The Thin Red Line

by James Jones

  The climactic moment for Fife did not come till later. He told his story and showed his ankle. The ankle was still swollen. Lt Col Roth examined it carefully, twisting it this way and that until Fife winced. It certainly was a bad ankle, he said. He did not see how anybody could march, and fight in rough terrain, on something like that. How long had Fife had it? Fife told him the truth, then went on to tell him about the basketweave bandage and how he always carried tape with him. Lt Col Roth whistled admiringly, then looked at Fife sharply.

  “Then how come you decided to report to hospital with it now?” the Colonel said sharply.

  It was Fife’s moment, and in some dim way he knew it. But his reaction was entirely instinctive. Instead of looking guilty, or even pleading, he gave Lt Col Roth a cynical, guarded smile. “Well, Colonel, it seems to be bothering me a lot more lately,” he said, and grinned.

  Roth’s lips twitched, and his eyes glinted, and then the same identical cynical, conspiratorial smile passed across his own face fleetingly. He bent and manipulated the ankle again. Well, it would need an operation, that much was certain, and that would mean several months in a cast. Was Fife prepared to spend several months in a plaster cast?

  Fife grinned guardedly again. “Well, if it will help it, Sir—I guess I am.”

  Lt Col Roth bent his head again. It might never be all right, he said, but perhaps it could be helped. Those ligament and tendon operations were ticklish things. There was an orthopedics man, a top man, at Naval Base Hospital No. 3 on Ephate, who really enjoyed doing that kind of ticklish job of surgery. After that, Fife would be shipped on to New Zealand, if he had to spend that long in a cast. And after that—Roth shrugged, and again his eyes glinted. He turned to the orderly. “Admit this man for evacuation,” he said.

  Fife was afraid to believe it, lest something happen to change it. Just like that. Just like that, and he was out. Out! Out! Saying nothing, he bent and began putting on his sock and boot.

  As he was going out the flap, Roth called him. When he turned back, the Colonel said, “You’re a Sergeant now, I see.”

  “Sir?” Fife said.

  Roth grinned. “You were a Corporal before, weren’t you? What happened about those eyeglasses of yours? Nothing? Well, when you get down there, mention it to them. They’ll fix you up with new ones.”

  It didn’t make any sense. Why would he be one way one time like that, and then the exact opposite the next? Was this Lt Col Roth, who carried in his hands the decision between certain life and probable death for simple infantrymen, was this man prey to the changeabilities and vagaries of emotion like that? Like everybody else? The thought was terrifying. He had three days to wait for the next hospital ship. (Only serious cases and emergencies were being flown out.) They were three days of misery and sadness. Because now that he was sure he was going, now that he was definitely safe, Fife wondered if he really ought to go? Should he not just skip out of the hospital and go back to C-for-Charlie, like Welsh had done? He tried hard to keep his mind on the sensible, sane MacTae. But the question stayed.

  He took it up with Welsh himself, finally, when the First Sergeant came up to the hospital bringing personal gear for somebody else who was shipping out.

  “So you finally makin it out, hunh, kid?” Welsh leered at him when he saw him, his black eyes glinting contemptuously.

  “Yeh,” Fife said sadly. He couldn’t help feeling melancholy. “But I been thinkin, First. Maybe I ought to stay?”

  “You what!” Welsh snarled.

  “Well, yes. I mean, you know, I’m gonna miss the company. And it’s—it’s sort of like running out. In one way.”

  Welsh leered at him in silence, his mad eyes gleaming. “Sure, kid. I think if you feel like that, you oughta come back.”

  “You think so? I thought I might slip out of here tonight maybe.”

  “You should,” Welsh said, and then grinned his slow, sly grin. “You wanta know somthin, kid?” he said softly. “You want to know why I got you busted out of the orderly room that time? You thought it was because we thought you weren’t coming back, didn’t you?” Before Fife could answer, he said, “Well, it wasn’t. It was because you were such a lousy fucking bad clerk, I HAD to do it!”

