The Thin Red Line (16 page)

“There’s only one thing,” he said again; “officially. Officially I don’t know anything about it. What you men do without my knowing about it isn’t my responsibility. When you go, you’re on your own.”

He thought that was a rather well-rounded, powerful statement of his position. He thought he had stated it boldly and well, and he was pleased by this. But his pleasure was negated by the sentiment which attacked him when he remembered he would soon be leading these same exuberant men into battle—battle in which some of them would surely die, very possibly including himself.

But with Culp Stein drew the line. None of the other officers could go. That was a flat-out order by Stein, and the faces of the other three young platoon officers fell. All of them wanted to take part in the raid.

The only officer who didn’t want to go was George Band, the exec—who nevertheless did want one of the submachineguns, and got it.

First Lieutenant Band did not agree with, or like, the way his superior had handled this whole matter of the gun raid. Band was a tall, stooped, emaciated high school teacher, an OCS graduate whose spine had not been straightened by close order drill, a possessor of strange bulging eyes which looked as though they ought to require glasses and did. But Band felt he knew the Army. If you were going to command a company, you had to command it. You simply could not give the impression that you were letting your subordinates sway you in your decisions. Only by avoiding that, or even the semblance of it, could you truly command. And only by commanding could you stimulate and cause to grow that intense and closely knit working relationship of true comradeship, which should exist between the souls of men who had shared the rigors and shocks of combat, and which was the greatest human value of combat. Any other course led to fractionization, not unity. And that unity was what differentiated human men from the various beasts of the world.

There was, for Band, a mysterious quality of deepest, most manly friendship which could exist between men who shared the pain and death, the fear and the sadness of combat—and the happiness, too. For there was happiness. Happiness in doing your best, happiness in fighting by the side of your friend. Band did not know where this powerful, manly friendship came from, or what exactly caused it, but he knew that it existed and there were times when Band felt closer to the men in his outfit than he had ever felt to his wife.

But Band knew that the closeness could not be achieved as Stein was trying to do it: by giving them their head and letting them have their way. You had to let your men know where they stood. You had to make it plain to them what they were allowed to do, and what they weren’t allowed. Your men wanted to know that. If Stein wanted Culp to go, he should have said so at first, not let himself be talked into it—or else he should have refused and stuck by it. Just as he should sit down on that insolent Welsh and bring him to heel, and should have done it long ago.

Band said nothing of all this, however. It was not his place to interfere—especially with junior officers and sergeants present. All he said out loud was his modestly murmured request for one of the guns—which he knew Stein would let him have, as soon as he asked for it. And Stein did.

With two Thompson guns siphoned off the top by the element of command, that left four. It was decided to apportion these beforehand to avoid argument after. Culp of course got one. Dale, who continued his cautious silence and did not mention the one he had hidden in the woods, was allowed one as the finder. And Welsh and Storm, being the next two men in line of rank, got the other two. MacTae, the young supply sergeant, didn’t want one anyway, because he was not going to go up with the company; he was only going along on the raid for the lark. The two platoon sergeants had to be content with carbines, but both were glad enough to have the chance to go.

All this was decided the afternoon of the raid, with the seven raiders standing excitedly around the orderly tent wearing their borrowed pistols, shortly before taking off.

The reason Dale had not mentioned the seventh gun was because he did not fully trust in the successful completion of the raid. With his country suspicion of authority, he feared his Thompson might wind up in the possession of Bugger Stein or Brass Band (as Tall George was sometimes called) before the raid ever commenced—in which case, if the raid was unsuccessful, he would be out of luck. After the raid was over and successful, he brought it out of its hiding place in his slow deliberate way, pretending to grin sheepishly at his own dishonesty—thus elevating it to the plane of humor, where everyone was forced to laugh. The extra, unexpected gun went to MacTae—who had changed his mind and decided that, when the time came, he too would go up and see what combat was like, as Storm and all the cooks were going to do.

The time came much sooner than any of them had anticipated or expected.

