by James Jones
Digging and sweating grimly in the growing heat of the day, 1st/Sgt Welsh was the first man in the company to finish his hole, and he only demanded a very little help from his three clerks. After all, they had to dig Band’s hole and the new Exec’s, before they could start on their own. Sitting in his, and staring off at the high ground of The Elephant’s Head where they had come from, Welsh was made to think of one of those sixteenth century bathtubs he had seen pictures of. Because of the slope, the rear of it rose to his ears while in the front it was two feet deep and halfway up his shins. (This was less than the required three feet but Welsh had cheated, and fuck them.)
Welsh suddenly envisioned himself sitting here with a big fat cigar in his face, a sponge in one hand and a longhandled brush in the other, enjoying this remarkably beautiful view. Which nobody else in the world had a right to look at, or pang! you’re dead! Welsh hated cigars and people who smoked them. But a cigar seemed proper in his vision all the same. He would soap and soap. And scrub and scrub. Not to get clean so much. He never minded being dirty. But because the view and the bathtub demanded it. Behind him his three clerks chattered at their digging like crazy birds, and Welsh had a momentary impulse to get up and boot them all three in the ass.
Welsh had taken a terribly dangerous chance yesterday when they moved out from the weekold vacation bivouac. He had filled two of his three canteens with gin, leaving only one for water. It was a desperate gamble heh heh but now it was paying off. Fuck water! He could get by without water. And with two shots inside his skin now he could look at the world again. It was really a beautiful world he thought looking off toward the distant magnificence of The Elephant’s Head. Where so many men had died and so many others had sickened. Fuck all that! Beautiful. Especially from a filled sixteenth century bathtub. He wiggled his toes in his stickywet socks. Ought to change, but the other pair was already stiff as boards in his pocket. Calmly he puffed on his imaginary cigar.
You guys! You guys! Welsh wanted to holler, listening to his three new clerks jabbering like three Japs behind him. You don’t know how to appreciate nothin’. Of them all he was, he was convinced, the only one left who really understood it. Home, family, country, flag, freedom, democracy, the honor of the President. Piss on all that! He didn’t have one of them, yet he was here, wasn’t he? And from choice, not necessity, because he could easily have gotten himself out of it. At least, he understood himself. The truth was, he liked all this shit. He liked being shot at, liked being frightened, liked lying in holes scared to death and digging his fingernails into the ground, liked shooting at strangers and seeing them fall hurt, liked his stickywet feet in his stickywet socks. Part of him did. In a way he was sorry about young Fife, though. Fife, in a rifle platoon!?
Of all the company including officers, Welsh was perhaps the only one as far as he knew who had never yet felt the combat numbness. He had heard them talk about it, during the week off, and had listened. He understood that it was the saving factor, and sensed the animal brutality that it brought with it. But he had not yet had the experience. He did not know whether this was because life had already made him numb like that years ago and he had never realized it, whether his foreknowledge of what to expect plus his superb natural intelligence heh heh had made him immune to it, or whether it was just that the combat itself had never yet gotten quite tough enough to freeze up his particular brand of personality. There were times, moments, when Welsh realized that he was quite mad. Like: Three cherries on the same stem = George Washington. Two no, never. Three yes, always. Who would understand that if he told them? If he dared tell them. He still hated cherries to this day and could not eat them, though he loved the taste of them. Typically, when his malaria had gotten much worse during their week’s vacation, he had told nobody about it and had hidden it with a kind of secret glee. And he never was going to tell anybody. He didn’t know why. It was all part of this silly game they pretended was adult and mature, that was all. He would go till he dropped in his tracks or some dumb Jap shot him and they could bury him while he laughed. But he did feel a little sorry about Fife. Not a lot, of course. After all, when some ass got himself shot up bad enough to go to the hospital and get himself evacuated forever, and then didn’t have the gumption or guts to follow it through, what the fuck could you do with him?
Welsh settled down in his hole. He had an intuition they were going to have a pretty easy day of it. To prove him wrong, it was just exactly then that the walkietalkie man somewhere close behind him called out he had a message for Band from the new Colonel ordering 1st Battalion to move out immediately in support of 3d Battalion on The Shrimp, Band to call back confirmation. Band came running from somewhere down the line, and Welsh got wearily up from his hole. He was aware that once again he had screwed himself. If he had waited a half hour to start instead of pitching in to get done, he would not have had to dig at all. He grinned mirthlessly.
