by James Jones
Witt suddenly thought of John Bell who had had the same thing happen to him at the strongpoint, and for a moment was intensely sorry to be leaving him, and the others. They were a good bunch, that assault group. Except for Charlie Dale.
“But I said sit down, Witt, sit down,” Band smiled.
“I prefer to stand, Sir,” Witt said.
“Oh?” Band’s eager smile disappeared. “All right, Witt. What was it you wanted, Witt?”
“Sir, I want to tell the Company Commander that I am returning to my old outfit, Cannon Company of this Regiment,” Witt said. “The reason I wanted to tell the Company Commander was so that if the Company Commander noticed I wasn’t around, he would know why.”
“Well that isn’t necessary, Witt. I think we can arrange to have you transferred,” Band said amiably. He laughed. “Don’t worry about being AWOL. You’ve been a pretty valuable man the last couple of days, you know.”
“Yes, Sir,” Witt said.
“You know, we’re short of noncoms. Tomorrow I intend to make all the temporary ranks permanent.”
A bribe. Witt could smell Welsh watching with supreme disgust. “Yes, Sir,” he said.
Band’s eyes suddenly narrowed above his still smiling mouth. “You still want to go.” He sighed. “All right, Witt. I guess there’s really no way I can stop you officially. And anyway I wouldn’t want a man in my command who didn’t want to serve under me.”
“It’s not that, Sir,” Witt lied. Because it was. At least partly. “It’s that I don’t want to serve in a battalion”—he deliberately did not mention Colonel Tall—“that does to guys what this battalion did to Captain Stein,”
“Okay, Witt.” Then he smiled that smile again. “But I feel that’s not up to us to judge. Every army is bigger than any single man in it.”
Preachin’s. “Yes, Sir,” Witt said.
“That’s all, Witt,” Band said. Witt saluted, Band returned it, and Witt turned away.
“Oh, Witt!” Band said softly. Witt turned back. “Perhaps you’d like a letter to present to your Company Commander in Cannon Company attesting to where you’ve been the past two days. If you would, I’d be glad to write one for you.”
“Thank you, Sir,” Witt said impassively.
“Sergeant,” Band said, “write me a letter saying To Whom It May Concern that Witt has been with this organization the past two days in the thick of the fighting and has been recommended for decorations.”
“I ain’t got no typewriter,” Welsh said disgustedly.
“Don’t argue with me, Sergeant!” Band shouted. “Write the letter! Take this sheet of paper and write the letter!”
“Aye, Sir,” Welsh said. He took the sheet Band handed him from the inherited musette of Stein. “Weld!” The middleaged little draftee came running. “Take this paper and go over to that stump and write me a letter. I want it printed. You got a pen?” he barked.
“Yes, Sir!”
“You know what to put in the letter?”
“Yes, Sir!” Weld said. “Yes, Sir!”
“Okay. Move! And don’t call me Sir, fuckface. You fucking draftee.”
Welsh sat down and folded his arms and looked at both of them, Witt and Band. Then suddenly he grinned his crazy, mad, furry-eyed grin at both of them. Somewhere in that labyrinthine mind of his, he was obviously lumping them together and letting them know it. Witt didn’t care, but he didn’t like Band any better than Welsh did. Or than he liked Welsh himself, for that matter. There was something obscene and too soft about the way the Lieutenant acted.
When the letter was written and signed—it took only a few moments—Welsh handed it over. But when Witt took hold of it, Welsh suddenly clamped his thumb and forefinger together, not letting it go. When Witt exerted some pressure, Welsh held on, grinning that stupid insane grin down into his face. But when Witt let go and was just dropping his arm, Welsh let go too, and the paper almost fell to the ground. Witt had to catch it. Welsh didn’t say a word. Witt turned away.
“There’s no need to go now, Witt,” Band called from behind him. “It’s practically dark. You can wait till tomorrow,”
“I ain’t afraid of the dark, Lootenant,” Witt said to him, but staring hard at Welsh. He left. He was angry at himself for wanting the letter. He should of left it, or refused it in the first place. He didn’t really need it. Screw them all, the cheap bastards. Not a one of them had lifted a finger to help poor old Stein. And if Band thought he could buy off Bob Witt with a sergeantcy, or an offer to stay overnight and maybe reconsider, he didn’t know his guy. As for hiking back to Hill 209 through the dark, he could do that standing on his head. And he did.
