by James Jones
The service records were a different matter. Prevor launched into that. None of them had been completed with the remarks of transfer. The 1st/sgt and the clerk were both afraid to touch them. One mistaken entry on a service record could require a week’s work to straighten out. “And the first payroll is coming up soon,” Prevor said. “Without properly completed service records we can’t make out the payroll.”
Landers nodded. Then after a moment he thought to rub his hands together briskly, like a man ready to go to work. The office was pleasantly warm, and a pot of coffee was heating on a hot plate in the corner. It was one hell of a lot better than going through old-hat basic training exercises out in the cold rain.
“Have you got enough experience?” Prevor said. “To straighten these things out?”
Landers nodded. “Yes, sir.” A picture of Winch’s long thin leather morning report book on New Georgia came into his mind. Winch always had it with him in his musette, up on the line. The mahogany leather cover was smeared with mud and so were some of the pages. But it was always correctly filled out and the drills Winch had put him through on it, so Winch would not have to do the job when they were back in bivouac, had been many and harsh. A sick book was about the simplest form there was, only a moron could fuck it up. Service record remarks he had been trained in by both Winch and the regimental S-1 sgt/maj. “Yes, sir. I can do them all. But I’ve never done a first payroll off the service records.”
“Never mind that,” Prevor snapped. “If you can do the others, there’s a sergeancy in it for you.”
It took a week. Landers asked for a new book of blank morning report forms and a new sick book. He got up in the freezing dark with the troops, but while they were bitching and getting into cold field uniforms, he dressed in his garrison ODs. He ate in the freezing cold kitchen messhall with them, but when they went off to freezing training formations, he reported to the warm orderly room, with its pot of coffee on the hot plate. It seemed the greatest of luxuries.
While he was working on the old morning reports, others came in from Second Army to be redone also. When he had time to spare from that, he worked on the unacceptable sick book sheets bringing them up to date, and at the same time doing each day’s new sick book entry correctly for the clerk. When he had a spare moment, and in the evenings when he could be alone, he worked on the service records remarks, which required such absolute accuracy. After supper he worked alone in the lighted orderly room, which was the only warm place in the company area anyhow. Landers didn’t mind it at all. Every so often Prevor would stop by late, to compliment him and see how he was coming along.
By the time ten days had passed he was running the company for Prevor. Just as he had run the old company. (God love them, God help them, wherever they were, he added quickly with a pang of guilt.) Except that now he was functioning as 1st/sgt too, doing the 1st/sgt’s fatigue rosters, and training rosters, and plotting out the basic training schedules for the various sections.
“Do you think you could handle the payroll, too?” Prevor asked him one night. “We’ve got to have it in in three days’ time, or they’ll redline the entire payroll. And nobody will get paid.”
Redline. A red line of ink through a soldier’s name on the payroll, because of a mistake in his line on the roll, or in the remarks under his name, was just about the cardinal sin in the Army. It meant the soldier did not get his pay that month.
“I’ll try it for you,” Landers said. “But I told you, I’ve never done a payroll directly off the service records. I always had a previous payroll roster to work from.”
“If you can do it, by God,” Prevor said fervently, “you’ll have your sergeancy before the next month is out. And as soon as I can swing it on the T.O., I’ll get you a rocker and staff sergeancy to go with it. If I have to put you down as a section leader, by God.”
“Frankly, I don’t want any goddamned rating, Lieutenant,” Landers said, and stared at him. “Quite frankly, I’ve made up my mind that I don’t ever want another rating in this shitty miserable Army.”
Prevor stared back at him a moment. “Well,” he said, “I want it. And I’m going to give it to you. So you’re going to have to take it.”
Landers looked away, back at the service record he was working on. “Well, you had better understand that I don’t believe in this Army any more, and I don’t believe in this country any more, either, and I don’t believe in this race that you and I happen to have been born members of. Fucking human race. I don’t like it, and I don’t give a shit for it, and I don’t believe in it.”
Prevor did not answer for a long moment. Then he said, “Never mind that. You get this payroll out for me, and you’re a staff sergeant. I don’t want to break my cadre. I can’t do that to them. They care too much, and it would ruin them. Anyway they’ll be all right, after they get worked in.”
Landers nodded, in support of the sentiment. “I respect that.” But then he shook his head, against the opinion. “But they won’t be all right. Unless I teach them. I could teach them, if you want. I know a pretty good bit about supply and about mess. I could work with them all, if you want me to.”
Prevor’s Mongolian eyes opened wide. “Would you really do that?”
Landers nodded. “Sure. Anyway I don’t want their fucking jobs. I just don’t want to go through basic training, and I don’t want to be cold.”
“I can certainly promise you both of those,” Prevor said, with a grin. “But you’re also going to have that rating, Landers. If I have to run shorthanded a section sergeant in one section.”
Landers smiled. “Besides, it would make you look bad up at Second Army Command, if you fired your cadre.”
Prevor gave him a peculiar look. “Yes, it would,” he said simply. He turned away, but then, with a spur-of-the-moment gesture, turned back. “The truth is, I can’t fire them. They’re Second Army Command men. I fire them, I lose this company. Like a shot.”