The sounds of mortar and small arms fire off in the hills had grown steadily louder, growling more angrily, day by day. The excited little jeeps scurrying along the mud roads bearing highranking officers with mapcases had gradually increased in number, and in their speed. This much C-for-Charlie knew. And yet, when their orders finally came to go up, everybody was astonished and surprised. Partly of course it was because they somehow had never quite believed this time would come, this moment arrive. Their own orders to move seemed to burst upon them suddenly and resoundingly—echoing in their ears like an explosion in a cave.

Corporal Fife was sitting on a watercan in the sun outside the orderly tent when Bugger Stein and his driver, Stein with his mapcase across his knees, roared up in the company jeep. Before either of them jumped out Fife knew by the look on their faces what they were coming back to say. Fife realized then that the hollow echoing he was hearing was not an explosion in a cave after all, but the slow bumps of his own heart perched beneath his swallowing mechanism. Reluctance and anticipation pulled him excitedly in two directions. If his excitement got the least bit stronger, he was afraid it might turn to open fear, perhaps uncontrollable.

Fife had been a bystander at the conferences over the submachinegun raid only a few days before. He had not yet forgiven Welsh for that. He had wanted one of those guns, and to go on that raid, so badly that it made his face twist into a gargoyle mask whenever he thought about it.

He had even broken his solemn promise to himself never to ask Welsh for anything. He had asked Welsh outright. During a lull, of course; when nobody else was around to hear. He didn’t even ask for a gun. All he wanted was to go along. The darkbrowed sergeant had merely stared at him—stared with a deliberately feigned astonishment, while his black eyes kindled murderously.

“Kid,” he said; “I want that sickbook with them three new malaria cases in five minutes. Flat.”

That was all. Fife did not think he would forget the shame of it during the rest of his life. He did not believe even the terrible demands of combat could erase this brand. The thought of it made his flesh itch, still.

During those two days while the event of major importance which was the gun raid was happening to the company, something of minor importance had happened to Fife. He had been visited by his second friend—second counting Bell, that is, Fife’s other friend. Though lately Fife was about ready to give up and stop counting Bell. This second friend of Fife’s was a man named Witt, and he had been transferred out of the company two months before the outfit sailed.

This man Witt was a small, thin, Breathitt County Kentucky boy, an old Regular, a former Regimental boxer. He had been in C-for-Charlie several years. His transfer had been a fine object lesson to Fife, an interesting study of the ways in which armies worked.

Shortly before its troops were hurled bodily into what was officially called Final Training Phase, a new company had been created in the Regiment. Existing first on paper as a directive from the War Department, and dreamed up for reasons largely technical and uninteresting to anyone not a student of tactics, this new unit was called the Cannon Company. There already was an Anti-Tank Company. But in addition to using its new type guns as antitank defense, Cannon Company was to be able to elevate them for use as artillery, and was to serve as a tiny artillery force within the Regiment, capable of putting heavy fire down quickly onto targets of platoon- or company-size.

Admirably conceived on paper, and existing only on paper, men were still needed to make Cannon Company an actuality. This was accomplished within the Regiment, by a strange process which might well have been named “shunting the crud.” Fife observed how it worked. A Regimental memorandum was sent out ordering each company commander to donate a certain number of men. The commanders complied and the worst drunkards, worst homosexuals, and worst troublemakers all gathered together under one roof to form Cannon Company. This command was then given to the officer in the Regiment whom the Regimental Commander liked least. Witt was one of the men donated by C-for-Charlie.

Witt, though a drunkard (like most), was not one of the worst drunkards, and neither was he a homosexual. He could perhaps, by a loose application, be classed as a troublemaker—since he had been busted several times and twice had gone to the stockade on a Summary Court Martial. All this made him something of a romantic hero to Fife (though perhaps not on a level with Bell) but it did not endear him to Stein or Welsh. Still, he was not unique, and other men who were not sent to Cannon Company had had similar careers. Witt’s trouble was that he had earned the personal enmity of Welsh by arguing back, because he did not like Welsh. Welsh did not like him, either. In fact, each thought the other stank, totally and abominably, without relief or reservation.

