The Thin Red Line (20 page)

They unslung their packs and dismantled them, then settled down to wait. They waited another hour and a half—from nine to ten-thirty—before they saw another human, listening to the splashing and faint shouts from the river, staring at their neat, stacked rolls.

There was not much discussion of the situation while they waited, largely because nobody knew what it was. But they didn’t want to talk about it anyway, and preferred not to think about it. What little discussion there was employed a new word; simply, “Elephant.” During the past two days whenever the group of treeless hills C-for-Charlie’s regiment had been assigned to attack was mentioned, it was called The Elephant, or simply Elephant. Everyone was quick to pick the word up and use it, but nobody knew where it came from or what it meant.

In actual fact, the complex of hills had been named “The Dancing Elephant” by a young staff officer while studying an aerial photograph. Outlined on all sides by dark jungled valleys, the group of grassy hills did somewhat resemble an elephant standing on its hind legs with its forelegs up and its trunk above its head. The hind legs up to the belly were already held by the Marines, and the regiment’s attack (less the 3d Battalion, which had been given another objective) was to commence there and work its way up and across the rest of the group of hills to the Elephant’s Head. The Japanese had been felt out by reconnaissance and were known to hold at least two strong points in the Dancing Elephant from which it was believed they would contest vigorously any attack. One of these was a high, steep ridge running across the Elephant’s body at about the shoulder; the other was the Elephant’s Head itself, the highest point in the entire hill mass. From it the Elephant’s Trunk tapered down to the low jungled country, affording the Japanese a good supply route—and a good escape route, if they needed it. It was the high ridge at the Elephant’s Shoulder, which had been labeled Hill 209, that the 2d Battalion was supposed to be attacking today. But sitting on their suddenly deserted road, C-for-Charlie had no idea if they were doing it or not, and if they were, how they were faring, and—except for the officers and platoon sergeants—did not even know the hill’s designated number. Nor did many of them very much care.

John Bell was one of those who did. Bell had had enough infantry strategy and tactics to be interested generally. Besides, if his life was going to be in jeopardy because of this action, he wanted to know as much about it as he could. Anyway, sitting on this weirdly deserted road was singularly unnerving, and Bell wanted something to do. Discussing the action was as good as anything else.

Bell was in the second squad of the second platoon, which was the squad of young Sergeant McCron, the notorious motherhen. McCron was great when it came to looking after his draftee charges, but he knew next to nothing about tactics, and cared even less. Bell approached his platoon sergeant, Keck. Keck was an old Regular who had been sergeant of this same platoon since 1940. Bell learned nothing from him. Keck merely sneered at him irritably and told him that 2d Battalion was attacking a hill called 209 today at some place called The Elephant (Christ knew why), that beyond it was another hill called (appropriately enough) Hill 210 which they themselves would probably have to attack tomorrow provided 2d Battalion did not bog down today and, since they were in reserve today, what the hell difference did it make? All of this Bell already knew. Keck was one of those toughened field noncoms who preferred to leave the maps and planning to the officers until he himself could get on the ground and see just what little jobs his platoon would have to do. Bell appreciated this, but it didn’t help him any.

His own platoon officer Lieutenant Blane was sitting close by but Blane had always been distant to Bell. Undoubtedly this was because of Bell’s former status and Bell did not feel like asking Blane. Then he saw Culp of the weapons platoon sitting on a hummock further on. Culp the typical uncomplicated happy-go-lucky college football player had always been kind to him. Bell decided to ask him.

Culp appeared to be a little unnerved himself by the strangely deserted road and the waiting, because he seemed glad to talk. He was able to tell Bell that some bright young staff officer (who would probably make Lt Colonel out of his feat) had conceived the poetic name of The Dancing Elephant, and with a stick drew him a rough map on the damp ground showing The Elephant’s salient features. When they had exhausted the topic—exhausted it to the point of mutual embarrassment, in fact—Bell went back to his squad, thinking it over. He decided there would be at least two rather nasty jobs of work in securing The Elephant. He had consumed twenty minutes. He sat down with his squad, thinking about his wife Marty and wondering what she was doing right now. It would be night now back in Columbus. Wouldn’t it? Suddenly a physical desire for her, a desire to take her and undress her and spread her out and look at her and mount her, so strong that it made his head begin to burn with a hot fever of flushed blood, passed over him and gripped him. It was so impossibly painful that he thought he must scream. Almost delirious with the fever of it, he could not make it go away. Immediately afterward he had a severe chill. Bell was not so delirious that he did not know what that meant. He made the tenth man in three days.

