The Thin Red Line (9 page)

Fumbling with his pocket a moment, Band said: “Have a stick of gum, Jim. I got two left.”

“Why, thanks, George. I will,” Stein said. “I’m all out.”

Further back in the column, and on the other side of the road, Pfc Doll marched—exhaustedly, gasping for breath, as everybody did—with his right hand resting on the holster flap of his new pistol, but the only feeling that was in him was one of a gigantic and gloomy sense of depression. He too had been affected by the sight of the wounded, and the effect upon him had been to diminish his recent acquisition of a pistol to total meaninglessness, nothingness, complete unimportance. Obviously, whether a man had a pistol or not, it was not going to mean a thing under the blast of an aerial bomb like that. Of course, up on the front lines later, where most of the fighting would be done with small arms, it might be different; but even there, there would be the big mortars, and artillery fire. Doll felt completely defenseless. As well as exhausted. How the hell much further was this march?

At that moment, in point of fact, the six mile march still had five miles to run; but had anybody told Doll this, or told any other man in C-for-Charlie company, it would not have been believed. There were men in this company who, back before the war in the peacetime regular army, had made forced marches upwards of fifty miles and lasting more than twenty-four hours. But never had any of them experienced anything like this. Slowly, very slowly, as they progressed through the coconut groves along the edges of these rivers of mud called roads, the terrain began to change a little. Fingers of matted jungle began to be visible, reaching down into the coconut trees, and every now and then yellow hills of kunai grass could be seen far back in the distance above the jungle. Wearily, exhaustedly they trudged and stumbled on.

To cover that six miles took them most of the afternoon, and by the time they reached the place they had been assigned more than a third of the company had given up and fallen out along the way. Those who made it were staggering, gasping from sheer airlessness, and almost senseless with exhaustion. The company kitchen equipment and the men’s duffel bags, as well as one of the company’s jeeps, had already been delivered to the spot; but nobody could do anything about it for more than half an hour after they arrived and collapsed when told that they were home. Then the jeep was sent out to collect the stragglers along the route, and Sergeant Storm, with a weary detail to help him and his cooks, set about putting up the kitchen tent and fly and putting up his field stoves so that he could serve a meal that night. Other details exhaustedly, sickly, went about putting up the supply tent and orderly room tent. Before any of these jobs could be completed, it began to rain.

CHAPTER 2

T
HERE WAS
a long line of jungle about a hundred and fifty yards from the bivouac. Off through the coconut trees and through the steaming, chill curtain of tropical rain it looked more like a massive wall than anything else. Dense, solid, sweeping away to the foothills and a hundred feet high, it might have been an ancient green lavaflow laid down by some volcano centuries ago to form this flat-topped plateau: up whose steep green slope one could climb, to walk away over the top on a surface at least as solid as the wet earth on which they stood. Almost invisible in the rain, it loomed there, alien, supremely confident, making them aware of it even when they could not see it, a fact of nature like a mountain or an ocean and equally as ominous to the human ego.

In the coconut grove they worked doggedly to set up their camp. The rain came straight down, unbreathed upon by any wind. A quarter of a mile away they could see the humid sun shining brightly down into the apparently endless cocopalms. But here it came down in bucketsful—in huge, fat drops so close together that it seemed to be a solid sheet of water which was pouring down on them from the sky. Everything not already accidentally covered up was soaked through in a matter of seconds. In minutes it had flooded the area. To think of raincoats was ridiculous, this rain would have gone right on through them. Soaked to the skin, still worn out by the march, C-for-Charlie company sloshed around through the area, churned it into a thin sea of mud with their feet, did whatever had to be done to make a camp. There was no other choice.

It was so bad, everything was so miserable, that suddenly the whole thing turned itself into a lark. A hollow and pathetic lark, to be sure, when associated with the dead, dying and wounded from the air raid whom they could not forget;—but perhaps for that very reason the clowning and laughter rose to an even higher pitch, one that in the end resembled hysteria. Some men, less cautious and able to forget that even combat fatigues had to be washed, were not above sitting down and sliding themselves around in the mud like children playing in snow. In the end, however, it did not lessen their painful new tension. When they had worn out their clowning, they found the nervousness still there. All their howling and laughing and sliding about had not in the slightest bit diminished that. Meanwhile, the rain did not cease.