More men had not finished digging than had finished, like Welsh. One of these was young Corporal Fife on the other, forward slope of the narrow little ridge. Here the fall was less steep than on the rearward slope where Welsh was, but it still required a considerable digging job to make a creditable hole. Fife had attacked it disheartedly with his inadequate little shovel. It seemed an insuperable job, and yet at the same time he knew he must make a good job of it because 3d Platoon had been placed on the forward slope, beside the 2d Platoon who held the apex of the angling ridge. Any counterattack must come right at him. As he dug, Fife was thinking about Fife somewhat the same as Welsh was—but differently. Fife was sure, absolutely and positively sure, that nothing he did could ever have gotten him evacuated. Not even if he had kept after them and persisted about his lost glasses. He paused digging and squinted off toward the (for him) blurred bulk of Hill 210 trying to see just how bad his eyes really were. He did not know if his eyes would see what they were supposed to see to save him. But he suspected not. Between halfhearted stabs with his shovel, he peered off anxiously squinting at The Elephant’s Head, checking and rechecking his bad eyes. When the news to stop digging bulleted itself down the line, he threw down his shovel with a great sigh of relief. Then he realized what that meant, and irrational panic seized him.
Fife had lain with the 3d Platoon along the trail, and just back out of range, while 2d Platoon had taken their beating this morning. One or two rounds hit quite near him. The terror for mortars which he now carried was so great it was indescribable in words, even to himself. Every round that he heard fall had to hit him squarely on that spot where his neck joined his shoulders. After the barrage he had a severe neck ache which lasted more than an hour. Now in his panic at having to leave The Sea Slug and move forward, he did not know if he could actually shoot and kill another human being or not, even if he had to. To save himself. And more, he did not know whether even if all that part did go well, did work right, it would make any difference and he mightn’t get killed anyway. Killed! Dead! Not alive anymore! He didn’t think he could face it. God, he had already been wounded once, hadn’t he? What did they want from him? He wanted to sit down and cry, and he couldn’t. Not in front of the company.
In the fact, the company probably would not have noticed if Fife had sat down and cried. They were all too engrossed in thinking about their own bad luck as they fell in in their squads and platoons. And it really wasn’t anybody’s fault, that was the worst thing. The reason, as Band found out when he radioed his confirmation call, and as the rest of them found out by word of mouth gossip seconds later, was simply that they happened to be closest and somebody was needed right away. Old 1st Battalion got the shitty end of the stick in every sense. Wearily, though more in the morale sense than the physical, they gathered their gear together and prepared to do, once more, the necessary.
It was just at this point that another man in the company was wounded. This was a tall, quiet buck sergeant Squad Leader from Pennsylvania in the 3d Platoon whose name was Potts. Potts’s squad had been the linkup of the 3d Plato
on with John Bell’s squad of the 2d. Potts and Bell and two others were standing out in the open by their holes on The Sea Slug, looking out toward The Giant Boiled Shrimp across the jungle that separated them. They were discussing the advance and what they might expect to find over there, and trying to see The Shrimp which from here was only a vague indistinct mass of brown. Bell, who happened to be standing with his back to The Shrimp at that particular moment and looking at Sgt Potts who was talking, saw the whole thing. One moment Potts was talking away. In the next there was a loud “Thwack!”, and immediately after the shrill whine of a bullet ricochetting away. Potts, who was looking straight at Bell and wearing no helmet, stopped in midword and stared at Bell crosseyed as if thoughtfully trying to see something on the end of his own nose. Then he fell down. A red spot had appeared in the center of his forehead. Potts immediately sat back up, still staring out at the world crosseyed, then fell back down again. By this time Bell was to him, but Potts was out, unconscious, those crossed eyes mercifully closed. Bell could see that on his forehead an inchlong groove had been cut—or burned rather, was perhaps the better word, since it did not bleed. Beneath it he could see the white, undamaged bone of Potts’s skull. A spent ricochet from somewhere on The Shrimp, traveling flatways instead of by the point, had passed beside Bell’s head and struck Potts square between the eyes and gone screaming on its way. Laughter beginning to make spasms in his diaphragm and bubble up into his throat despite himself, Bell knelt and brought him around by gently slapping his cheeks and chafing his hands. Potts was perfectly all right. Laughing so hard they could hardly see where they were going through the tears, the three of them helped him back to Battalion Aid Station which was just setting up on The Sea Slug, and where the doctor, laughing also, put a patch over the cut and gave Potts a handful of aspirin. Until the moment of departure he lay on his back resting with his helmet over his face because of his headache, assured of his Purple Heart. Potts did not think it was at all funny, and complained bitterly about his headache the rest of the day. Everybody else roared with laughter whenever it was mentioned. It put the company in a good mood to begin the incredible, unbelievable march they did not yet know they were going to make.
