessly.
St
ein suddenly wanted to weep. He didn’t know why, really. Perhaps it was because he could no longer even dislike Tall. Not even Tall.
And if you couldn’t dislike even Tall… “Aye, aye, Sir,” he said evenly, affecting boredom.
“I think it’s best if you go back right away, with the next batch of wounded and prisoners,” Tall said expressionlessly. “It’s no good for you to keep hanging around. The quieter we keep this thing the better it will be for all.”
“Aye, Sir,” Stein said, and saluted, and turned away. He suddenly saw himself in his imagination with tears in his eyes, stumbling, a broken man. But that was pretty cornball. And his eyes were quite dry. To go to Washington? He could not really say he minded that. God, what legends! The war had made it the biggest, roaringest, richest, most exciting boomtown in the nation. And all for paperwork. A group of stretcherbearers were preparing to make the descent down to where the jeeps were finally making their way forward on the short forward slope of Hill 209, and Stein headed for them.
He stared a long time at Hill 209’s short forward slope. That was where just yesterday they had moved forward into enemy territory, and now it was no longer dangerous. Men swarmed along it. So this was it. The long-awaited, soul-illuminating experience of combat. Stein could not find it any different from working for one of the great law offices, or any of the huge corporations. Or for government. Like the Soviets. A little more dangerous to life and limb, but no different in its effect upon the reward-haunted, ax-fearing spirits of the workers. When the stretcher party was ready, he went with them, helping with the stretchers over the rough places when it was necessary. What did Tall really think of him? Or did he think nothing at all?
The word got around quickly. In spite of Tall’s wish to keep it quiet, all of C-for-Charlie—and for that matter, the entire Battalion—knew that C Company’s commander had been relieved within fifteen minutes after Stein had left. In C-for-Charlie it made many of the men and noncoms very angry, but it was Acting Sergeant Witt who first thought of the idea of raising a deputation to go and protest. Many were in favor of the idea, but asked who would they protest to? To Brass Band, the new commander, or to Shorty Tall himself? It seemed a sort of slap in the face to protest to Band. On the other hand to protest to Shorty was inconceivable, since he would undoubtedly throw them all in the can for even daring to think of such a thing in the first place. In the end it all tapered away to nothing but bitter mumble. But if the others were willing to assuage their consciences this way, Witt who was very angry did not feel he could let it go at that.
Witt had already had one bad run-in today. When he had so wisely and delicately retired from proximity to the reunion of Tall and Stein, (he too had seen that there was no water), he had gone off a ways on the hillside to sit down by himself and rest. He was exhausted. And terribly dry. It was here, as he simply sat numbly staring emptily off down the hill, that Charlie Dale the ex second cook, who had come through with Gaff and the other volunteers in the B Company platoons, sought him out to complain.
The stocky Dale with his perpetually hunched shoulders and powerful long arms marched himself up stolidly, directly in front of the sitting Witt and stood himself there lumpishly to have his say. He had his rifle in his hands.
“I got somethin I want to tell you, Witt,” he growled.
Witt’s mind, such as it was at the moment, was far, far away. “Yeah?” he said somnambulantly. “What’s that?”
“You shouldn’t ought to talk to me like you did,” Dale growled authoritatively, “and I don’t want you to do it any more. That’s an order.”
“What?” Witt said, coming more awake at the tone of voice. “What? When?”
“Back there at the strongpoint this morning. You remember, Witt.”
“What did I say?”
“You called me a jerk when I tossed that grenade down that one hole and that Jap tossed it back out. That’s no way to talk to me. I’m a noncom now, and it ain’t dignified. In any case,” he said, a phrase he had picked up from listening to Gaff and Stein, and then repeated it with relish. “In any case, I’m orderin you not to do it no more.”
Witt looked as if he had been stung by a mad bee. Not angry. Mad. “Arngh, come off it, Charlie,” he snarled. “I knew you when you was a lousy second cook. And a not very good one at that. I ain’t takin any orders from you. You can shove them acting stripes up your ass.”
“You called me a jerk.”
“Well, you are a jerk!” Witt shouted, scrambling to his feet. “A jerk! A jerk! A jerk! And what’s more, you’re stupid! You should of known better than to—And anyway, I’m an acting sergeant too myself! Stein made me this morning! Now, peel off!” He was still furious about Tall’s having made such an ass of him this morning, and now here this ass was trying to give him stupid orders. “Jerk!” he shouted again insanely.
Dale appeared perplexed by the information that his enemy was now also an acting sergeant. “I’m not a jerk,” he said calmly. “And you wasn’t no acting sergeant when you done it. And anyway, I was made before you so I still outrank you. And I ain’t scared of you.” Then his voice softened as he thought of a new thing. “Besides, it just don’t look good in front of the men, Witt,” he said as if they were two Majors bellying up to the Officers’ Club bar.
