The Thin Red Line (48 page)

When he had delivered his message about the strongpoint and the water Stein nodded, debating whether to send a runner up with the news; it ought to provide added incentive, especially about the water. His tongue felt like sandpaper on the roof of his mouth. He himself had not had any water since—? he could not remember. Deciding in favor, he motioned for the last of his little clerks, the middle-aged draftee Weld, and sent him forward with the information and orders to 1st and 2d Platoons to move up behind the 3d to a distance of twenty yards. When the 3d moved, they were both to move forward and occupy the vacated positions. If 3d was not stopped, they were to move forward again and join it. Then he turned to Witt and grinned out of his dirt-blackened, stubbled face. “It looks like we’re in luck today, Witt.”

Witt could have thrown his arms around his commander and kissed him on his dirt-crusted, stubbled cheek in an ecstasy of loving comradeship. Except that it might have looked faggoty, or get taken the wrong way. Emotions were coursing through Witt today that he had never known existed in him in his life. He was, he found strangely enough, really very happy.

“How did it go with the strongpoint?” Stein asked him. He had some minutes to wait anyway.

Witt told him a little bit about it, about Big Un Cash and his shotgun—and about his own big fat Jap sergeant, shyly. He showed him his rifle.

“How many did they get altogether?”

“About thirty-five,” Witt said, batting his lashes in a shy, abashed embarrassment he could not control.

“Thirty-five!”

“But more than ten of those was bombed out in the bunkers. Seven was knocked out beforehand, and Big Un got six with his shotgun. That only left around nine. I only got three myself.”

“Pretty damn good job. Okay, why don’t you stay here with us and have yourself a rest?”

“I ruther be with the company, Sir,” Witt said, then added hastily: “I mean, you know, with the platoons. I always feel like maybe I could help somebody, you know? Maybe
save
somebody.” It was the first time he had ever told anyone his secret.

Stein stared at him quizzically, and Witt cursed himself. He had learned long ago in his life never to tell anybody anything about what he really felt, what had made him do it now? Stein shrugged. “Okay. Report to Beck then. He needs noncoms badly. Tell him I just appointed you Acting Sergeant.”

“But I’m not even in the compny, Sir, officially.”

“We’ll worry about all that later.”

“Aye, Sir.” Witt crawled away.

“If you hurry,” Stein called softly, “you can get there before we start. I won’t signal for a couple of minutes.” Motioning to the Hq and the rearguard, he moved them forward.

But he never did signal. Before he could, they had been discovered. But they were discovered in the most delicious way any infantryman ever can be. A party of fourteen or fifteen unprepared Japanese, all packing portions of dismantled heavy mortars they were carrying to the rear and safety, came over the crest. Needless to say, none of them survived. 3d Platoon took them from right, left and center. Stein was on his feet as soon as the first shot was fired and saw most of them go down.

They had left all of their weapons platoon back with Colonel Tall except for one machinegun. Stein had placed it on the extreme left flank of the 3d Platoon in the first line with orders to fire when they heard him blow four short blasts on his whistle. Now, with his lungs crammed full of air, his mouth open, his head pushed back and his whistle moving in his hand to his mouth, he heard the MG open up, anticipating him. He exhaled, and watched them put a covering fire down all along the crest, which was much less a sharp line from where they crouched than from where he watched, as 3d Platoon led by Al Gore leaped to its feet and rushed the crest. It was almost exactly like the G Company charge against the crest of Hill 209 which Stein had witnessed from the basin, and for an insane moment Stein thought he was back there and that none of all this had happened yet. He had to blink his eyes to bring himself out of it. But this wasn’t G Company’s charge against Hill 209, these were his men, this his company, and also this charge was, apparently, successful. His MG was answered only by a very weak scattering of riflefire. It continued to fire until to go on would endanger 3d Platoon, then Stein saw its crew—without any orders or suggestions from him—pick it up and run it up over the crest. Two men carried the gun on its tripod and the other two staggered along behind with all the ammo boxes. It disappeared over the crest. 3d Platoon disappeared over the crest. The MG began firing again. 1st Platoon was moving up to replace the 3d. 2d Platoon was moving up to replace the 1st. “Go on! Go on!” Stein heard his own voice bellowing. “Don’t stop now!” He knew nobody could hear him but he could not stop it, and he could not stop waving his arms. Nevertheless, almost as if they actually could hear him, 1st Platoon led by S/Sgt Skinny Culn hesitated only a moment at 3d Platoon’s old position, then themselves charged on up and disappeared over the crest, from which was now coming the sound of a great amount of American smallarms fire and very little of the Japanese. “Hot damn! Hot damn!” Stein kept yelling over and over. 2d Platoon, much farther down the slope, was still toiling toward the 1st Platoon’s old position where the impassable side slopes began, and Stein suddenly realized that he did not want them to go over the crest, too.