In the future annals of the Regiment (and the Division) it would be known forever as “The Race” or the “Grand Prix.” Sometimes it was referred to also as “The Long End Run.” C-for-Charlie was to become and remain one of its foremost elements. In the maps of the Division history (all drawn very much later) the “Long End Run” would be shown with red and blue arrows to be the logical development of a situation and its equally logical followthrough. The truth was that at the time nobody anywhere really knew what the situation was. As 1st Battalion led by C-for-Charlie came up out of the jungle and moved around the left side of Hill 250, the Shrimp’s Tail, the only evidence of any Japanese was a honeycomb of deserted, well camouflaged emplacements which several men stumbled over and fell into. It was clear to everyone it should have been an expensive battle. But where were the Japanese? Why had they left? Slowly and cautiously, they deployed on the left of 3d Battalion in the flat open ground and probed on. Two hours and two thousand yards later they arrived worn out and waterless on the forward slope of Hill 253, The Shrimp’s Head, without having suffered a casualty.
It really wasn’t all that easy. On their right L Company had had a fire fight with twenty or thirty Japanese on top of Hill 251, a long narrow ridge projecting into the jungle which corresponded to one of The Shrimp’s Feet, finally destroying them with their company mortars from the other end of the ridge. Moving along down below, C-for-Charlie could watch the whole action. Far back on Hill 250 they could see Dog Company busily setting up its heavy mortars. It was very quiet in the bright sunshine. There was tough going in the crotchhigh grass. But at least they could walk standing up. Here and there men shook themselves and settled their shoulders as if to indicate this wasn’t so bad after all; but nobody dared voice the feeling, for superstitious fear that all hell would break loose immediately after.
2d Platoon had again been chosen by Brass Band to be lead platoon, so it was they who were out in front as skirmishers. Beck the martinet had cursed and complained about this to his squad leaders (who agreed with him) but so far had said nothing to Band. Beck himself had switched his point squad, putting Bell’s squad out in front, and when they deployed had placed Doll’s squad on Bell’s right in the safest place, letting the other two, Thorne’s and Dale’s, go to the open left flank. It was in this position, as they walked slowly forward through the tough grass with their rifles held at a low port in tired arms, that Pfc Carrie Arbre left his position and sidled over until he was beside his squad leader. Arbre had seemed to be avoiding Doll, or so Doll thought, ever since the two episodes of this morning. Doll waited.
“Can I talk to you private a minute, Doll?”
“Sure, Carrie.”
As they talked both of them kept their eyes moving to left and right as they moved ahead, looking for emplacements, looking for Japanese.
Arbre frowned, but he had long ago given up trying to make anyone stop calling him Carrie. “I just wanted to ast you why you changed yore mind about pickin me to go with you, back there today.”
A person always expected that Arbre, because of his girlish shyness and sensitive look, would be more educated than most but in fact he wasn’t. He had not gone as far in high school as Doll. Doll had nearly graduated. “Well, I don’t know, Carrie,” he said. “It was just something that hit me. A sort of sudden instinct. Or something.’’
“Well, I can sojer as well as the next man. I carry my weight.”