  If he could have Fife would have hit him, he was so furious. He knew he was not a bad clerk. But he was lying on his bunk and before he could get up Welsh was gone, down the aisle and out through the flap. He did not even look back. Fife did not see him again. He did not slip out that night, and the hospital ship left the next day. He felt sad, but when the landing craft carried them out to the big ship he did not feel guilty. He was glad to leave such hate-filled people. It was a fine, sunshiny day.

  It was on that same day that Sgt John Bell got the letter he had been waiting for from his wife. They had just broken from the morning training exercise for noon chow, and Corporal Weld came around with a batch of new mail. Actually, it was one of a batch of three. As he always did, Bell arranged them by postmark date and read the oldest first. So he did not read the new letter until last. When he opened it and saw how it began (Dear John, it said), he knew what it was, and that it was in fact a Dear John letter. Messkit, ringed lid, and handleopened canteen cup all dangling impotently from one hand together, he walked away by himself with it. Dear John. The others always began with Darling or Dearest or Beloved, or some such other of that phony shit. She had been doing it. She had been doing it. And him he had not touched a single soul, not once, since he had left. Superstitious fool bastard, thinking that would help or make any difference! He was ravenously hungry from the morning workout, but he knew he couldn’t eat anything. He was sick all over. His legs were shaky and his hands and arms were shaky. He sat down on a cocopalm log with it.

  When he finally could, he read it carefully and sanely instead of jumping jerkily around in it. It was carefully and sanely written. All the necessary information was there. The guy was an Air Force Captain at Paterson. She had fallen deeply in love with him. He was a scientific researcher in aerodynamics, and would therefore never be sent overseas. She wanted a divorce to marry him. She knew that he, Bell, could refuse to give her one. But she was asking him anyway—out of the memory of what they had had together. The war looked as though it might go on forever. And God only knew what was going to happen to the world afterward. She had fallen deeply in love, and she wanted that love while she could have it. She thought he would understand. And in between all this necessary information were sandwiched the repeated requests, pleas, for forgiveness. Oh, it was all there. It was sane and sensible and calm and even sad. It was proper and it was reasonable. It was even prim. What was not there was any information about what they did together. How they went to bed. What they did in bed. What other things they did. Not one word about how he compared to Bell. That, of course, was all private now, between her and the guy. That was something Bell could never be admitted to. But he could imagine. Worse, he could remember. Why, from the letter you’d think they didn’t even have any sex together at all, it was so prim and proper and polite and distant. Come on, I used to fuck you, Baby! He sat with it, shaken all over and, as a professional soldier, quite ready to die. Marty! Marty!

  He couldn’t eat anything. And during the afternoon exercise he was something less than his normal competent self. “What’s the matter with you?” Buck Sgt Witt, who was now one of his squad leaders, said, “You lost yore taw?” When they were back and dismissed, he went off into the tongue of jungle by himself and tried to evoke that translucent, so realistic image of his wife which had come to him so many times and over so many places on this island. He found he couldn’t. He took the letter and went to Captain Bosche.

  “Yes? Come on in! What is it, Bell?” the Company Commander said. His hard, tight little belly was pressed to the edge of his desk as he bent over his work. Bell handed him the letter without a word. After all, this letter was such a formally proper letter you could show it to anybody. You could show it to your own mother.

 
; The reaction he got from Bosche was astonishing, even to him in his state of despair. As he read, the Captain’s hands began to shake until the letter rattled. His face became as white as a sheet of his own memo paper with a rage so great that it seemed to bunch his hard round little face into a tight hard round little ball of such density it looked as though it could pulverize a granite ball of equal size simply by falling on it. Somehow, in what appeared to be slow degrees but was really very swiftly, Captain Bosche got command of himself again. Bell had no idea why the letter should affect him so.

  “You know, of course, that you do not have to accede to this request,” Bosche said in a hard thin voice. “Nor can your wife get a divorce or separation without your official permission.”

  “I know,” Bell said, weakly.

  “There is more. With a letter like this in your possession, you have the right to stop all allotments, all payments, all Government insurance policies.” Bosche’s voice was even harder.