“You’ll have to give me a place where I can work around the clock, and not be disturbed,” Landers said. “I won’t be able to do the daily sick book and morning report.”
“We’ll take care of that. And you can have my office here,” Prevor said. Then, hesitantly, he stuck out his hand.
Landers took it, without much enthusiasm. “It looks to me like somebody up at Second Army is trying especially hard to do you in. Is it because you’re a Jew?”
Prevor didn’t answer for a moment, and it looked as if he wasn’t going to answer. He made a shrug, a very Jewish shrug, and then a rueful grin. “That’s what it is, all right,” he said finally.
“Well, we’ll see,” Landers said. “But I won’t guarantee that a few men won’t get redlined.”
It took the full three days to do it. Landers worked two whole nights and the three full days without sleep, to get it done, and on the third night between half-hour snatches of sleep spent most of the night going over it and proofreading. The next morning he submitted it, all properly signed and initialed by Prevor. Two days later it was back, all properly okayed, and the company was paid. Not one man was redlined.
You could walk out anywhere on any parade-ground street and stop a soldier and tell him you had just completed a forty-page first payroll directly off the service records without getting a man red-lined, and the soldier would nod without comprehension and give you a nervous, puzzled smile. The only words he would really hear would be the words no redlines. Very few people knew the amount of work that went into even an ordinary everyday payroll. The Finance Office allowed not even the slightest deviation. No strikeovers, no erasures, even a bad smudge of a single letter or serial number numeral would cause the unfortunate soldier whose name it appeared in, or after, to be redlined. And Landers had been working with blocks of six to eight lines of remarks under each entry’s name, taken directly from the service record.
But Prevor knew, and caused the entire 3516th to know. Prevor bought a bottle of champagne and with the rest of the officers and the
clerk force opened it and drank it in the orderly room, toasting Landers. Landers walked out into the company area in the drizzle to find he was the new hero of the 3516th. In the messhall he was cheered. Every man who had his pay stuffed in his wallet wanted to shake his hand and pat him on the back, and by the end of the next month he was a buck/sgt and nobody begrudged him the promotion.
Only Landers was not elated. If he had told Winch what he felt, Winch would have snorted and then cursed. If he had told it to Strange, Strange would have said that he was seriously crazy.
But only Landers knew. He had an instinctive feeling that all this was not going to last. Not for him. Not for Landers. Just as he knew Prevor the Jew was not going to last, was going out. And when Prevor went, God only knew what would happen to the 3516th.
Landers wondered if Winch up at Second Army Command, the place where all the morning reports had been returned from, was following his progress.
CHAPTER 25
WINCH HAD KEPT TRACK of him. As he had all of his boys. In his job there was not all that much to do, that he did not have time to do outside things, too.
Also, Winch’s contacts had grown. In the time he had been at O’Bruyerre. With important help from Jack Alexander, he had extended his contacts until by now he had a web of informers, spreading out through all of Second Army Command here at O’Bruyerre, through all of Second Army HQ in Luxor, through Alexander’s hospital, and through all the various areas and aspects of O’Bruyerre itself.
Winch hated to use that word informers. But that was what it was. Pals, or buddies, would have been a better word. But that wasn’t what they were, they were informers. For vanity’s sake, and for pride, the whole thing was built and structured to look, and to seem, as if they were buddies. Nobody wanted to be an informer. First-three-graders from the QM from here, first-three-graders from Signal from there. All coming in singly to report from time to time, but looking like they were coming in really to say hello and have a beer.
Winch had set up in the first-three-graders area of the big main PX beer hall, at a big corner table. This was part of the bigger NCOs’ section, which was separated from the rest of the huge hall by a low fence of aluminum poles. At early evening every evening, just after work (what would be called the cocktail hour at the officers’ club) the big table was reserved for Winch, and there at his corner table Winch received.
The topics of conversation were always the gossip. That was how his informers conveyed their information. Junior first-three-graders came into Winch’s table for beer from just about everywhere on the big post. I don’t know if anybody can believe this, but I heard. So and so may not know what he’s talking about, but he said. So and so said this. Some other so and so heard this.
Winch presided, buying the various beers, easily, laughing, but filing away in the dark file cabinets of his head everything that might be pertinent somewhere or other. Almost everything was. For a while at first he kept a half-full glass mug of beer in front of him which he never touched. Later on he dispensed with the untasted beer. He would drink a glass of white wine or two now and then, from bottles he himself brought the barman.
Winch hated the aluminum-post fence. Just as he hated the two huge chrome-and-colored-lights Wurlitzer jukeboxes which stood in the big hall and were constantly being paid fortunes in nickels and quarters to play at top volume all the popular war songs. If they were going to put in a fence, why couldn’t they have put in a fence of turned wooden posts, like a beer hall should have? And he was heartily sick of Jo Stafford’s “I’ll Never Smile Again”; Dinah Shore’s “Sentimental Journey”; Vera Lynn’s “I’ll Be Seeing You”; Dick Haymes’ “I’ll Get By”; Alice Faye’s “You’ll Never Know”; Frank Sinatra’s “All or Nothing at All”; Helen Forrest’s “I’ve Heard That Song Before.” Sentimental hogwash. And “Avalon,” “Elmer’s Tune,” “Ciribiribin,” “Chattanooga Choo-Choo,” “The Jersey Bounce,” “I’ve Got a Gal in Kalamazoo.” They rattled and banged, or moaned, all over the place without cease, hanging up high in the huge room like a second cloud of tobacco smoke. But they made a good screen cover for the information that was passed to Winch in the form of lighthearted gossip.
