The Thin Red Line (7 page)

Apparently the news had not affected the beach very much at all. The LCIs and a welter of other types of barges still came roaring, jamming in to unload their cargoes of men or supplies, while others were in process of pulling back out to rejoin the shuttle. The beach was literally alive with men, all moving somewhere, and seemed to undulate with a life of its own under their mass as beaches sometimes appear to do when invaded by armies of fiddler crabs. Lines, strings and streams of men crossed and recrossed it with hot-footed and apparently unregulated alacrity. They were in all stages of dress and undress, sleeveless shirts, legless pants, no shirts at all, and in some few cases, particularly those working in or near the water, they worked totally stark naked or in their white government issue underpants through which the dark hairiness of their genitals showed plainly. There were no women anywhere around here at all anyway, and there were not likely to be any either for quite some little time. They wore all sorts of fantastic headgear, issue, civilian, and homemade, so that one might see a man working in the water totally naked with nothing adorning his person except his identity tags around his neck and a little red beany, turned-up fatigue hat, or a hat of banana leaves on his head. The supply barges were unloaded by gangs of men immediately, right at the water’s edge, so that the barge could go back for more. Then lines of other men carried these boxes, cases, cans back up the beach into the trees, or formed chains and passed them from hand to hand, trying to clear the space at the water’s edge. Further away down the beach the heavier matériel, trucks, anti-tank guns, artillery, were being unloaded, driven by their own drivers, or hauled up by Marine tractors. And still further away, this whole operation was being conducted a second time for the second transport, anchored quite a few hundred yards behind the first.

All of this activity had been going on at this same pace since very early morning apparently, and the news of the impending air raid did not appear to affect it one way or the other. But as the minutes crept by one after the other, there was a noticeable change in the emotional quality and excitement of the beach. C-for-Charlie, from its vantage point at the edge of the trees, could sense the tautening of the emotional tenor. They watched a number of men who had been calmly bathing waistdeep in the sea in the midst of all this hectic activity, look at their watches and then get out and walk naked up to their clothes in the edge of the trees. Then, just a few moments after this, someone at the water’s edge flung up an arm and cried out, “There they are!” and the cry was taken up all up and down the beach.

High up in the sunbright sky a number of little specks sailed serenely along toward the channel where the two ships lay. After a couple of minutes when they were closer, a number of other specks, fighter planes, could be seen above them engaging each other. Below on the beach the men with jobs and the working parties had already gone back to their work; but as the others, including C-for-Charlie company, watched, about half the engaged fighter planes broke off and turned back to the north, apparently having reached the limit of their fuel range. Only a couple of the remaining fighters started out to chase them, and they almost at once gave it up and turned back, and with the others began to attack the bombers. On they all came, slowly getting larger. The tiny mosquitoes dipped and swirled and dived in a mad, whirling dance around the heavier, stolid horseflies, who nevertheless kept serenely and sedately on. Now the bombers began to fall, first one here, trailing a great plume of smoke soon dissipated by the winds of the upper air, then another one there, trailing no smoke at all and fluttering down. No parachutes issued from them. Still the bombers kept on. Then one of the little mosquitoes fell, and a moment later, in another place, another. Parachutes appeared from both, floating in the sunbright air. Still the mosquitoes darted and swirled. Another injured horsefly fell. But it was surprising, at least to C-for-Charlie and the other newcomers, how many did not fall. Considering the vehemence and numbers of the attack, it appeared that they must all go down. But they didn’t, and the whole concerted mass moved slowly on toward the ships in the channel, the changing tones of the motors as the fighters dived or climbed clearly discernible now.

Below on the beach the minutes, and then the seconds, continued to tick by. There were no cheers when a bomber fell. When the first one had fallen, another new company nearby to C-for-Charlie had made an attempt at a feeble cheer, in which a few men from C-for-Charlie had joined. But it soon died from lack of nourishment, and after that it was not again attempted. Everybody watched in silence, rapt, fascinated. And the men down on the beach continued to work, though more excitedly now.

