The Thin Red Line (62 page)

That had been last night. And now, as he climbed the slopes of The Sea Slug to meed 3d Battalion at 7:40 the next morning, after a mortar pummeling that had wounded four men of his best platoon, and some others, he still felt the same way about them. He would do anything in the world for them. Behind him his men followed, much more interested in the terrain they were getting a first look at, than in what their present commander might ever do for them.

“Jesus!” Sgt Doll said to Sgt Beck. “Am I glad 3d Battalion did get there first!”

“Yeh,” Beck said, out of breath. “So’m I.”

What they saw was a series of fingerlike ridges thirty-five to forty feet high, rocky, steep, totally bare, with narrow, bare, ten to twenty foot draws between them. These were on the left. To have scaled them under Japanese fire was more than the toughest wished to contemplate. But on the right was a long, steep grassy slope devoid of cover for at least fifty yards. To have gone up this into MGs would have been to invite being mown like Nebraska wheat. The Japanese had even cut multiple fire lanes in the waist-high grass. Lucky. Lucky.

Band shook hands with the commander of 3d Battalion’s L Company, an old drinking pal of his and Stein’s who had reduced the position, and whose men were standing all around getting back their breath. 2d Platoon, and then the others following, mingled in with them, talking and smoking. But this time there was no evidence of competition, no digs or wisecracks about being late or who got there first.

L had not suffered badly: five men hit, one of them killed. Two of them by the first machinegun further back the ridge, three by the mortars which had hit them at the same time they hit C-for-Charlie. They had found only two MGs on the entire Sea Slug ridge, both suicide crews left behind to hold up the advance apparently. All had preferred to die. But there was evidence that there had been many more. The Japanese had pulled back apparently late yesterday, or last night.

What did all this mean? Neither L Company and its commander nor Band and C-for-Charlie had any idea. Both had expected a much tougher fight. Each would radio back the development to his respective battalion and carry on with his mission unless told otherwise. They decided to leave it like that. When they did radio, they were both told to carry on as planned.

L Company’s orders were to cross to and attack the open ground of The Giant Boiled Shrimp hill mass as soon as The Sea Slug was taken. C-for-Charlie’s were to dig in and hold The Sea Slug against counterattack for an approach route. It was still not yet eight o’clock in the morning. “I’m not at all sure you’ve got the easier job,” L Company’s commander smiled as he shook hands with Band before leaving. “Not if they find we’re using this ridge as an approach route and decide to turn loose those mortars again.” With a grim chill those men of Charlie who heard him thought he might very well be right.

Band put them to work right away. He chose for them the most advanced, most susceptible part of The Sea Slug ridge. Behind them Baker and Able were beginning to come up and spread out rearward from their flanks. As they dug, I-for-Item and K-for-King came up along the ridge and passed through them, I to take the left flank of the attack up the open ground of The Shrimp, twice as big as The Dancing Elephant in area, K to follow them as reserve 2d Battalion, they said, provided 3d was able to move on into the wider areas, was to follow them soon after and join in the attack.

This was not, however, the way it worked out in the reality.

Digging and sweating grimly in the growing heat of the day, 1st/Sgt Welsh was the first man in the company to finish his hole, and he only demanded a very little help from his three clerks. After all, they had to dig Band’s hole and the new Exec’s, before they could start on their own. Sitting in his, and staring off at the high ground of The Elephant’s Head where they had come from, Welsh was made to think of one of those sixteenth century bathtubs he had seen pictures of. Because of the slope, the rear of it rose to his ears while in the front it was two feet deep and halfway up his shins. (This was less than the required three feet but Welsh had cheated, and fuck them.)

Welsh suddenly envisioned himself sitting here with a big fat cigar in his face, a sponge in one hand and a longhandled brush in the other, enjoying this remarkably beautiful view. Which nobody else in the world had a right to look at, or pang! you’re dead! Welsh hated cigars and people who smoked them. But a cigar seemed proper in his vision all the same. He would soap and soap. And scrub and scrub. Not to get clean so much. He never minded being dirty. But because the view and the bathtub demanded it. Behind him his three clerks chattered at their digging like crazy birds, and Welsh had a momentary impulse to get up and boot them all three in the ass.