So Winch knew all about Harry L Prevor and the 3516th, long before Landers showed up and drew that assignment. He also knew immediately it happened how Landers had saved Prevor’s ass twice, or three times, if you counted the payroll, with his superior clerking ability, learned right here at Mother Winch’s tit. He also knew, as soon as it came through, about Landers’ promotion back up to buck sergeant. And a month later he knew about his promotion to staff.
In spite of promotions Winch shrewdly suspected Landers was a long way from being out of the woods yet. It was Winch’s hunch that Landers had taken up the cause of Lt Prevor, and the saving of his company for him, as a moral cause. If so, Landers was shit out of luck. Winch had followed Lt Prevor’s progress since Lt Prevor had arrived in Second Army, a week after Winch himself. The anti-Jewish discrimination practices utilized against Prevor and two other Jews who had come in in the same batch of young officers were constant and unbending.
There was nothing in it for or against Winch and his command. But Winch found it an interesting thing to watch. There were other Jews in Second Army, quite a few of them, and some of them quite high-placed. But none of these were new, and strangers, without friends. And none of these established Jews came forward, either openly or behind the scenes, to help Prevor and the other two. According to the gossip received by Winch from their various sergeants, the established, accepted Jewish officers seemed to be more against Prevor and the other two than the white Anglos. In the sergeants’ opinions, the accepted Jews were doing it to stay “in.”
That made sense to Winch. He had long ago given up making moral judgments against Jews, or anybody else. But he did not think Landers had. And if Landers had decided to throw in his moral indignation behind Lt Prevor, Landers was on the losing side from the start. Because poor Prevor was a lost cause from the beginning, and his ouster from command of the 3516th was a foregone conclusion from the moment he got the command.
Second Army was allowing only two alternatives. One, if Lt Prevor got the command working and whipped it into some kind of good shape, Second Army would put some well-liked unassigned captain in over Prevor’s first lieutenancy to command it, and sop up the gravy poor Prevor had sweat blood to create for him. Second, and much more likely, if Prevor turned out an inept and shady outfit that was malfunctioning and in lousy shape, Second Army would relieve him and put him to work on some other cadre, with several black marks against him. And would then let some unloved young officer take the outfit overseas.
The only other possible alternative, the worst of all, would be that Prevor would be able to do nothing at all with this soured, motley crew, and would wind up with an undisciplined, morale-less gang of crippled stockade figures. In that case Second Army would let him take them overseas himself, caught up in the midst of his own death trap he had created, to be rid of him. Any way it came out Prevor stood to lose.
And if this was the cause Landers was putting himself and his talents behind, there was no way Landers could do anything but lose, too. What Landers would do, when one of these bad alternatives came up to be faced, was something Winch had to think about.
Meantime Winch had his own life to live. Mostly, his life consisted of Carol. Carol, and his nightmares. And the nightmares were gaining ground, on Carol, and on everything.
There had been a time, when Winch first got back from overseas, that he had had a very strong, almost uncontrollable desire to sleep with a bayonet or .45 pistol under his pillow. There was no sense to it. It was just comforting, like a kid with his security blanket. Winch had kept his pistol from the old company, writing it off as lost or stolen, and it was easy enough to come by a bayonet. He had used one or the other a few times, self-consciously, at the hospital in San Francisco, but then had stopped it. But both pieces still reposed in his gear and now
the desire had come back so strong that only the presence of Carol in the apartment and in the bed at night kept him from doing it. The few nights he slept alone in his quarters, he did sleep with one or the other. There was something immensely comforting about the feel of the warm metal under your hand under the pillow as you fell asleep.
The nightmares had nothing to do with the desire for a weapon, at least not as far as Winch could see. But lately the nightmares had started to win. There were three of them now. Three separate and different nightmares. There wasn’t a night, or a nap, or a half-hour’s doze, that there wasn’t one of them there, bedeviling him. And recently the original nightmare had broken through into the outside world, into the conscious awareness of other people. The thing he had tried most to avoid.
One night in a deep sleep Carol had awakened him saying that he was shouting something in his sleep. Something about “Get them out of there! Get them out of there!” The same sentence, over and over. It sounded as though it had something to do with the war, she said. But it was all so garbled. Was that what it was? Something about the war?
“It was nothing,” Winch said. “No. It wasn’t about the war.”
But the eager look on her face of concealed delight was so apparent, and so strong, that he felt sorry he couldn’t tell her. It would give her something romantic to remember about the war. When she was older. An older woman.
“It was nothing,” he said. “Just a bad dream.” But he was shaken, by the fact that he had yelled it aloud.
“You really are upset,” Carol said.
“A little. It’ll go away.”