To Corporal Fife, standing tensely in the midst of the silent company headquarters, the lack of cheering only heightened his previous impression of its all being like a business. A regular business venture, not war at all. The idea was horrifying to Fife. It was weird and wacky and somehow insane. It was even immoral. It was as though a clerical, mathematical equation had been worked out, as a calculated risk: Here were two large, expensive ships and, say, twenty-five large aircraft had been sent out after them. These had been given protection as long as possible by smaller aircraft, which were less expensive than they, and then sent on alone on the theory that all or part of twenty-five large aircraft was worth all or part of two large ships. The defending fighters, working on the same principle, strove to keep the price as high as possible, their ultimate hope being to get all twenty-five large aircraft without paying all or any of either ship. And that there were men in these expensive machines which were contending with each other, was unimportant—except for the fact that they were needed to manipulate the machines. The very idea itself, and what it implied, struck a cold blade of terror into Fife’s essentially defenseless vitals, a terror both of unimportance, his unimportance, and of powerlessness: his powerlessness. He had no control or sayso in any of it. Not even where it concerned himself, who was also a part of it. It was terrifying. He did not mind dying in a war, a real war,—at least, he didn’t think he did—but he did not want to die in a regulated business venture.

Slowly and inexorably the contending mass high up in the air came on. On the beach the work did not stop. Neither did the LCIs and other barges. When the planes had almost reached the ships, one more bomber fell, crashing and exploding in smoke and flames in the channel in full view of everybody. Then they began to pass over the ships. A gentle sighing became audible through the air. Then a geyser of water, followed by another, then another, popped high up out of the sea. Seconds later the sounds of the explosions which had caused them swept across the beach and on past them into the coconut trees, rustling them. The gentle sighing noise grew louder, carrying a fluttery overtone, and other geysers began to pop up all over the sea around the first ship, and then a few seconds later, around the second. It was no longer possible to distinguish the individual sticks of bombs, but they all saw the individual stick of three bombs which made the hit. Like probing fingers, the first lit some distance in front of the first ship, the second coming closer. The third fell almost directly alongside. An LCI was just putting off from the ship, it couldn’t have been many yards away, and the third bomb apparently landed directly on it. From that distance, probably a thousand yards or more, one faint, but clearly discernible scream, high and shrill, and which actually did not reach them until after the geyser had already gone up, was heard by the men on shore, cut off and followed immediately by the sound wave of the explosion: some one nameless man’s single instinctual and useless protest against the taking of his life and his own bad luck at being where he was instead of somewhere else, ridiculous, pointless, but not without a certain dignity, although, ironically, it was not heard, and appreciated, until after he himself no longer existed. His last scream had lived longer than he had.

When the spout of water had subsided so that they could see, there was nothing left of the LCI to be seen. At the spot where it had been a few figures bobbed in the water, and these rapidly became fewer. The two barges nearest them came about and made for the spot, reaching them before the little rescue boat that was standing by could get there. Losing way, they wallowed in the trough while infantrymen stripped off equipment and dived in to help both the injured and uninjured who had had no time to strip equipment and were being dragged under by it. The less seriously wounded and the uninjured were helped aboard the barges on little rope ladders thrown over the side by the pilots; the more seriously hurt were simply kept afloat until the rescue boat, which carried slings and baskets and was already on its way, could get there.