Though he refused to go and ask to stay, Witt was unhappy at being transferred. All his friends were in C-for-Charlie, and he liked the reputation he had there. As Witt saw it, everybody knew he loved C-for-Charlie and for Welsh to transfer him out while knowing this only proved his total contempt for Welsh correct, thus making it even more impossible for him to ask to stay. So he was transferred in silence, along with several real drunkards, and two homosexuals. And now he had come back for a visit.

Cannon Company along with other elements of the Regiment had arrived almost a month earlier with the first echelon of the Division. They had had a good deal more time to become “acclimatized,” and Witt now had malaria. He looked wan and there was a yellowish tinge to his skin. Never heavy, he was now even thinner. He had kept his ears open for news of the old company and whenever a transport arrived with troops had tried to find them. He must have repeated this process twenty times. Finally he had been rewarded. He had been on the beach with a work detail the day they arrived, but had missed them because he was up at the other end unloading the other ship. So he had started out to find them. It was harder than it sounded. The island was jammed to boiling with men and matériel. After persistent inquiry he finally found someone who knew where they were bivouacked—only to find when he arrived (after slipping off and going AWOL and making the long walk up the island) that they had moved. He had had to start the whole thing over again. The feat was indicative of Witt’s stubborn patience. It was a quality Fife wished he had more of himself.

Fife was overjoyed to see him, especially after the downhill route his friendship with Bell had taken lately. Also, Fife was not unaware that—for another reason—Witt admired him as much as he admired Witt. Fife admired and heroized Witt for all of the manly, tough, brave qualities he had; but Witt secretly admired Fife for his education. Fife was not above playing to this flattery.

As it happened, Witt showed up on the very afternoon of the gun raid. Fife had, only just a short time before, stood and watched the seven raiders depart without him. Perhaps that had something to do with what happened between him and Witt, afterward. At any rate, it was a half hour after his sour observation of the raiders’ departure that he went outside for a break and heard himself hailed by a man standing some distance off near the supply tent and leaning against a cocopalm. It was Witt, who had made up his mind not to come near the orderly tent where his archenemy Welsh would be, and so had decided to wait here until his friend came out. Fife couldn’t make out who it was at the distance. He went over to him.

“Well, Witt! By God! How are you! Christ, it’s good to see you!” he cried as soon as he recognized him, and rushed to shake hands.

Witt grinned, not without some triumph, in his taciturn way. But he looked tired and worn. “Hi, Fife.”

For Fife, on this miserable disease- and death-ridden, frightening island, it was like finding a longlost brother. Witt allowed himself to be pumped by the hand and pounded on the back, grinning triumphantly all the while. Then they went off and sat down some distance away on a downed cocopalm log.

Mostly, Witt wanted to know about the company, and when it was going up on the line. He had seen Big Queen, and Gooch, his special pal, and Storm (who fixed him some hot Spam sandwiches, for the lunch he’d missed) and some of the others he used to know. But while he was happy to see them all, still nobody could tell him anything about the company. He thought perhaps Fife could. Though he was glad to see him, too, of course, naturally. He had, in fact, been waiting more than half an hour, and wouldn’t have left without seeing him.

“But aren’t you AWOL?”

Witt shrugged, and flashed his shy—but proud—grin. “They won’t do nothin to me. Not in that stinking outfit.”

“But why didn’t you come on in and get me?”

Witt’s face hardened, almost as though someone had modeled his features in quicksetting cement and Fife was watching it dry. His eyes took on a curiously flattened, deadly look—with which he stared at Fife. “I ain’t goin’ noplace where that fucking, poorly son of a bitch is.”

Fife suffered a trace of spinechill. There was something oddly snakelike about Witt at certain times such as this—like a coiled rattler ready to strike and certain it is right and, although this was only instinct, or perhaps because of that, completely satisfied in its own tiny mind. You know it is useless to argue with it. Also—because Witt was staring at him—Fife could not escape a feeling that Witt was personally insulted by his suggesting Witt might be willing to go where Welsh was. This made him uncomfortable.