In the kitchen tent which had been on the way up when the rain started, Storm, cursing and swearing, tried to light his field stoves with wet matches. No one had any that were dry, and if he did not get them lit there would be no hot meal tonight; and Storm was determined that there would be one. Finally he managed it with a borrowed Zippo, knowing beforehand that if he succeeded he would burn his hand rather badly, and which in fact he did do. Stoically, he wrapped his hand in a towel and after giving orders to dry out some matches over the lit stove went on with his work, considerably prouder of himself than he would have admitted aloud. He would show these bums who it was kept them fed. Nobody’d ever say Storm didn’t feed his people.

Outside in the rain it appeared upon closer inspection that the company’s allotment of eight-man personnel tents had not arrived from the ship; nor had the folding cots which were supposed to go in them. When Sergeant Welsh grinning with great relish brought him this news, Captain Bugger Stein did not know what to do. This was one of those little inefficiencies that could always be expected, wherever large groups of men tried to carry out a complex operation together. But on this particular day, and in this rain, it was an especially bad one to have inflicted on him, Stein felt. Logically there was only one order to give, which was for the men to break packs and put up their sheltertents, and that was the order Stein gave. Logical or not, it was still an absurd order, and Stein was painfully aware of that. He was sitting bareheaded in the newly risen, comparatively dry orderly-room tent, drenched and cold, and rummaging around in his own barracks bag trying to find a dry uniform, when Welsh came to him; and when he saw the grinning contempt on Welsh’s wet face at the order, he became so incensed that he forgot his policy of parental tolerance toward his crazy first sergeant.

“God damn it, Sergeant,
I
know it’s a ridiculous order,
too!
” he shouted. “Now go and
tell
them! That’s an order!”

“Yes, sir!” Welsh grinned, saluting him insultingly; and did. With sardonic relish.

The men heard the order with stolidly set faces and little comment, standing with hunched shoulders in the rain. Then they set about it.

“He’s nuts!” Private Mazzi snarled to Private Tills, wiping the water from his face as he coupled their tentpoles together, “plain fucking nuts!” They were bunking together, and Tills was sitting on a five gallon watercan buttoning their shelterhalves together in the rain. He did not answer.

“Well, ain’t that right?” Mazzi demanded, as he finished the poles and started unwinding the rolled ropes. “Ain’t that fucking right, Tills? Hey, Tills!”

“I don’t know,” Tills said and relapsed into silence. Tills had been one of those who had got carried away into playing in the mud, and now he was regretting it. At the height of the clowning, sitting in the mud, he had even daubed streaks of it across his face. By now the rain and simple usage had washed most of it from his hands and, with some help from himself, from his face; but the rest of him was one great concerted smear of the foul, evilsmelling tropical mud. “What else could he do?” he asked spiritlessly after a moment.

“How the goddam hell do I know what he could of done? I ain’t the company commander.” Mazzi gathered their combined ten tentpegs, having stretched the wet ropes as best he could, and began laying them out.

“You think these goddam little old pegs going to hold in this muck?” he demanded. “I was compny commander of this compny, there’d be a lotta changes around here, and pretty damn fucking quick. And up yours, Tills. You about finished there?”

“I’m sure there would be,” Tills said. “Yeah, I’m finished.” He stood up, letting the joined mass of soaked canvas fall from his lap to the muddy ground, and wiped the rain from his face.

“Well come on then.” Mazzi tossed out the last two pegs. “He’s a jerkoff. A goddam mothergrabbing jerkoff. That’s what he is. He don’t know his ass from third base and he ain’t about to ever. Come on, damn it.”

“Everbody’s a jerkoff,” Tills said. But he remained standing where he was. Furtively he made a couple of useless swipes at his face, then wrung his hands and rubbed them together. It was futile. Fine lines of the thin, glutinous mud remained in all the wrinkles and grooves of his hands, rolls of it under his fingernails and in the angles of the cuticles. Only the ridges were clean, giving his hands a curious two-tone effect, as if he were trying to imitate his own fingerprints. He still did not move his feet. “To hear you tell it.”

