The Thin Red Line (43 page)

And as the twilight deepened, that was the way they remained: the little knot of officers in the center discussing the prospects and possibilities of tomorrow, the men in the holes around the circle checking and cleaning their weapons: the Battalion at the end of its first real day of real combat: neither successful nor unsuccessful, nothing decided, exhausted, growing number. Just before full dark the officers parted and went to their own holes to lie down and wait with the men for the expected Japanese night attack. Perhaps the worst thing was that now one could no longer smoke. That, and the shortage of water. A few more men had collapsed during the late afternoon and been carted away like the wounded, and many more remained on the verge of collapse. Fear was a problem too, more in some, less in others, according to how far the ahuman numbness had advanced in each. John Bell was not afraid at all now, he found. Wait until the shooting started, to get scared.

They were paired off of course in each two holes, one man to guard, one to sleep; but nobody slept very much. Quite a few men, spending their first night outside their own lines, fired at shadows, fired at everything, fired at nothing, revealing their positions; but the expected Japanese night attack did not develop, though they did manage to cut both companies’ sound power phone lines. Probably they were too weak and too sick to attack. And so the Battalion lay and waited for the dawn. Along about two o’clock John Bell suffered another malarial attack of chills and fever like the one he had had two days before on the road, except that this one was much worse. At its worst he was shaking so uncontrollably that he would have been of no use to anybody if the Japanese had attacked. And he was not alone. First Sergeant Welsh, clutching his precious musette bag containing the leatherbound Morning Report book in which for tomorrow he had already recorded in the dusk all of the personnel changes of today: “KIA; WIA; Sick;”—suffered his first malarial attack, which was worse than Bell’s second one, though neither knew it about the other. And there were others.

One man who had to shit did his business in the corner of his hole cursing hysterically, and spent the rest of the night trying to keep his feet out of it. To have gotten out of your hole was worth your life with this bunch.

CHAPTER 5

B
ILLIONS OF HARD
, bright stars shone with relentless glitter all across the tropic night sky. Underneath this brilliant canopy of the universe, the men lay wide awake and waited. From time to time the same great cumuli of the day, black blobs now, sailed their same stately route across the bright expanse blotting out portions of it, but no rain fell on the thirsting men. For the first time since they had been up in these hills it did not rain at all during the night. The night had to be endured, and it had to be endured dry, beneath its own magnificent beauty. Perhaps of them all only Colonel Tall enjoyed it.

Finally, though it was still black night, cautionary stirrings and whispers sibilated along the line from hole to hole as the word to move out was passed. In the inhuman, unreal unlight of false dawn the grubby, dirtyfaced remnants of C-for-Charlie sifted from their holes and coagulated stiffly into their squads and platoons to begin their flanking move. There was not one of them who did not carry his cuts, bruises or abrasions from having flung himself violently to the ground the day before. Thick fat rolls of dirt pressed beneath the mudcaked fingernails of their hands, greasy from cleaning weapons. They had lost forty-eight men or just over one-fourth of their number yesterday in killed, wounded or sick; nobody doubted they would lose more today. The only question remaining was: Which ones of us? Who exactly?

Still looking dapper although he was now almost as dirty as themselves, Colonel Tall with his little bamboo baton in his armpit and his hand resting on his rakishly lowslung holster, strode among them to tell them good luck. He shook hands with Bugger Stein and Brass Band. Then they trudged away in the ghostly light, moving away eastward back down the ridge to face their new day while thirst gnawed at them. Before dawn lightened the area, they had crossed back over the third fold—where they had lain so long in terror yesterday, and where the familiar ground now looked strange—and had traversed the low between the folds to the edge of the jungle where they were hidden, where Col Tall would not let them go yesterday, and where not a single Japanese was in sight. Approaching it cautiously with scouts out, they found nobody at all. A hundred yards inside the jungle they discovered a highly passable, much used trail, its mud covered with prints of Japanese hobnailed boots, all pointing toward Hill 210. As they moved along it quietly and without trouble, they could hear the beginning of the fight on the ridge—where they had left the previously four, but now five volunteers with Captain Gaff.