On shore, the watching men—the lucky ones, as the barge pilots had said, because they were out of it—tried to divide their attention between this operation and the planes still overhead. The bombers, having made their run, turned out toward the channel and headed back north. They made no attempt at strafing, they were too busy protecting themselves from the fighters, and the antiaircraft crews on the ships and shore could not fire either for fear of hitting their own fighters. The whole operation, except for the dropped bombs themselves, had taken place up there, high up in the air. Slowly, sedately, the bombers headed back into the north to where a protective blanket of their own fighters would be waiting for them, growing slowly and steadily smaller, as before they had grown slowly and steadily larger. The fighters still buzzed angrily around them, and before they were lost to sight a few more fell. All during the action the defending fighters had been hampered by having to break off and streak back to the air strip to renew fuel or ammunition. Replenished, they would return. But the number of fighters actually engaged was never as large as it might have been. Apparently the bombers were allowing for this factor. At any rate, slowly they dwindled to specks again, then to invisibility. Then finally, the fighters began to return. It was over. On the beach the work of unloading, which had never ceased during the attack, went right on.

Men who had been here longer and who were standing nearby to C-for-Charlie, which still waited—and watched—from the edge of the coconut grove, told them that there would probably be at least two more attacks, now, during the day. The main thing was to get the damned ships unloaded so they could get out of here and thus let things settle back peacefully to normal. The unloading was the most important thing of all. But it had to be finished by nightfall. The ships had to be out of here as soon as it got dark, fully unloaded or not, rather than risk night air attacks. If they weren’t fully unloaded, they would leave anyway.

Already, long before the retreating bombers were out of sight, word had circulated around the beach that the first transport had been damaged by the same bomb which had destroyed the bargeful of infantrymen. This was an even more important reason for the ships to get out. The damage was slight, but the bomb had sprung some plates and she was taking water, though not enough that the pumps could not handle it. There had been some casualties aboard the ship, too, caused by bomb fragments or pieces of flying metal from the barge among the densely crowded men on deck; and one man, word had it, had had his face smashed in by a helmet blown from the head of some man in the barge: a complete, solid helmet, undented, undamaged. Such were the vagaries of existence, the word had it. Pieces of meat and chunks of shattered equipment had also been blown up onto the ship’s deck from the barge, the jagged riflestocks causing some little further injury. Apparently, word from the ship said, the bomb had not landed directly in the barge itself, but had hit right alongside its gunnel, between it and the ship. This was the reason for the blast damage to the ship. On the other hand, had it landed on the opposite side of the barge away from the ship, or even in the barge, the men on deck would have been bombarded with a great deal more meat and metal than they had been. As it was, the most of it had—because of the bomb’s position—been blown away from the ship across the water. The casualties on board the ship, the word said, had been seven dead and twenty-two injured, amongst which injured was the man who had had his face smashed in by the helmet. All of these were being cared for aboard in the ship’s hospital.

C-for-Charlie heard this news with a strange feeling. This had been their ship, these men now dead and injured their sailing companions. The spot where the bomb fell had not been at all far from their own debarkation position. They listened to the word-of-mouth reports with a sort of mixture of awe and imaginative fear which they found completely uncontrollable: If the bombers had been a few minutes earlier. Or if they themselves had been only a few minutes later getting up on deck. Suppose one of the companies ahead of them had been much slower getting off? Suppose, for that matter, the bomb hadn’t landed some yards off in the water? Suppose it had landed that number of yards toward the rail? This sort of speculation was, of course, useless. As well as acutely painful. But a strong awareness of this uselessness did not seem to help to make the speculation cease.

The survivors of the destroyed LCI were landed from the two barges and the rescue boat which had picked them up, not far away from C-for-Charlie company; so C-for-Charlie got to observe this action, too. With practical comments as to the extent of the various injuries in their ears from the nearby men who had been here longer, C-for-Charlie watched round-eyed as these men were tenderly led or carried up from the beach to where a field dressing station had been set up at dawn. Some of them were still vomiting sea water from their ordeal. A few were able to walk by themselves. But all of them were suffering from shock, as well as from blast, and the consummate tenderness with which they were handled first by their rescuers and then by the corpsmen was a matter of complete indifference to them and meant nothing. Bloodstained, staggering, their eyeballs rolling, the little party faltered up the slope of the beach to sit or lie, dazed and indifferent, and acquiescently allow themselves to be worked on by the doctors.