“I know that. Course you do. Course you can.” By a momentary inspiration Doll was moved to put his arm around Arbre’s thin shoulders which in the shower always looked so much narrower than his wide, lean, woman’s hips, but he did not do it because he didn’t want to let go of his rifle with one hand. They walked ahead through the tough grass. “If I was to analyze it, like I’m tryin to do now, I’d say it was just because I wanted to look out for you and protect you.” Doll felt his heart beat suddenly, as a brilliant idea came to him.
“I don’t want nobody to look out for me,” Arbre said beside him sullenly. “I don’t need any protection.”
“Everybody needs help, Carrie,” Doll said. He turned his head for a second to smile at him, and when he did Arbre turned to look at him, a strange enigmatic expression on his face as if he knew something he was not saying, or as if he knew something Doll was not saying and perhaps did not even know. They both turned back and began looking for emplacements again.
“I want to live through this fucking war as much as anybody,” Arbre said. “I didn’t want to go up there with you.” He moved on ahead, slumpshouldered and narrowchested, with that same strange halfsoft, halfhard, almost apologetic look. “I guess I do need help. I mean, all of us.” With that he turned and moved away, still looking as if he knew something extra.
Doll spared a quick look after him wondering what the hell all that had been about, watching those girlishly goodlooking hips. Then he turned back to the business at hand, shifting his rifle a little, wondering how the hell much longer this walk was going to go on like this. Momentarily he wondered nervously if anybody had noticed the two of them together. Well, what if they did? Everybody knew Doll liked broads. When the hell was something going to happen around here?
It was just then that three bedraggled, scarecrowlooking Japanese men burst out of the jungle brush ahead of them on the left and ran toward them chattering and wailing and waving their hands and arms high in the air, skittering and stumbling along in the stony grass. Doll threw up his rifle and fired, his face a mask of grim satisfaction. So did others, and the three were shot down before they had gotten twenty yards. Then the sunny morning silence returned. In it, the lead platoon watched and listened. Then they moved on. Ahead of them now not too far away was the hill of The Giant Boiled Shrimp’s Head. Behind them, as the column moving forward passed t
he three corpses, hardly anybody even bothered to look down at them. Their wallets had already been taken.
Like Doll, Buck Sergeant Squad Leader Charlie Dale was one of the men in 2d Platoon who had fired first and definitely gotten one of the three Japanese. Dale had never believed in giving no Jap no chance anyway, and after fighting them for ten days now believed in it even less. Like that one that tried to grenade Big Queen on The Elephant’s Head at the Jap bivouac after surrendering first. They just didn’t have no conception of honor or honesty. Grinning smugly, Dale ran forward to them through the grass. His particular one’s wallet contained nothing of any value except a picture of some Jap broad, which wasn’t much. She wasn’t even naked. But he kept it anyway because he was getting quite a collection of them now. The wallet he threw away. It was falling apart from jungle rot. Somebody—Doll, in fact—found one of those small, individual soldier’s battleflags on one of them, but Dale’s didn’t have anything. Some crappy luck. He didn’t even have any gold teeth when Charlie opened his mouth.
During their week off, with part of his loot, Dale had traded for a pair of electrician’s pliers. These now reposed in his hip pocket with a supply of Bull Durham sacks. If damned Marines could have collections of gold teeth worth a thousand dollars Charlie Dale could by God have one. And this would have been his first chance to use the pliers—except the bastard had to go and not have any. And before he could look over the other two corpses, the order to move out came, which order Dale obeyed swiftly because Brass Band that asshole was close enough to be watching him. And Dale had evolved for himself a new, grandiose plan. Cursing savagely with regret, he led his squad off.
Dale’s plan was a simple one. He had watched the promotions list with a shrewd and careful eye that went far beyond his own sergeantcy. He knew that that fool schoolteacher Band liked him. And he was convinced that Sergeant Field, Doll’s old squad leader, had been promoted to Platoon Guide of 1st Platoon simply to get him out of the way. If anything happened to Skinny Culn now, Dale was convinced he could bullshit Teacher Band into promoting himself into the job of platoon sergeant of 1st Platoon. Also, the Platoon Guide of 3d Platoon was a pretty wishywashy type character. For that matter, Fox, the new platoon sergeant of 3d Platoon was no very great shakes himself. It might be even possible to live to see him replaced without him even getting wounded or killed.