Tall had not waited long. B-for-Baker now manned the line of holes behind the ledge. Tall sent them forward to the ledge itself, and as soon as it was light enough to see at all, sent the middle platoon forward in an attack whose objective was to wheel right in a line pivoted on the ledge so that they would be facing the strongpoint. This would place them in a position to aid Gaff.

But the middle platoon’s move was not successful. MG fire from the strongpoint, and other hidden points nearby, hurt them too badly. Four men were killed and a number of others were wounded. They were forced to return. That was the noise of the fight C-for-Charlie heard; and its failure left everything up to Gaff and his now five volunteers. They would have to take the strongpoint alone. Tall walked over to them where they lay.

This fifth volunteer with Gaff was Pfc Cash, the icy-eyed taxi-driver from Toledo with the mean face, known in C-for-Charlie as “Big Un.” Earlier, before C-for-Charlie moved out, Big Un had come up to Tall in the dark and in a ponderous voice had asked to be allowed to stay behind and join Gaff’s assault group. Tall, who was not used to being approached by strange privates anyway, could hardly believe his ears. He could not even remember ever having seen this man. “Why?” he asked sharply.

“Because of what the Japs done to them two guys from 2d Battalion three days ago on Hill 209,” Big Un said. “I ain’t forgotten it, and I want to get myself a few of them personally before I get knocked off or shot up without getting a chance to kill some. I think Capn Gaff’s operation’ll be my best oppratunity.”

For a moment Tall could not help believing he was being made the victim of some kind of elaborate and tasteless hoax, perpetrated by the wits of Charlie Company who had sent this great oaf up to him deliberately with this stupid request for personal, heroic vendetta. 1st Sgt Welsh, for one, had a mind capable of such subtle ridicule.

But when he looked up (as he was forced to do; and Tall was by no means a small man) at this huge, murderous face and icy, if not very intelligent eyes, he could see despite his flare of anger that the man was obviously sincere. Cash stood, his rifle slung not from one shoulder but across his back, and carrying in his hands one of those sawed-off shotguns and bandolier of buckshot shells which some fool of a staff lieutenant had had the bright idea of handing out for “close quarter work” the night before the attack—which meant that Cash had hung onto the damned thing all through the danger of yesterday. Tall thought they had all been thrown away. A sudden tiny thrill ran through Tall despite himself. The brute really was big! But his own reaction made him even more angry.

“Soldier, are you serious?” he snapped thinly. “There’s a war on here. I’m busy. I’ve got a serious battle to fight.”

“Yes,” Big Un said, then remembering his manners added, “I mean: Yes, sir: I’m serious.”

Tall pressed his lips together. If the man wanted to make such a request, he should know he was supposed to go through channels: through his Platoon Leader and his Company Commander to Gaff himself; not come bothering the Battalion Commander with it when the Battalion Commander had a battle to fight.

“Don’t you know—” he began in frustration, and then stopped himself. Tall prided himself on being a professional and such requests for personal vendetta offended and bored him. A professional should ignore such things and fight a battle, or a war, as it developed on the ground. Tall knew Marine officers who laughed about the jars of gold or gold-filled Japanese teeth some of their men had collected over the campaign, but he preferred to have nothing to do with that sort of thing. Also, though his protégé Gaff had lost two men yesterday evening, they had decided between them that the experience and the knowledge of the terrain gained by the survivors more than made up for the adding of two green replacements who would probably be more liability than help. Still…

And anyway, here this great oaf still stood, waiting dumbly, as though his wishes were the only ones in the world, and blocking Tall’s path with his huge frame so Tall could not see anything that was going on.

After biting the inside of his lip, he snapped out coldly, “If you want to go with Captain Gaff, you’ll have to go talk to him about it and ask him. I’m busy. You can tell him that I don’t object to your going. Now, God damn it,
go away!
” he yelled. He turned away. Big Un was left holding his shotgun.

“Yes, Sir!” he called after the Colonel. “Thank you, Sir!” And while Tall had continued with getting C-for-Charlie moving, Cash had gone in search of Gaff.

