The Thin Red Line

by James Jones

  There was only one glass in the tent so they all took it straight from the neck of the bottle. They all drank greedily, and Stein suddenly realized that whatever medicines they had been dosed with at the hospital whiskey was not one of them. Bending to his baggage, he hauled out the three bottles he had intended to take with him on the plane and gave them to them. He could easily get more before he left. When they tried to thank him, he only smiled a sad little selfdeprecating half-smile.

  They were all talking at once, all babbling away together, and Stein felt curiously detached from them. The upshot of what they wanted to say was that they wanted to thank him for saving the company with his flanking move, that they were all sorry to see him go, that they thought he had gotten a rotten deal. Stein merely smiled and moved his head depreciatingly. He was not at all sure himself that they were right. And anyway it didn’t matter. He didn’t care. He was glad to be going.

  “We ought to all go and make a protest!” Fife cried, almost with tears in his eyes. “All go in a body and—”

  “For what?” Stein smiled and shook his head. “What good would it do? Anyway, I want to go. You wouldn’t want to take away my chances of getting evacuated, would you?”

  No, they chanted in unison, Jesus Christ no. They wouldn’t want to do that.

  “Then leave it alone. Let it lay like it is.”

  When they had left, he stood in the door of the tent and sadly watched them struggle off with their whiskey, unshaven, dirty, still in the mudslicked fatigues from the battle, each one sporting his clean white bandage somewhere on his person—except for Storm and McCron: Storm’s hand had never been bandaged, and McCron’s wound was inside. Then he went back inside and poured himself a drink.

  He would never know. That was the truth. And that was the hell of it. Perhaps the Japanese had had that jungle line on the right fully covered during the first day, and had only moved their men away later, in the night. Even if the jungle had been open, a patrol in force with a platoon, as he suggested, would have been no good. One platoon could never have taken that bivouac area alone. And it was too late in the day to send an entire company. Certainly, the right should have been reconnoitered thoroughly before making an attack plan calling for a frontal attack. But he had not suggested that himself the day before and neither had Tall or anybody else. So where did that leave you?

  But none of that was the basic problem, was it? He had been too hasty, certainly, in refusing Tall’s order to attack, and he should have stalled and waited till he found out what Beck could do on the Ridge. The basic problem was something else. And Stein didn’t know the answer to that either. The question was: Had Stein refused Tall’s order really because he was afraid for his men, because so many of his men were being killed? Or had he refused Tall’s order because he was afraid for himself, afraid he might be killed? Nobody had ever suggested such a thing or even hinted at it. But Stein didn’t know. He had pondered and pondered it in those nights when he sat alone in the little sleeping tent and listened to the airraids, and he just didn’t know. Perhaps it had been some of both. But if it had been both, then which had been the stronger impulse? Which had really dictated his decision? He just didn’t know. And if he didn’t know now, he would never know. It would remain with him, unsolved. That was something to live with, but on the other hand Stein found he no longer gave a damn what his father the World War I Major thought. Men changed their wars in the years that followed after they fought them. It was that old thing about “I’ll-believe-your-lies-about-you, if-you’ll-believe-my-lies-about-me.” History. And Stein knew now his father had lied—or if not lied, had augmented. And Stein hoped he would never do that. He might, but he hoped not.

  But as for the rest, he no longer cared. A lot of people were going to live through this war, many more than got killed in it, and Stein intended to be one of those if he could. Washington. Women. The fat boom town. With his campaign ribbons and medals he ought to make out pretty well. He could do a lot worse. And even if rumor followed him, nobody was going to say anything to him about it because it was all part of the great conspiracy. And as long as you played ball with the conspiracy ... the great conspiracy of history …

  Stein knew something else that he had not told the C-for-Charlie delegation of wounded, and that was that Captain Johnny Gaff would not be going back up on the line with the Battalion when they went. Gaff had been recommended for the Congressional Medal of Honor, and he was now too valuable to send back up. Under Colonel Tall’s auspices, the recommendation had already been signed by the Division Commander and sent forward to CINCSWPA by cable. In a week or so it ought to be back from Washington, and in the meantime Johnny Gaff was being flown to Esperito Santo to act as aide to the General Commanding. Stein fully expected to meet him in Washington someday, during one of his bond selling tours. Maybe they’d get drunk together. Anyway, Gaff’s line about “This is where we separate the men from the boys, the sheep from the goats.” had been quoted in full in the cable.

  While the delegation of C-for-Charlie wounded had babbled their silly, idiotic, childish ideals about ‘fair play to Stein,’ Stein had exchanged with Storm—who said almost nothing—an incredible, astonishing look of secret knowledge, and had been shocked to realize that Storm knew what he knew. It was not something that could be admitted aloud, or even acknowledged privately, but it was a look of full and complete understanding. Storm, like him, knew that many many more people were going to live through this war than got killed in it; that as soon as it was over all the nations involved would start helping each other and be friends again, except for the dead. And Storm—like him—meant to be one of the ones who lived if he possibly could. And Storm, like him, did not feel at all guilty. Stein finished his drink and sat down again to wait—for tomorrow and the plane. As he sat, the first chills and fever of his first malaria session attacked him and began playing on him like on a musical instrument. He sat tasting these physical sensations, grinning to himself.