It was only a few minutes after Witt left the C-for-Charlie CP that Colonel Tall sent out from his own Headquarters CP the letter that he had spent the last two hours drafting. He was not really satisfied with it, the style was both too florid and too hard at the same time, but he wanted to get it out to be read to the men before it got too dark. He much would have preferred to make the Battalion a personal address, but with them on the line that was impossible. So he had had his clerks make two handwritten copies for each company. He spoke of the victory, of course, in glowing terms. But mainly what he wanted them to know was that he had secured for the Battalion a week’s rest off the line. (He had spent the best part of half an hour arguing about it with both Regiment and Division, as soon as the sound power phone lines were laid.) His Battalion had sustained the highest casualties in the Division, and had captured the toughest objective. They would be relieved late tomorrow by a battalion of the Division’s reserve regiment. Tall hoped to hear a few cheers from the line when this was read to them, and in the gathering dusk as he stood off from his CP by himself to listen, he was not disappointed. The other thing he wanted to tell them was that there would be a personal inspection of the line tomorrow by the Division Commander. It was because of this inspection that they could not be relieved sooner. Tall expected to hear some groans about this and, he noted smiling to himself, he was not disappointed here either. He flattered himself that he knew pretty well how enlisted men worked—he ought to after fifteen years—and the news of the week’s relief much more than offset any natural irritation over the inspection.
The inspection began at ten-thirty. This was because the Division Commander was spending the morning going over the battleground down the hill with his staff. But long before ten-thirty the Division Press Officer was up on the line going over the area, checking, arranging, changing, setting up camera angles—and searching. He was a big, bluff, open sort of man, a Major, who had been an All-America tackle during his years at The Point. He found what he was searching for in the person of Private Train, the stutterer, upon whose lap young Coporal Fife had fallen after being hit with his mortar shell.
There had been a number of ‘Samurai Sabers’ taken during the two days. Queen (now evacuated), Doll and Cash each had one. So did several others in both companies. But it was left by fate to Train (through no particular fault of his own, it must be said) to take the only real jewel-encrusted sword like the ones they had all read about in the papers for so long. Train, more from exhaustion and to catch a breather than anything else, had stumbled into one of the stick shanties along the crest for a moment, and had found it lying on the mud floor.
This particular sword had a sort of false hilt of dark wood chased with a lot of gold and ivory, in addition to its beautifully made leather hilt cover. It was not an especially secret mechanism, and later when Train took it off, he found jewels—a couple as large as his thumbnail—embedded in the steel tang. Rubies, emeralds, some small diamonds. The false wooden hilt had been cunningly carved inside to fit perfectly together over the protuberances of the stones. The whole sword was a beautiful piece of workmanship. It must have belonged to at least a general, Train’s wide-eyed buddies told him when he showed it—though, however, they said, 2d Lieutenants were known to carry such swords when they were family heirlooms.
The sword
caused a great deal of excitement in the Battalion, its value being variously estimated at everything from $500 up to $2000. And it was this sword which the Division Press Officer was seeking, in addition to doing the rest of his duties. He did not know it belonged to Train, but he knew it was somewhere in C-for-Charlie. Rumor of it had penetrated far to the rear, and the Press Officer had had a brilliant idea when he heard about it. He went straight to Lieutenant Band when he arrived. After thinking a moment, Band sent him to Train. He thought that must be the one. He hadn’t seen it himself, or paid much attention. But that must be the one. It was.
“This is it!” the Press Officer cried excitedly when Train showed it to him. “This is the one! Son, you’re a very lucky man! You know what you’re going to do? You’re going to present this sword to the General when he makes his inspection!”
“I-I a-am?” Train said.
“You sure are! Why, I’ll have your face in every movie theater across the whole of the United States that shows newsreels! Think of that! What do you think of that? Your face!”
Train gulped beneath his sharp-edged, dangling, pickle nose. “W-Well, I-I k-kind of thought I’d I-like to k-keep it, M-Major, S-Sir,” he said timidly.
“Keep it!” the Major roared. “Whatever for! What the hell for! What would you do with it!”
“W-Well, y-you know. N-Nothing r-really. J-Just k-keep it,” Train tried to explain. “F-For a s-souvenir, l-like.”