Welsh had taken a terribly dangerous chance yesterday when they moved out from the weekold vacation bivouac. He had filled two of his three canteens with gin, leaving only one for water. It was a desperate gamble heh heh but now it was paying off. Fuck water! He could get by without water. And with two shots inside his skin now he could look at the world again. It was really a beautiful world he thought looking off toward the distant magnificence of The Elephant’s Head. Where so many men had died and so many others had sickened. Fuck all that! Beautiful. Especially from a filled sixteenth century bathtub. He wiggled his toes in his stickywet socks. Ought to change, but the other pair was already stiff as boards in his pocket. Calmly he puffed on his imaginary cigar.

You guys! You guys! Welsh wanted to holler, listening to his three new clerks jabbering like three Japs behind him. You don’t know how to appreciate nothin’. Of them all he was, he was convinced, the only one left who really understood it. Home, family, country, flag, freedom, democracy, the honor of the President. Piss on all that! He didn’t have one of them, yet he was here, wasn’t he? And from choice, not necessity, because he could easily have gotten himself out of it. At least,
he
under
stood
himself. The truth was, he liked all this shit. He liked being shot at, liked being frightened, liked lying in holes scared to death and digging his fingernails into the ground, liked shooting at strangers and seeing them fall hurt, liked his stickywet feet in his stickywet socks. Part of him did. In a way he was sorry about young Fife, though. Fife, in a rifle platoon!?

Of all the company including officers, Welsh was perhaps the only one as far as he knew who had never yet felt the combat numbness. He had heard them talk about it, during the week off, and had listened. He understood that it was the saving factor, and sensed the animal brutality that it brought with it. But he had not yet had the experience. He did not know whether this was because life had already made him numb like that years ago and he had never realized it, whether his foreknowledge of what to expect plus his superb natural intelligence heh heh had made him immune to it, or whether it was just that the combat itself had never yet gotten quite tough enough to freeze up his particular brand of personality. There were times, moments, when Welsh realized that he was quite mad. Like: Three cherries on the same stem = George Washington. Two no, never. Three yes, always. Who would understand that if he told them? If he
dared
tell them. He still hated cherries to this day and could not eat them, though he loved the taste of them. Typically, when his malaria had gotten much worse during their week’s vacation, he had told nobody about it and had hidden it with a kind of secret glee. And he never was going to tell anybody. He didn’t know why. It was all part of this silly game they pretended was adult and mature, that was all. He would go till he dropped in his tracks or some dumb Jap shot him and they could bury him while he laughed. But he did feel a little sorry about Fife. Not a lot, of course. After all, when some ass got himself shot up bad enough to go to the hospital and get himself evacuated forever, and then didn’t have the gumption or guts to follow it through, what the fuck could you do with him?

Welsh settled down in his hole. He had an intuition they were going to have a pretty easy day of it. To prove him wrong, it was just exactly then that the walkietalkie man somewhere close behind him called out he had a message for Band from the new Colonel ordering 1st Battalion to move out immediately in support of 3d Battalion on The Shrimp, Band to call back confirmation. Band came running from somewhere down the line, and Welsh got wearily up from his hole. He was aware that once again he had screwed himself. If he had waited a half hour to start instead of pitching in to get done, he would not have had to dig at all. He grinned mirthlessly.

More men had not finished digging than had finished, like Welsh. One of these was young Corporal Fife on the other, forward slope of the narrow little ridge. Here the fall was less steep than on the rearward slope where Welsh was, but it still required a considerable digging job to make a creditable hole. Fife had attacked it disheartedly with his inadequate little shovel. It seemed an insuperable job, and yet at the same time he knew he must make a good job of it because 3d Platoon had been placed on the forward slope, beside the 2d Platoon who held the apex of the angling ridge. Any counterattack must come right at him. As he dug, Fife was thinking about Fife somewhat the same as Welsh was—but differently. Fife was
sure
, absolutely and positively
sure
, that
nothing
he did could ever have gotten him evacuated. Not even if he had kept after them and persisted about his lost glasses. He paused digging and squinted off toward the (for him) blurred bulk of Hill 210 trying to see just how bad his eyes really were. He did not know if his eyes would see what they were supposed to see to save him. But he suspected not. Between halfhearted stabs with his shovel, he peered off anxiously squinting at The Elephant’s Head, checking and rechecking his bad eyes. When the news to stop digging bulleted itself down the line, he threw down his shovel with a great sigh of relief. Then he realized what that meant, and irrational panic seized him.