By contrast Mazzi looked extraordinarily clean. Even though he was wet to the skin. He had not joined in the mudplaying, although he had been willing to laugh and yell with the rest, and had cheered on the ones who did.

“That’s right,” he agreed. “Except for me and a couple my better acquaintances around here who are the ony ones around here who are hep. Come on I said goddam it. Let’s get this fuckin thing up.”

“Look, Mazzi.” Tills still did not move. “I want to ast you somethin. You think there’s any fucking germs in this mud?”

Mazzi stared up from where he squatted by the tentsite, momentarily surprised into speechlessness. “Germs?” he said finally. “Germs.” He too wiped the water from his face again, thinking. “Sure there’s germs. All kinds of germs.”

“You really think so?” Tills said in a worried voice. He looked down at himself. For the moment imagination had made him totally defenseless.

Mazzi continued to stare up at him sensing this, his face beginning to take on a pleased look. He grinned maliciously. “Why, hell yes. Don’t you read the papers? This island’s loaded with all kinds a germs. Any kind a germ you want this island’s got it. And where do you find germs? In dirt, dopehead. What kind a germs you want?” He held up a hand and began ticking splayed fingers. “Malaria germs—”

“—Malaria germs are in the mosquitoes,” Tills interrupted sullenly.

“Sure but where do they get them? From the dirt. There’s—”

“—No,” Tills interrupted again. “They get them from other people who got malaria.”

“Okay, sure. But where they come from first? Everybody knows that. Germs come from dirt and bein dirty.” He went on ticking his fingers. “And then there’s dinghy fever germs, and jaundice germs, black water fever germs, jungle rot germs, dysentaria germs—” Mazzi was onto the other hand by now. Still grinning up at Tills, he stopped and threw both hands away into the air expressively. “Hell, what kind of a germs you want? You name it this island’s got it.” He paused.

“Christ,” he said looking pleased with himself. “You’ll probly be sick as a dog tomorra, Tills.”

Tills regarded him defenselessly. “You’re a son of a bitch, Mazzi,” he said after a moment.

Mazzi raised his mobile eyebrows, together with his expressive shoulders. “Who? Me? What’d I do? You ast me a question. I answered it for you. Best as I could.”

Tills did not make any answer and continued to stand looking at Mazzi in an attentive, defenseless way, the wet muddy canvas draped around his feet. Still squatting by the tentpegs Mazzi grinned back at him.

“You dint see me down and slidin around in that mud, did you? Sure, I laughed and hollered and cheered them on. That never cost me nothin. Trouble with you, Tills, you’re a jerkoff. A born jerkoff. You’re awys gettin sucked into somethin. Take a lesson, kid. You don’t see me gettin sucked into somethin, me and my better acquaintances around here who are hep.

“Right, Tills?”

Smug complacency dripped from his use of the word “kid.” Mazzi was several years the younger. Tills did not answer him.

“Now come on. Let’s get this thing up,” he said. His face squinted up again: “before you get so sick you can’t even help me. One guy can’t put up a puptent by himself. Hell, if you get real sick, I’ll have the whole tent to myself. Hell, maybe you’ll get so sick you’ll be lucky and they’ll ship you out—if you don’t die.”

Without speaking Tills stopped and gathered up the stiff, wet mass of canvas and started with it over to the tentsite where Mazzi, still grinning at him complacently, rose to help him spread it.

“Look at them goddamn blankets,” Mazzi said pointing at them. They had stuffed them under a tarp covering some equipment. “Would you mind tellin me, Tills, how a man is gonna sleep in blankets like that tonight? Would you? Hunh?” he demanded. But when Tills did not answer he did not bother to repeat the question as they fell to stretching the canvas over the first pole.

Around them other men were working in the rain and other sheltertents were going up in the long, even lines. Everyone tried to avoid walking where the little tents would sit but it did not help. The force of the rain itself was enough to turn the ground into a mire. Without cots they would have to spread their soggy blankets on this quagmire, and then on top of them protect what halfdry clothes they could find. It was going to be a miserable night for everyone but the officers whose sleeping tents, cots and bed rolls were always carried with the company, and it would not be pleasant for them.