“Men, my ass! Men, my ass!” Witt shouted. He bent and picked up his rifle and held it in both hands across the front of him the way a man holds a two-ended weapon. The bayonet wasn’t on it. “Charlie Dale, I never hit nobody without I warn them first. That’s my policy. Well, I’m warning you. Get away from me and stay away. If you ever say another word to me, I’ll belt your fucking head in. And I can whip your ass!”
“I think I can whip you,” Dale said in his phlegmatic way.
“Then have a go! Have a go!”
“No, there’s too much work to do around here right now. The mopping up’s just starting. I don’t want to miss that.”
“Anything you want!” Witt yelled. “Knives, bayonets, fists, riflebutts, shooting!”
“Fists’ll do,” Dale said narrowly. “I don’t want to kill you—”
“You couldn’t!”
“—and I know you been a boxer,” Dale went on calmly. “And all that shit. I can still whip you.”
“Yeah?” Witt advanced on him raising his riflebutt as if to stroke him in the side of the head with it, but Dale backed off. He raised his own rifle, which was bayoneted, into fighting position.
“Maybe I couldn’t whip you,” Dale decided. “But you’ll know you been in a fight, buddy.”
“Come on! Come on!” Witt cried. “Talk! Talk! Talk!”
“There’s too much serious work to do,” Dale said, “right now. I’ll try you later, buddy.” He turned and walked away.
“Any time!” Witt had yelled after him, and then sat back down, his rifle across his knees. He was trembling with a cold rage. Whip him! There wasn’t a man his size in the Regiment who could whip him. And he doubted there was anybody in the Regiment who could whip him at bayonet fighting. As for shooting, he had been high gun in every Regiment he served with for the past six years. Don’t look good in front of the men. Jesus!
Now, he had decided, he had two people in the Battalion to hate: its Commander and Charlie Dale.
Witt had not, what with all the mopping up fighting of the afternoon, retained his mood of supreme, disgusted fury; but it had come back over him soon enough as soon as the news of Stein’s disgrace had reached him and he tried to organize a protest. These guys were all slobs, that was the truth. And this Battalion was going to hell on a sled. Band! For Company Commander? Witt believed he knew how to recognize a Company Commander, and Brass Band was no Company Commander. For that matter, neither had Stein been one. He had only just become one in the last two days, and look what happened! Now they were kicking him out. As the possibility of an organized protest slowly dwindled away into grumbling, just as slowly Witt gradually realized what he was going to do. He just didn’t wa
nt to be in this shitty battalion any more. Not without Stein. A cold, implacable Kentuckyness came over him, pulling his sharp chin down into his thin neck and setting his narrow shoulders stolidly. He reported himself to the new Company Commander at the CP shortly before dusk.
That goddamned Welsh was there, of course. Brass Band was sitting six feet away from him, eating the last of a can of C ration meat-and-beans.
“Private Witt requests permission to speak to the Company Commander,” Witt said to the Sergeant. Band looked up from his meat-and-beans with those eager, screwball eyes of his. But he didn’t say anything. And Witt did not let his eyes waver from the Sergeant.
Welsh stared at him grimly. Then he turned his head. “Sir, Private Witt requests permission to speak to the Company Commander,” he snarled.
“Okay,” Band said, and smiled his eager smile. He took a last bite of his meat-and-beans, threw away the can, licked off his spoon and put it in his pocket. He was wearing no helmet. Witt, like everybody else in the two companies, knew that Band had had his helmet shot off his head by a Japanese coming up out of a hole, during the mopping up work. The bullet had gone in the left side at about the temple making a small, neat hole, and had come out the back making a large, jagged hole. Band who had not been knocked down had spun and shot the Jap. The battered helmet now lay beside him on the ground. Witt marched over to him and saluted.
“Sit down, Witt, sit down. Make yourself com-fort-able,” he said in a jocular, cavalier way. “But you’re not ‘Private’ Witt anymore; you’re ‘Acting Sergeant’ Witt. I heard Captain Stein when he made you this morning.” He bent and picked up the helmet. “Have you seen my helmet, Witt?”
“No, Sir,” Witt said truthfully.
Band pulled the dented fiber liner out of it and displayed it. Then he stuck his finger through the bigger hole and waggled it at Witt. “That’s something, isn’t it, hunh?”
“Yes, Sir,” Witt said.
Band threw the helmet aside, after putting back in the liner. “I never knew these things ever really protected anybody,” he said. “I’m going to keep this, the shell anyway, and take it home with me when I get another.”