“Don’t be silly!” the Major bellowed. “In the first place, you’d probably lose it before this war is over! Or sell it! The General has a marvelous collection of bizarre and antique weapons! A piece like this belongs in a collection like his!”
“W-Well—”
“And think what a newsreel shot it will make,” the Major hollered. “The General comes up! You give him the sword! You draw it and you show him how to take the false hilt off! Then you give it back to him! He puts the hilt back on! He shakes your hand! General Bank shakes your hand! And we’ll record your voice! You’ll say, ‘General Bank, I’d like you to have this Japanese sword I took!’ Or something like that! Think of it! Think of that! You’ll have your face, and your voice, in every movie theater across the nation! Maybe even your family will see you!”
“W-Well,” Train said with timid regret, “if you r-really think it’s the b-best th-thing to—”
“Think it!” the Major trumpeted. “Think it! I, personally—personally! can guarantee you that! It’s something you’ll never regret! Wait until your family writes you they have seen you!” He shook his hand. “Now, give me the sword! I want to look at it some more! Have to figure out the best angle to photograph it, you know! I’ll give it back to you just before the General takes it! Thank you,—uh,—uh, Train?”
“Y-Yes, S-Sir,” Train said. “Frank P.”
“You go ahead with your work here, and I’ll see you later on!” the Major shouted.
With the sword, the Press Officer came back down to the little CP where Welsh and Band were still working on their casualty listings. They all looked at it. But the Press Officer was scratching his head and didn’t look very happy.
“What a face,” he said. “I guess I never saw a more goddamned un-soldierly-looking face in my whole life. With that nose. And no chin. And he would have to stutter.” He looked up. “You suppose I could get another, slightly better looking type to do the actual presentation?” He looked at both of them.
“I suppose not,” the Press Officer said, answering himself. “But, God.” Then he brightened. “I suppose in one way it’ll really look even more democratic, won’t it? A little rear-rank pipsqueak like that. Yeah, I guess it’ll even be better, in a way.”
It was, in fact, the highlight of the whole camera-recorded inspection tour, the movie cameras grinding, the General smiling, shaking Train’s hand, Train smiling. The still cameras got it all the first time, but the movie cameras had to shoot their sequence over a second time because Train was so nervous at speaking to a General that he stuttered more than usual. But the second time he was better.
There was some muttered comment and bitter grumbling in the C-for-Charlie platoons, about Train letting himself be talked into giving his trophy away like that. Several of his friends told him he was stupid. Train tried to explain that it did not appear that he had had much choice. And anyway, if the General really wanted it that bad … His friends shook their heads in disgust.
But nobody really cared very much. They were all too excited, and too relieved, to be getting a chance to go back off the line. As soon as the Division Commander had passed on to the B Company line, they began getting their stuff together to make the move.
The march back, over that terrain where they had lain so long in such fear and trembling the last two days, and which now was so peaceful, was strange to everyone. And they all felt a bit numb.
CHAPTER 6
AS SOON AS THEY were bivouacked the interminable accounts began. Everybody had at least three stories of personal, hair-raising escape from death to tell, and at least two stories of personal, exciting Jap-killing. Only in the last two days of their week off, when they began to think about going back up there a second time, did they begin to stop talking about the first time.
It was interesting to watch the gradual diminution of the universal numbness which afflicted everyone. In most of them the numbness required about two days to go away. By the third day nearly all of them had become almost the same personalities they had been before. But John Bell, for one,—who watched this denumbnification process with more self-interest than most—could not help wondering if any of them could ever really become the same again. He didn’t think so. Not without lying, anyway. Perhaps long years after the war was done, when each had built his defenses of lies which fitted his needs, and had listened long enough to those other lies the national propaganda would have distilled for them by then, they could all go down to the American Legion like their fathers and talk about it within the limits of a prescribed rationale which allowed them selfrespect. They could pretend to each other they were men. And avoid admitting they had once seen something animal within themselves that terrified them. But then, most of them were doing that right now. Already. Including him. Bell had to laugh, and then was terrified because he had. At any rate, it was those first two days of numbness which set the pattern for the entire week of ‘rest’. Rest!?