  It was on the way back to the hospital with the other six casualties and the three bottles of whiskey that McCron took another of his fits. He had been very quiet since leaving Bugger Stein’s tent, a sign which usually presaged one of his attacks, but nobody had paid any attention because of the happy windfall of whiskey and their love-warm conversation about Stein. Consequently, no one was prepared for it when McCron suddenly threw himself down in the mud at the edge of the road and began to weep, whimper and howl, biting his clenched knuckles and staring over at them with the wild eyes of a rabid animal, while he curled himself up into the tightest ball his body could make. While they rushed to him and tried to straighten him out and soothe him, he screamed at them half in incomprehensible gibberish, half in lucid phrases. When they first stood up Wynn screamed “Oh my God!” in a voice of terrible recognition with the blood spurting a foot from his throat, and had gone down. Nineteen. Only nineteen. Next to him Earl went down in silence because his face had been torn open to a mass of red. He was twenty. Further to the left the other two Darl and Gwenne had gone down too yelling “I’m killed! I’m killed!” All of them at once, in a matter of seconds. And then the others. All the others. He had tried to help them. He had tried to protect them. I tried. I tried.

  Finally they got him to stop screaming and got his body straightened out, which last they had learned by experience helped to quiet him more than anything. But he was still weeping and whimpering and went on biting his now bloody knuckles, and they knew also from experience that this stage usually went on a long time. It was either carry him, or stay here with him until they missed supper chow. So they carried him. Slowly the weeping and knuckle biting stopped until he was only drawing long shuddering sobs through his clenched fists pressed against his mouth. By the time they had almost reached the compound he was all right enough to say in a thick voice, “Gimme a drinka whiskey,” which they stopped and did, then had one themselves, and then went on in to eat. They were all of them sure McCron would be evacuated any day now. The
y were also sure that with his haggard face and haunted eyes he would feel guilty about going the rest of his life, though none of them would have. He was in fact evacuated the day after the visit to Stein. Two days later Fife and Storm were sent back to the company together.

  The first thing they both noticed, during that first evening of cataloging the hits, runs and errors of evacuation for the nonwounded who had not had their advantages, was that everybody in the old outfit was sporting a beard. In the hospital everybody was clean-shaven. Almost the first thing the orderlies did after getting them settled in was to come around with a dollar Gillette and a blade (which they later carried off to another bed, but brought back every day) and insist that everybody shave. Those incapable of shaving themselves, the orderlies shaved for them. So Fife and Storm with their smooth faces immediately noticed the beards first of all. It seemed to apply to everyone in the company except the officers. They were not very big beards—after all it was only eleven days since they had first departed on the march up to the line, and fifty per cent of them were too young to raise much of a beard anyway—but it seemed to be very important to everyone. But when Storm and Fife asked about it nobody seemed to know quite why. It was just something which had swept through the company like a fad and, they learned later, the same thing had happened in the rest of the Battalion. It was not a protest against anything. It was not a time device or a vow, as if they had promised not to shave till the whole island was captured. It was not even a manliness game: no display of ‘tough virility’. It was just that everyone—rightly or wrongly (John Bell, whom Fife and Storm also saw, thought wrongly though he had a beard)—felt he was a different person from the man who had gone up on the line ten days ago; and the beards seemed to symbolize, seemed to make material, this change. Storm and Fife, of course, immediately stopped shaving.

  There were other changes in the company besides the beards—as Fife, especially, found out soon enough. They drank and talked a long time that night, and so wound up sleeping drunk with borrowed blankets on the floors of somebody else’s tents, but when Fife reported to the orderly room tent the next morning, he found he was out of a job.

  There had been an almost wholesale number of promotions in the company: Skinny Culn replaced Grove as platoon sergeant of 1st Platoon; Beck of course replaced Keck as platoon sergeant of 2nd Platoon; Sergeant Field, Pfc Doll’s old squad sergeant in 1st Platoon, had replaced S/Sgt Spain as platoon leader of 3rd Platoon. And after that it went right on down the line: Charlie Dale had made squad sergeant; Doll had made squad sergeant; John Bell had made squad sergeant; and so had a number of others. And as for the orderly room, the middleaged little draftee Weld had been made corporal and was now Welsh’s Forward Echelon clerk. He had two privates for assistants, just as Fife himself had once had, and one of them turned out to be Pfc Train, the stutterer, in whose lap Fife had fallen after being hit, he who had found and then given away the jewelled sword.

  It was strange what a little authority and a couple of stripes could do to a man. When Fife came in, Weld was sitting behind Fife’s old field desk, punching away at Fife’s old typewriter with a pencil behind his ear, and ordering his two assistants around as if they were a full Army Corps. Fife had always thought of little old Joe Weld as the meekest of men. Now Weld looked up at him with a coldeyed smile floating on his middleaged face, said calmly “Oh hello there Fife.” He was obviously not about to turn loose of his newly acquired status if he could help it.