  “I didn’t know that,” Bell said.

  “Well, you can,” Bosche said. His little round jaw was as hard as a steel one.

  “But I want to give it to her,” Bell said tiredly. “I wanted to ask you if you would draft an official letter from you for me giving her the permission.”

  The Captain did not answer for a stunned second. “I don’t understand you,” he said stiffly. “Why do you want to do that?”

  “Well, it’s a little hard to explain,” Bell said and paused. How to say it to him? If he didn’t know. “Well, I guess it’s just that what’s the point of being married to a woman who doesn’t want to be married to you?”

  Captain Bosche’s eyes had narrowed to slits, and with them he stared at Bell. “Well, there are all sorts of attitudes and opinions, I guess,” he said profoundly. “That’s what makes the world go round.”

  “Will you draft the letter for me, Sir?”

  “I certainly will,” Bosche said, and Bell turned to go.

  “Oh, Bell!” he called, and when Bell turned back he was holding a sheaf of papers. “This came in yesterday, for you. I held it up a little because I wanted to write my own endorsement. Which is now written. I just thought that now might be a good time to give it to you. It’s an order for a field commission appointing you a First Lieutenant of Infantry.” He said it all flatly, but even then the slight emphasis on First Lieutenant could not be missed. He smiled. “Really?” Bell said. He felt silly.

  Bosche grinned. “Really. I assumed that you would want to accept it, and I have already written my hearty endorsement.”

  “Can I think it over for a little while?”

  “Of course,” Bosche said promptly. “Take all the time you want. You’ve had several big things today. And if you want to change your mind about that other matter, that will be perfectly all right too.”

  “Thank you, Sir.”

  Outside, he sat down again upon the same cocopalm log. Or was this another one? It was hard to tell. Had she really calculated it all? written the letter in exactly the way which she knew would bring from him the type of reaction she wanted? Probably. She knew him well enough to do that, didn’t she? She knew him well. Just as he knew her well. Well enough to know that what was going to happen with her would happen. And it happened, didn’t it? People didn’t stay married to each other that long without getting to know each other pretty well. Or did they never know each other at all? Bosche certainly wouldn’t have given his wife permission to divorce, would he? Why had he reacted so strangely? Had the same thing maybe happened to him? The pain of transposing his own experience of making love with Marty into an imagined love-making between her and this other guy was too much to stand. He put his mind on his other problem.

  The commission? First Lieutenant of Infantry! Smiling sadly, Bell decided he would probably do as little harm there as he would anywhere else. In the falling dark he rose to go and tell the Captain. The next day, the letter of permission to divorce drafted and signed, he packed and left to be sworn in and transferred. One more departure from old C-for-Charlie. When Bosche asked him to recommend his successor, Bell nominated Thorne from the 2d platoon because he felt Witt was inclined to be a little unpredictable if he got angry.

  And so there they were. The remainder, filled up almost to capacity with new green men, was not at all the C-for-Charlie which had once landed on this island. It was a totally different organization, with a different feel altogether now. Three days after Bell left, the orders to move came down and everything was frozen again. No more transfers, no more promotions that could move a man out of the company, no more changes of any kind. The orders, marked TOP SECRET and known to everyone almost as soon as they arrived, stated that they should be prepared to move within ten days to two weeks. All training would cease upon receipt of this order and preparatory work for moving would be begun immediately. The orders did not say what destination the Division would be heading for.

  Of course, they did not need to say. Everybody knew. Don Doll had become bosom buddies with his immediate superior Milly Beck, now that Fife was gone, and they discussed New Georgia. Doll was by common consent considered the best Platoon Guide in the company now, and was clearly the next in line for a platoon. Slender Carrie Arbre had been promoted to sergeant of Doll’s old squad. He and Doll still spoke to each other with a carefully guarded stiffness.