They came down from the hills and out of the jungle with their haunted faces and pooldeep, seadark eyes, lugging every ounce of booty they could carry and looking more like Bowery scavengers than soldiers. Japanese pistols, rifles, helmets, belts, pouches, swords and sabers, and even one machinegun: Privates Mazzi and Tills, in addition to carrying the buttplate and mortar tube on their backs, plus their other souvenirs, transported between them a heavy caliber Japanese MG, tripod and all, which had escaped the notice of the Ordnance people largely because Mazzi and Tills had hidden it. Tills had found it first and Mazzi had offered to go in on the carrying for half, thus patching up their friendship. They had hopes of getting a whole case of Australian scotch for such a rare item, and they staggered in with it into the bivouac area near-dead from fatigue.
The bivouac which had been assigned C-for-Charlie was on top of a small, bare hill in some trees, just on the northern edge of the airfield which spread itself out below them. As a result, they were able almost every afternoon to lie out on their backs in the sun with their shirts off and watch the Japanese light bombers come in from the north to bomb the field. Because of their hill’s position, the bombbay doors were always open before the bombers reached them, and once they were even able to see a Japanese face peering down at them. Twice the bombs were released directly over their heads, which was spinechilling fun and perfectly safe. And each time after the bombers had passed, they could jump up and watch the effects down on the field, for which they had a perfect grandstand seat. The first day the raid scared the living hell out of everybody: to be killed by an aerial bomb after what they’d bee
n through? but after they understood, it became their daily—or almost daily—double feature: first the planes themselves, and then the effect on the field. Several times they were able to see American planes exploded and burning. Air Corps men fighting gasoline fires, now and then some actual wounded and dead, and if nothing else there were always the exploded holes in the metal matting of the airstrip which had to be repaired before planes could take off. Altogether it made a very entertaining spectacle to be seen almost every day. But despite the greatness of the bivouac’s daytime entertainment facilities, there was something else about it of even greater importance due to its proximity to the airfield. This was the souvenir trade. For which they had come down from the hills prepared.
Every afternoon after the daily raid—if there was one, and usually there was—the whole of C-for-Charlie would descend en masse to the field, spread out over the undamaged or least damaged areas of it, and begin the bargaining. While prices had become more or less stabilized, they were not absolutely fixed and it was possible if you had an item some Air Corps man particularly wanted, to get higher than the normal going rate. The Air Corps men could and would pay higher because it was they who imported the booze. Every day a plane flew in from Australia with Air Corps Generals’ supplies such as milk, meat and cheese, and the crews of these flights, known universally as the “Milk Run”, stuffed every available bit of space with bottles or cases of Scotch. Consequently it was pointless to bargain with the ground troops or service forces, all of whose whiskey ultimately came from the Air Corps, and who even if they did not drink it themselves had to be extremely close with it—pointless at any rate if you could get to the airfield easily, and C-for-Charlie could.
A silk battle flag, preferably bloodstained, was always worth at least three Imperial quarts. A rifle on the other hand would hardly bring a pint. A helmet if it bore the officer’s gold or silver star and was in good condition might bring one Imperial quart. Pistols were especially in demand. There were two types of Japanese pistols. One, cheaper and blighter, was modeled on some European popgun pistol and would bring three Imperial quarts; the other, heavier and better made, was copied from the German Luger and had the Luger’s elbow-type slide action. This one was much rarer and apparently for officers and would bring four, five or even six Imperial quarts. A typical, normal ‘Samurai saber’ was always worth five Imperial quarts at least, and the better grade ones with gold and ivory chasing could bring as high as nine Imperial quarts. A jewelled one you could set your own price on, but they were unknown in the ordinary market. In addition to these solid staples there were other things. The thick leather belts with their old-fashioned leather ammo pouches, for example, which the Air Corps men liked to wear for pistol belts. Also a lot of the Air Corps men wanted Japanese photographs and wallets. The photos with Japanese writing on them were worth more than those without, and the photos of the soldiers themselves, or of groups of soldiers, were worth more than the photos of wives or girlfriends—unless of course they were pornographic. A certain amount of pornographic photos did turn up from time to time and were worth a lot. Money of course was practically meaningless to everyone except the crews of the “Milk Run” planes who could spend it in Australia, and men who had it but no souvenirs to trade were known to pay as high as fifty dollars for one Imperial quart of Scotch.