  The two new assistant clerks, Train and the other one—a young draftee named Crown, both looked at Fife with deeply guilty looks on their faces and said nothing. Mad Welsh of course was sitting behind his own field desk, working. While Fife stood, he continued to work. Finally he looked up. He must have known already that Fife had returned with Storm from the hospital, but he showed no surprise, pleasure, warmth or even simple kindliness on his crazy, black-Welsh face.

  “Well what do you want, kid?” he said brusquely, as if Fife had never been away. Then he smiled his crazy, slyeyed, sadist’s grin.

  “I came back from the hospital and I’m supposed to report in,” Fife said furiously. But his anger could not even begin to overcome in him his sense of lostness, war terror, terrible aloneness. This orderly room had been his sanctuary.

  “Okay,” Welsh said. “So you’ve reported.”

  “What’s Weld doing at my desk, punching my typewriter?” Fife demanded.

  “Corporal Weld is my Forward Echelon clerk. Them other two punk assholes there are his assistant runners. Here, Fuckface!” Welsh barked and held out a paper to Weld. “Take this over to MacTae in supply.”

  “Right, Sarge!” Weld barked back. He got up and took the paper and turned around, throwing out his meager chest. “Train! Here!”

  “I said TAKE it!” Welsh shouted.

  “Right, Sarge!” Weld barked. He left.

  “Ain’t he an asshole?” Welsh grinned at Fife.

  “But you knew I was coming back from the hospital!” Fife said. “You knew I was—”

  “Knew you were comin back! How the hell would I know you were comin back? I got a company to run here. You think it can wait for you? If you’d had any fucking guts or brains, you’d of got yourself evacuated off this Rock and back to the United States with a wound like you had. If I’d of been—”

  “You can’t do this to me, Welsh!” Fife cried. “By God you can’t! You can’t take and—”

  “I can’t, can’t I!” Welsh bellowed. He stood up and leaned his knuckles on the desk. “Look around you! It’s done. It was done while you were in the hospital waiting to be evacuated.” He grinned his furry-eyed grin. “You can’t blame me if you didn’t have guts or brains enough to—”

  “God damn you, I notice you didn’t make anybody Mess Sergeant in Stormy’s place!” Fife shouted.

  “Storm asked me to wait because he thought he might be comin back,” Welsh said, grinning insolently. He sat back down. Corporal Weld had sneaked back in and sat himself down at Fife’s old desk to listen.

  It was exactly like a hundred others of their furious battles and insulting arguments, and for a moment in the heat of it Fife forgot the reason for it. But then his heart sank, because he was no longer Welsh’s clerk. He would never have believed, whatever their internecine fights, that Welsh would not have stood up for him and backed him up when it came to losing his job as clerk. But apparently Welsh was not going to, and had no intention of doing so.

  “God damn you, Welsh! God damn you, you son of a bitch!” he spluttered.

  Fortunately, Brass Band came through the tent flap at just that moment, and Welsh leaped up to shout “Attention!” at the top of his lungs while himself, the two frightened assistant clerks, Weld and Fife all snapped to.

  “You don’t have to call attention every time I come in, Sergeant,” Band said benignly, “I’ve told you that.” Welsh merely stared at him. Band looked at Fife. “Well! Hello there, Fife! So you’re back with the old outfit. Glad to have you back aboard. At ease! Rest! Rest! By the way, Fife, have you seen my helmet?”

  Fife could hardly believe his ears. He was still in the throes of bitterly cursing Welsh. Band went behind his own desk and produced for Fife’s inspection his fractured helmet shell which that Japanese had put a bullet through. Fife listened to him in silence with increasing astonishment and indignation. He felt he deserved a certain amount of respect and prestige for being a wounded man. After all, none of these guys had been wounded. And here was this silly ass telling him this story about something that had not even hurt him. When Band finished the tale of his adventure, Fife was so furious he could hardly trust himself to speak.

  At his own desk First Sergeant Welsh had taken a deep breath and blown it out and sat back down to his work. For himself, Welsh was just as glad Band had come in. Or he might really have lost his temper. He was getting damn tired of forever teaching punk asshole kids that to the world, the war, the nation, the company, none of them meant a goddam thing; that t
hey were spendable like dollarbills; that they could all die day by day and one by one and it wouldn’t mean a goddam fucking thing to anybody as long as there were replacements. Who the fuck did he think he was? Did he think he meant anything to this company? Welsh took in another deep, selfpitying breath and blew it out. Now he was angry. That hurt look on the punk’s face when he came in and saw Weld made Welsh insanely furious. What did Fife expect him to do for him? The punks were all learning now—and Oh did it hurt! This week back off the line was good enough for that, was excellent for that: Shorty Tall and his bright ideas: time enough to get drunk good; time enough to talk; time enough to think about themselves and their impossible, ridiculous position. Time enough to reflect that this war was only starting, time enough to realize—or remember!—that behind every company like them stood at least ten companies stretching all the way back to Washington and dedicated with much less danger to getting them up there all equipped to do their dangerous work. Oh yes they were learning! They were learning now, but without appreciation, what Welsh had known and appreciated all along. Even Storm had not known that. But Welsh had.