“Come on! Come on!” he yelled at the men around him. “We got to get up there!” And he started off through the grass running.

At just that moment something which sounded like a Japanese grenade, but which must have been one of the smaller knee mortars, exploded among the dispersed Hq group. Except for Stein almost everyone hit the dirt, but Stein ran on. He stopped long enough to turn around and bellow at them insanely, waving his arms, then went on running. No more of the objects fell, and slowly the others got up. Only one of them had been hurt by it, and this was Storm the mess sergeant. A tiny fragment not much bigger than a pinhead had entered the back of his left hand between the fingerbones but had not come out on the other side. Storm stared at the little blue-rimmed hole which was not bleeding, flexed his hand and heard something grate, then ran numbly on after the others beyond whom Stein was already thirty yards in the lead. Storm could not associate the puncture with the explosion. They didn’t seem to have anything to do with each other. Grimly he ran to catch up. Everything everywhere seemed to be ungovernable chaos with the firing, the shouts and the breathless running.

Stein had moved the Hq and rearguard up to within forty yards of 2d Platoon before the action started so abruptly. Even so, he would never know how an essentially puny, windless man like himself made it to them, but he did. A few yards beyond 1st Platoon’s old position he caught them, ran right on through them and out in front. Bracing himself he turned, his arms spread wide and his carbine clutched at the balance in one hand.

“Hold it! Hold it!” he sobbed. When they had stopped, he shouted back down to the Hq and rearguard being led on by George Band and Sergeant Welsh. “Keep your distance! Keep your distance! Twenty yards! Form a line there!”

When they were all stopped and into position, he assumed command himself and led them forward to within twenty yards of the crest. He did not want his reserve rushing pellmell and disorganized over that crest until he knew what was going on, until he knew whether he would have to hold them back to cover a retreat. The sound of the firing had become somewhat muffled, as if the shooters had moved on some distance, and its volume had diminished. There seemed very little of the sharper crackle of the Japanese weapons. Stein advanced alone by himself until he could see over the crest. What he saw was a scene which would stay with him the rest of his life.

His two bloodthirsty platoons had burst into what was clearly a bivouac area. The tall jungle trees, by whatever logic of their own, had climbed up out of the gulches and established themselves here on this crest. These were the trees which had been visible from the low area before the ridge all day yesterday. The Japanese had cleared out all the small trees and undergrowth so that what was taking place here now was taking place in the cool-looking sundappled shade of the big trees as though in some park. The only thing that was not like a park was the gluey mud which was everywhere on the ground. In this pretty, natural setting Stein’s two platoons in small disorganized groups were shooting and killing Japanese in what appeared to be carload lots. Stein saw one group pass a sicklooking Japanese man standing unarmed with his hands in the air, whereupon, as soon as they had passed, the Japanese lowered his arms and reached inside his shirt for something. A man in another group ten yards away shot him immediately. As he fell, the unignited grenade rolled from his hand. Stein saw another man (it looked like Big Queen but he couldn’t be sure) advance upon a Japanese man who was grinning desperately with his hands high in the air, push his rifle which carried no bayonet to within an inch of the grinning face and shoot him in the nose. Stein could not help laughing. Especially at the thought of those widened eyes slowly crossing themselves in despair as they focused on the advancing muzzle. Harold Lloyd. There were no tents visible, but there were surface shelters of branches and sticks which the Japanese had made themselves, and there were underground dugouts. The first were being shot to pieces or knocked apart with riflebutts. The underground shelters were being bombed out with grenades. Stein saw at a glance there would be no way of getting these men organized for quite some time. On the other hand they were not in any major danger requiring his reserve. They had the upper hand, and they were exercising it. A crazy sort of blood lust, like some sort of declared school holiday from all moral ethics, had descended on them. They could kill with impunity and they were doing it. The sweating terrors and suffering of yesterday, the enthusiasm over their undetected advance from the rear, the massacre of the fifteen unprepared Japanese at the crest, all had contributed to their ebullient mood and there was no stopping them till they wore it out—even if it would be safe to do so, which Stein didn’t think it was because of the possibility of counterattack. This was not to say that there were not some of them being killed and wounded by the Japanese. There were, and not just a few. But the others, those who were not killed or wounded, didn’t give a good goddamn about that.