Big Un’s cry of thanks after the Colonel had not been without his own little hint of sarcasm. He had not been a hack pusher all his life not to know when he was being deliberately snubbed by a social better, high intelligence or low. As far as intelligence went, Big Un was confident he could have been as intelligent as any—and more intelligent than most—if he had not always believed that school and history and arithmetic and writing and reading and learning words were only so much uninteresting bullshit which took up a man’s time and kept him from getting laid or making an easy buck. He still believed it, for his own kids as well as for himself. He had never finished his first year of high school and he could read a paper as well as anybody. And as for intelligence, he was intelligent enough to know that the Colonel’s statement about not objecting was tantamount to acceptance by Gaff. In fact, all the time he was talking there to the Colonel, Big Un had intended to tell Gaff that, anyway. Now he could tell him truthfully.

So, in the still dark predawn, Gaff and his four volunteers were treated to the awesome spectacle of Big Un looming up over them through the dark, still clutching his shotgun and bandolier of shells which he had clung to so dearly all through the terror of yesterday in his US-made shellhole among the 1st Platoon. Stolidly and without excitement, Big Un made his report. As he had anticipated, he was immediately accepted—although Gaff, too, looked at his shotgun strangely. All he had left to do was find Bugger Stein and report the change, then come back and lie down with the others to wait until B Company’s middle platoon made its attack and it was their own turn. Big Un did so with grim satisfaction.

There was little for them to do but talk. During the half hour it took the middle platoon of B Company to fail and come tumbling and sobbing back over the ledge with drawn faces and white eyes, the six of them lay a few yards back down the slope behind B’s right platoon which in addition to holding the right of the line along the ledge was also acting as the reserve. It was amazing how the longer one lasted in this business, the less sympathy one felt for others who were getting shot up as long as oneself was in safety. Sometimes the difference was a matter of only a very few yards. But terror became increasingly limited to those moments when you yourself were in actual danger. So, while B’s middle platoon shot and were shot, fought and sobbed thirty yards away beyond the ledge, Gaff’s group talked. Cash the new addition more than made his presence felt.

Big Un himself did very little of the talking, after explaining his reason for wanting to come with them, but he made himself felt just the same. Unslinging his rifle, he arranged it and the shotgun carefully to keep their actions out of the dirt, and then simply lay, toying with the bandolier of shotgun shells and slipping them in and out of their cloth loops, his face a stolid, mean mask. The slingless shotgun was a brandnew, cheap-looking automatic with its barrel sawed off just behind the choke and a five shell magazine; the shot shells themselves were not actually buckshot at all, but were loaded with a full load of BB shot capable of blowing a large, raw hole clear through a man at close range. It was a mean weapon, and Cash looked like the man to use it well. Nobody really knew very much about him in C-for-Charlie. He had come in as a draftee six months before and while he had made acquaintances, he had made no real friends. Everybody was a little afraid of him. He kept to himself, did most of his drinking alone, and while he never offered to challenge anybody to a fight, there was something about his grin which made it plain that any challenges he received would be cheerfully and gladly accepted. Nobody offered any. At six foot four and built accordingly, in an outfit where physical fighting prowess was considered the measure of a man’s stature, nobody wanted to try him. Except for Big Queen (over whom he towered by five inches, though he did not weigh as much) he was the biggest man in the company. There were those who were not above trying slyly to promote this battle of the giants between Big Un and Big Queen, just to see who
would
win; and many bets might have been taken, except that nothing ever came of it. Curiously enough, the nearest Big Un ever came to having a real friend was Witt the Kentuckian who hardly came up to his waist, and who used to go on pass with him before Witt was forcibly transferred. This turned out to be because in Toledo Big Un had known and admired so many Kentuckians who had come up north to work in the factories, and had liked their strong, hardheaded sense of honor which showed itself in drunken brawls over women or fistfights over particular prize seats at some bar. But now, today, he did not even speak to Witt beyond a perfunctory grunt of greeting. The rest of them watched him and his shotgun curiously. Despite the fact that they were now seasoned veterans of this particular assault and could look down on Big Un from this height of snobbery, they were all somehow a little reluctant to try it.