Malaria was not considered a hospitalizing ailment except in the most extreme cases, and Bell was not the only man present with beginning malaria when finally a solitary figure appeared around the bend of the still-deserted road in front of them. At the spot where they sat the road bore a slight upgrade to the bend ahead. At the bend it turned sharply downhill to the right. The figure trudged uphill around the bend breathing heavily, stopped momentarily on the level ground to breathe, then stopped a second time when he saw them. After a couple of deep gasps for air, the man came on at a quickened pace, already shouting.

“Where the fuck have you guys been? I been lookin all over hell’s half acre for this outfit! What the hell have you been doin’? You’re supposed to be on the other side the river, not here! What the fuck happened?” He continued to come on, shouting other plaintive statements.

“All right,” Bugger Stein called disgustedly to his company. “Fall in, men, fall in.”

The new guide did not cease his nervous exhortation even when he came up to them and, once they had fallen in, began to lead them onward.

“Honestly, sir, I been lookin all over. You’re suppose to be clear over on the other side the river. That’s where they tole me you’d be.”

“We were just exactly where the other guide left us, and told us to stay,” Stein said. All his many pieces of equipment, dangling from their various straps, suddenly did not seem to be able to be kept in time and kept knocking against each other and against himself as he walked, ruining his balance.

“Then he must of made some kind of a mistake,” the new guide said.

“He was very positive about what he told us,” Stein said; “and quite definite.”

“Then somebody up there gave him the wrong orders. Or else they told me wrong.” The guide thought. “But I know I’m right. Because the rest of the battalion’s all over there.”

Not a very auspicious beginning. But Stein was even more concerned with some other things. He waited a full fifteen seconds before he spoke.

“What’s it like up there?” He could not fully disguise in his voice the guilt he felt for asking.

But the guide didn’t notice. “It’s a—” he searched for a word— “a crazyhouse.”

Stein had to be content with that. The guide didn’t elaborate. George Band was marching just alongside Stein, and they exchanged a glance. Then, suddenly, Band grinned at him a wolfish grin. Wondering what the hell that meant, Stein put his mind on the job at hand, because they had reached the bend.

From the bend the road ran almost straight down to the unnamed river, and the slope was steep. The road itself, churned by traffic, was a mudslide, a gloomy descending tunnel between impenetrable jungle walls. The only way to take it was to turn sideways like a man running down steep steps, and then dig in with the sides of the feet. At least half of the company took wet pratfalls going down, but there was very little laughter. What laughter there was was highpitched and nervous, and did not sound truly sincere.

The pontoon bridge, wide enough and with wood tracks for the jeeps to cross, was directly at the bottom. Groups of traffic control men and bridge tenders watched them from both ends of it with curious but sympathetic eyes. After their scrambling, sliding, falling trek down, jerky, too fast and out of time like an early Chaplin movie, their momentum carried them right on across.

In crossing, they saw for the first time the cause of the splashing and faint shouting they had heard earlier. Groups of naked or nearnaked men were wading in the river pushing boats ahead of them, one line coming upstream another going down, an improvised supply line replacing the stalled trucks. The boats coming upstream carried supplies. And in the ones going down C-for-Charlie got its first look at infantry wounded by infantry: dull-eyed men most of them, lolling against the thwarts and wrapped here and there with the startlingly clean white of bandages, through which on many the even more startling red of fresh blood had soaked. From the bridge every eye in C-for-Charlie turned toward them whitely, as the company crossed. Not all of the returning boats carried wounded men, only about half.