  One more thing, gift of a grateful nation, came to them before they left, and this was the medals. Cynically, they had forgotten all about them when they hadn’t come through, but now here they came, complete with the citations. There was a presentation. Every member of Captain Gaff’s little assault force on The Dancing Elephant received a Bronze Star or better. Big Un Cash’s, of course, was posthumous. John Bell’s was sent on to him. Skinny Culn, recommended for a Bronze Star by Bugger Stein, got one. Don Doll, recommended for a Distinguished Service Cross by Captain Gaff, received a Silver Star instead. Charlie Dale, recommended for a Distinguished Service Cross by both Stein and Glory Hunter Band for all his braveries during The Dancing Elephant, got a Distinguished Service Cross, the only one in the Battalion. There was some bitching about this, but—as some wit immediately said—it would look good with his collection of gold teeth. Everyone pretended medals didn’t mean anything, but everyone who got one was secretly proud.

  One last word of the legendary Captain Gaff reached them also, just two days before they left. A fairly recent copy of Yank Magazine somehow fell into the hands of a C-for-Charlie man, and in it was a full page photo of the former Battalion Exec. Dressed in his tailored dress ODs (it was winter back home), wearing his Medal of Honor on its ribbon around his neck, the Captain had been photographed for Yank while making a speech at a bond selling rally. The caption below the photo said that his by now world famous statement to his trusty little band of exhausted but unbeaten volunteer Infantrymen on Guadalcanal (This is where we separate the sheep from the goats and the men from the boys!) had become a national slogan and was being flown on bunting in letters a foot high all across the country, while two song publishers had brought out patriotic war songs using it for a title, one of which was succeeding and was now on the Hit Parade.

  They of course had to march to the beach, as no trucks happened to be available for them at the moment. Their route led them past the new cemetery. Plodding along gasping in the airless humidity and tripping over mud rolls and grass hummocks as they were, the cemetery looked very green and cool. The area had been well drained, and bluegrass had been planted on it. Big sprinklers sent their long gossamer jets swirling through the air above the crosses, and the white crosses were very beautiful in their long even rows. Quartermaster men moved here and there on its long expanse keeping it up and tending it.

  Half a mile further on, passing a rusting wrecked Japanese barge, they met a man eating an apple. Perched high up on the prow of the wreck, he could look directly down on them as he leisurely munched his apple. One apple. Somehow, by some incredible mistake in bills of lading and shipping ticke
ts in quintuplicate, a gross oversight by some nameless but usually efficient functionary, one fresh red apple had gotten sandwiched in amongst all the cans and crates and boxes and cases of precooked, dried and dehydrated foods, and hidden away in some unsearched corner had stowed away overseas. By some unbelievably marvelous stroke of luck this man had gotten it and could sit on the high prow of a wrecked barge eating it while they passed. Had he known them, this stranger, he could have ticked off their names as they passed below him in macabre review, their faces twisted up at him to stare hungrily at his apple: Captain Bosche, his officers, 1st/Sgt Eddie Welsh, Platoon Sergeants Thorne, Milly Beck, Charlie Dale, S/Sgt Don Doll, Corporal Weld, Sgt Carrie Arbre, Pfc Train, Pvt Crown, Pvts Tills and Mazzi, each looking back and upward at him as they passed. But, of course, he couldn’t do this, since to him they were all strangers.

  Mad Welsh, marching on behind the sturdy little figure of Captain Bosche, didn’t give a fuck for apples. He had his two canteens of gin. Which was all he could carry this time, and he felt for them furtively. In his mind he was muttering over and over his old phrase of understanding: “Property. Property. All for property,” which he had once said in rudimentary innocence arriving on this island. Well, this was a pretty good sized chunk of real estate, wasn’t it? this island? He had known the combat numbness now—for the first time, at Boola Boola—and it was his calculated hope and belief that if pursued long enough and often enough, it might really become a permanent and mercifully blissful state. It was all he asked.

  Ahead of them the LCIs waited to take them aboard, and slowly they began to file into them to be taken out to climb the cargo nets up into the big ships. One day one of their number would write a book about all this, but none of them would believe it, because none of them would remember it that way.

  A Biography of James Jones