“I guess not. I don’t suppose I ever will.”
“Look, Wendy, the world is blowing up. We’ve got to take what happens as we can when it comes. I’m not a soldier, not risking my life every day, but life goes by pretty quick.”
“So we have to take whatever fun we can? I don’t believe that, Alex. There’s more to life than that. After all, look at all the people you’ve known that have had affairs. After they’re over, what’s left? Nothing but bitterness, usually.”
“It’s not like that with us.”
“It might be, but we’ll never find out.”
Alex Grenville put his hands on the steering wheel and bowed his head. There was a stubbornness in this woman beneath her fragile exterior and her gentle manners. He had the feeling that, if she needed to, she could shoot a man down and then treat the wound. He looked at her and shook his head. “I can’t have you, and you’re the only one I want.” When she did not answer, he started the car and said morosely, “Why is it that we don’t get the things we want in this life?” He turned the Cord around and headed back to the library. When he let her out she said, “Good-bye, Alex.” And he felt as if he was losing something precious, yet he could not do more than say, “Good-bye, Wendy.”
“I’ve decided to join the Air Corps.”
Lylah and Jesse Hart had been paying attention to their meal, and Adam’s abrupt announcement swiveled their glances, and they stared at him with disbelief.
Adam had expected such a response. For weeks now he had been walking around saying little, and when Henry Vane had shoved the contract for the new movie under his nose, he had not been able to sign it. Vane had been incredulous, but he had not been able to persuade the young man.
“The Air Corps!” Lylah exclaimed. “When did you decide this, Adam?”
“I can’t say just when.” Adam shrugged. He pushed the bit of asparagus around with his fork for a moment, then looked up and said, “I know it comes as a shock, but I guess you really know why I’m doing it.”
Jesse looked at the young man carefully. “It’s Jake Greenberg, isn’t it, Adam?”
“Yes, I can’t get him out of my mind.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good reason for joining the Air Corps or any of the services,” Lylah said quietly. Fear had come to her, for she knew that the loss of this son of hers would ruin her life. “Why don’t you wait a while?”
“It’s too late; I’ve already enlisted.”
Adam looked at the two and tried to explain. “I can only talk to you. Not many people know who my father was, but somehow I feel responsible for Jake’s death.”
“Well, that doesn’t make sense, Adam. Your father was German, but that was in another war.”
“I know it doesn’t make any sense, but I’ve been going almost crazy,” Adam said. He tossed the fork down and looked at them, then said, “I can’t really explain it; I just got to do it!”
“How did you get in the Air Corps?”
“Well, since I can already fly, I think that made a difference. I had some college, although my scores are rotten, but they gave me a whole battery of tests, and I guess I must’ve done pretty well.” He went on to tell them about how he had wanted to get it all done before he told them. “Maybe I was afraid I’d back out, I don’t know. Anyway, I’ll be leaving to go to flight school in a week.”
Lylah could think of nothing to say, and she merely listened with a growing fear as Adam spoke about his plans. Finally, she said, “If you’ve got to do it, we’ll pray that God will protect you, Adam.”
Adam stared at her, “Thanks, Mom. I’ll need all the prayers I can get.”
MEN AT WAR
Never had there been any doubt in Will Stuart’s mind about what branch of the service he would fight his war in. Somehow the United States Marine Corps had been real to him from early boyhood. He had read the history of the Corps and everything he could find about the heroes that made up that branch, and when the first news of Pearl Harbor had come over the radio, the words had leaped into his mind, I’ll be a marine.
Now as he sat jammed in the passenger car of the Erie commuter train that passed over the Hudson River to downtown New York, he thought of that moment and wondered if he had been wise. The master gunnery sergeant who escorted the group of prospective marines to Parris Island was a slender man of middle age wearing marine dress blues. Now, standing up as the train began to slow, he grinned and said, “When you get to Parris Island, you’ll find things different. You won’t like it, you’ll think it’s stupid, you’ll think those officers and noncoms are the cruelest, rottenest bunch of men you ever ran into!” He paused, looked around almost fiercely, and shook his head. “I’m gonna tell you one thing. If you want to save yourselves headaches, you do everything they tell you and you keep your big mouths shut!”
Will had listened along with the others, and as the marine left the car he said, “Thanks, Sarge!”
Sergeant Benton glared at Will with mock ferocity. “It’s OK if you call me ‘Sarge,’ but from now on, don’t address anybody, even a lowly PFC without saying ‘Sir’!”