As soon as they reached the other side they began to climb as steeply as they had come down, but the climb was longer. Many more men could be seen now everywhere, running back and forth and up and down and talking. To C-for-Charlie after an hour and a half alone the sight was comforting. They saw D-for-Dog, their battalion’s heavy weapons company, sitting all together in the jungle on the slope with their big mortars and .50 cal machineguns. There were some waves and greetings. Able and Baker had already gone up, they were told. Then they came out of the jungle onto the grassy slopes. As if there were a manmade demarkation line, the mud ceased suddenly and became hard, packed dirt which dusted their faces. They climbed on.

It was here that S/Sgt Stack, platoon sergeant of the third lead platoon for an even longer time than Keck had been sergeant of the second, a lean hardfaced tough old drillmaster and disciplinarian, was found sitting by the trail with his legs pressed tightly together and his rifle in his lap, crying in agony at them as they passed: “Don’t go up there! you’ll be killed! don’t go up there! you’ll be killed!” The entire company had to pass him, one at a time and man by man in single file as if passing in some macabre review, as he sat pressing his legs and shouting at them. Most of them hardly saw or heard him in the intensity of their own excitement, and they left him there. It was as close to the front as Stack ever got, and they did not see him again. They were about two-thirds up.

Nothing they heard or saw on the way up prepared them for the pandemonium they entered when they came over the crest. Climbing with the wind behind them they had heard no battle noises; then, rounding the last bend and coming out onto the open hilltop suddenly, they found themselves immersed in infernal noise and tumult. Like a river running into a swamp and dissipating its current, the line of files trudged over the crest and disappeared in a mob of running or standing, shouting and talking men who struggled to make themselves heard above the din.

Invisible but not far off, 81mm mortars fired off rounds with their peculiar gonglike sound. From further off came the monumental crashes of artillery firing sporadic salvos. Further off still .50 cal machineguns, chattering in bass voices, punctuated the intervals. And much fainter, but coming clearly across the rolling unjungled terrain in front, there were the sounds of small-arms fire and grenades, and the explosions of the mortar shells and artillery rounds landing. All of this, compounded by the excitement, shouting and rushing about, created a demented riotous uproar whose total effect could only be mad confusion. C-for-Charlie had arrived on the field, at just a few minutes after eleven.

They were on a high knoll overlooking a series of grassy hills and draws rising out of the surrounding sea of jungle. To their front the slope fell to a smaller knoll upon which the jungle encroached more closely, forming in effect a narrow deck of untreed land leading to the wider areas beyond. On this knoll, too, stood or ran groups of Americans in their green combat fatigues, a lesser number than up here, thirty perhaps. Beyond the second knoll the slope dropped again, not so steeply but much further, to a broken ravine covered with sparse grass; and beyond this low point the land rose again, steeply this time, to a high ridge which dominated the area and made invisible anything beyond it. On this slope, perhaps a thousand yards away and higher even than the original vantage point, infantrymen were fighting.

To a few men like Bell who were informed about The Dancing Elephant’s terrain, it was clear that the knoll they occupied was The Elephant’s hind foot. The lower knoll in front, which was obviously 2d Battalion’s command post, thus became The Elephant’s knee leading to the wider areas ahead which formed the torso. And the high ridge where the infantrymen now fought was the Elephant’s Shoulder, the strong point labeled Hill 209.

A fire fight was obviously in progress. Several groups of squad or platoon size, tiny at this distance but plainly visible, were trying to get close to the crest and take it. The Americans, too far down the slope to lob grenades up to the crest, had to content themselves with riflefire. The Japanese, also clearly visible from time to time among the trees which rose above the crest from the jungled reverse slope, were under no such handicap; they could simply drop them down, and the black explosions from the Japanese grenades kept bursting out here and there, from the hillside. One American, receiving such a grenade near him, was seen to turn and simply jump out from the side of the hill like a man jumping off a ladder. He hit and rolled, the grenade exploded black behind him, and after a moment he rose and began to work his way back up to his group.