Fife had lain with the 3d Platoon along the trail, and just back out of range, while 2d Platoon had taken their beating this morning. One or two rounds hit quite near him. The terror for mortars which he now carried was so great it was indescribable in words, even to himself. Every round that he heard fall had to hit him squarely on that spot where his neck joined his shoulders. After the barrage he had a severe neck ache which lasted more than an hour. Now in his panic at having to leave The Sea Slug and move forward, he did not know if he could actually shoot and kill another human being or not, even if he had to. To save himself. And more, he did not know whether even if all that part did go well, did work right, it would make any difference and he mightn’t get killed anyway. Killed! Dead! Not alive anymore! He didn’t think he could face it. God, he had already been wounded once, hadn’t he? What did they want from him? He wanted to sit down and cry, and he couldn’t. Not in front of the company.

In the fact, the company probably would not have noticed if Fife had sat down and cried. They were all too engrossed in thinking about their own bad luck as they fell in in their squads and platoons. And it really wasn’t anybody’s fault, that was the worst thing. The reason, as Band found out when he radioed his confirmation call, and as the rest of them found out by word of mouth gossip seconds later, was simply that they happened to be closest and somebody was needed right away. Old 1st Battalion got the shitty end of the stick in every sense. Wearily, though more in the morale sense than the physical, they gathered their gear together and prepared to do, once more, the necessary.

It was just at this point that another man in the company was wounded. This was a tall, quiet buck sergeant Squad Leader from Pennsylvania in the 3d Platoon whose name was Potts. Potts’s squad had been the linkup of the 3d Platoon with John Bell’s squad of the 2d. Potts and Bell and two others were standing out in the open by their holes on The Sea Slug, looking out toward The Giant Boiled Shrimp across the jungle that separated them. They were discussing the advance and what they might expect to find over there, and trying to see The Shrimp which from here was only a vague indistinct mass of brown. Bell, who happened to be standing with his back to The Shrimp at that particular moment and looking at Sgt Potts who was talking, saw the whole thing. One moment Potts was talking away. In the next there was a loud “Thwack!”, and immediately after the shrill whine of a bullet ricochetting away. Potts, who was looking straight at Bell and wearing no helmet, stopped in midword and stared at Bell crosseyed as if thoughtfully trying to see something on the end of his own nose. Then he fell down. A red spot had appeared in the center of his forehead. Potts immediately sat back up, still staring out at the world crosseyed, then fell back down again. By this time Bell was to him, but Potts was out, unconscious, those crossed eyes mercifully closed. Bell could see that on his forehead an inchlong groove had been cut—or burned rather, was perhaps the better word, since it did not bleed. Beneath it he could see the white, undamaged bone of Potts’s skull. A spent ricochet from somewhere on The Shrimp, traveling flatways instead of by the point, had passed beside Bell’s head and struck Potts square between the eyes and gone screaming on its way. Laughter beginning to make spasms in his diaphragm and bubble up into his throat despite himself, Bell knelt and brought him around by gently slapping his cheeks and chafing his hands. Potts was perfectly all right. Laughing so hard they could hardly see where they were going through the tears, the three of them helped him back to Battalion Aid Station which was just setting up on The Sea Slug, and where the doctor, laughing also, put a patch over the cut and gave Potts a handful of aspirin. Until the moment of departure he lay on his back resting with his helmet over his face because of his headache, assured of his Purple Heart. Potts did not think it was at all funny, and complained bitterly about his headache the rest of the day. Everybody else roared with laughter whenever it was mentioned. It put the company in a good mood to begin the incredible, unbelievable march they did not yet know they were going to make.