Off to the left of this disorganized scene was the only bit of sensible organization Stein could see. His one machinegun which he had seen get run up over the crest was set up to cover the horseshoe-shaped forward slope which composed the left flank and rear of his two platoons as they worked their way right around the curving crest. Several thoughtful riflemen had foregone the shooting jamboree to place themselves as cover guards for the MG. All of them were now firing forward downhill whenever any of the Japanese in the forward positions attempted to come back to help their friends, and while there were not many of these Stein nevertheless saw immediately where an organized platoon could be of great service. Because it was down this way that Colonel Tall and B Company were still fighting their way up from the ridge. Immediately Stein turned to go back over the crest and get them moving. As he did so, he was nearly knocked down by a bull-roaring figure which slammed past him from the killing fest on the right, bent to seize the rifle and bandoliers of a dead compatriot—(Pfc Polack Fronk the dead one was, of his 3d Platoon, Stein realized vaguely)—and then went huge-chested and still roaring back into the melee. Big Queen, of course. There was blood dripping from the biceps of his huge left arm in the torn shirt. A khaki GI handkerchief had been knotted around it. Stein went on.

It was indeed Big Queen whom Stein had seen shoot the grinning Japanese in the nose. That had been his seventh. A few seconds after that his rifle had jammed itself irretrievably. Quite apart from the fact that it was exceedingly dangerous to go on fighting in this kind of a fight with a rifle that wouldn’t shoot, it infuriated Queen beyond speech to think of being left out of the fun at this late date, and he had run rearward hunting the first loose rifle he could find. He was, Queen realized happily, quite a sight: a blood-dripping mad roaring bull, and he knew he made quite a picture. All this was because a delicious thing had happened to Queen today. He had discovered that, after all, he was not a coward. All day yesterday he had lain in that fucking US-made shellhole under the mortars, completely unnerved and terrorstricken into helplessnes. He had lain there like that until Captain Gaff had come down to order 1st Platoon over to the ridge. He had even, he thought with shame, ordered Doll to stay put and not carry his message back to Stein. What if Doll ever told anybody about that? But, big, strong and tough or not, that was what Queen had done. Because being big, strong and tough could not help you with enemy mortars. For that something else was required. And Queen had found that he did not have it. He had been reduced again to essentially the same puniness he had suffered from all during his early childhood when every kid in the neighborhood could beat him up if they could only catch him. He was sure, after he got his growth, that nothing like that could ever happen to him again, and so all day yesterday had become a horrible, unspeakable nightmare. He had hardly spoken a word to anybody since, except when necessary, to hide what he really felt.

But today all that had gone away. The compounded excitement of the secret march to the Japanese rear, the successful reduction of the MG on the trail, plus the undiscovered move up to the top of The Trunk, and then the joyous wholesale destruction of the startled Japanese mortar carriers, had created an elation in him which allowed him to move his body as easy as anything. And with the others, running the last few yards to the top of the crest, he hadn’t been scared at all. He had led his squad with abandon. And when he burst over into the disorganized bivouac area and saw what was going on there, he knew with a savage joy that
some
body was going to
pay
for what the fuckers had done to him. The reason there was no bayonet on his rifle was because he had forgotten it in the excitement. But after watching two men get shot while trying to extricate their bayonets from the filthy squirming bastards stuck on them, he decided it was better not to have one anyway. He had been hit within almost the first fifteen seconds after cresting the ridge. It hadn’t hurt him at all. The bullet had passed through the fleshy part of his upper arm, leaving a clean hole. He knotted a handkerchief around it using his teeth and ran laughing and bellowing on. Before his piece jammed he had killed seven, four of them with their hands up. And now, bowling his way along roaring through the various groups to the front like some flesh and blood tank, he arrived back in time to shoot a Japanese officer who rising from a hole had run at them screaming to die for his Emperor whirling his sword on high. Queen tore the scabbard from him, jammed the sword in it, stuck it all in his belt and rushed on.