Will thought about that as they arrived at the station. Other marine recruits were arriving from all over the east. His unit was the last to arrive, aboard an ancient wooden train that puffed, smelling of coal, waiting to take them to the coast of South Carolina. As the train rattled on over uneven sleepers, all the men talked about the Corps. “What do you think it’ll be like at Parris Island?” “Hey, you think the Japs are as tough as the newspapers say they are?”
By the time they got to Parris Island and formed into a motley rank in front of a red brick mess hall, they were all tense. Will walked along with a group in clumsy civilian fashion. In the mess hall they were fed bologna and lima beans—cold lima beans. Afterwards they were addressed by Sergeant Wilcox, a southerner with a fine contempt for northerners. He was about six-feet-four, weighed 230 pounds, and had a voice that could make your hair hurt. It pulsed with power as he counted out the cadence as they marched. It whipped at the men, stiffening their slouching civilian backs. They marched to the quartermaster’s and were ordered to strip naked. Will stood before the quartermaster thinking, Somehow, when a man hasn’t got any clothes on, he’s defenseless. Your clothes are kind of like your character. Later he recognized that everything of the past was ripped from them by the Marine Corps. It was part of the plan to make marines out of civilians.
When Will emerged, he had a monstrous pile of gear: rain cap, gloves, socks, shoes, underwear, shirts, belts, pants, coats. And he had a number, 351000 USMCR. He had the feeling of being stripped of his personality, and looking around, he noted that everyone looked alike.
The haircut came next, and as they marched to the barber shop the cry, “You’ll be sorry!” was heard. Sitting down in the chair, Will received the quickest haircut he had ever had. Four or five strokes with the electric clippers, and he was as bald as an egg.
He was taken to the second floor of a wooden barracks, and for the next few weeks there were no privileges, except the privilege of marching.
March to the mess hall, march to the sick bay, march to draw rifles, slimy with Cosmoline, march, march, march. Feet slapping cement, treading the packed earth, always grinding to a halt with rifle butts clashing. “To the rear march! . . . Forward march! . . . Right shoulder arms!”
For the next few weeks nothing but discipline—no one at Parris Island seemed to care for anything except discipline. He heard no talk of the war, no fiery lectures about killing Japs. The drill instructors loved to beat into the raw civilians that had been handed to them the instant obedience to commands. Sergeant Wilcox, the drill instructor, delighted in throwing any discomfort he could upon his squad. He marched them toward the ocean on one cold morning, his chanted cadence never faltering. Right toward the ocean they went, and when the leader stopped, the sergeant went into a rage. “Who do you think you are? You’re nothing but a bunch of stupid boots! Who told you to halt? I give the orders
here, and nobody halts until I tell ’em to!”
The next day the platoon marched resolutely into the water, and he screamed, “Come back here, you idiots! Get your stupid behinds out of that ocean!” He would turn and address the universe, “Who’s got the most stupid platoon on the whole island? That’s right, me! I’ve got it!”
Will had enjoyed privacy most of his life and a semblance of good manners but found that both had ceased to exist. Most of the men had ideas of what passed for good table manners, but the meals were more like feeding time at the zoo. Will discovered that he was losing his sensitivity. Part of this was the ruthless denial of the slightest privacy. Everything was done in the open—rising, waking, letter writing, receiving mail. There was no privacy. Food in packages from home was appropriated by the drill instructor, and he would give a fine account of how good the cakes or homemade candy were. This caused rage among some of the recruits, which only delighted the drill instructors. In the morning the cold coastal weather brought shivers, and Sergeant Wilcox delighted in tormenting the northerners. “Hey, Yankee, I thought it was cold up north! Thought you was used to it! Look at them big Yank’s lips chatter!”
A problem for Will was the continual cursing and blasphemy and obscenity that took place. It was like part of the air that he breathed. In time, he learned to shut his mind to it, but the air was filled with cursing, especially on the rifle range.
It was on the rifle range, however, that after being taken apart, they started being put together as marines. Most of the southerners knew how to shoot, and even a surprising number of big city boys. It seemed that those from Georgia and Kentucky were the best. There was a certain number of mistakes, shooting at the wrong target, shooting under the bull’s eye, but Will wound up with an expert rifleman’s badge. It had brought five dollars a month extra pay, a considerable sum to one earning twenty-one dollars a month.
Finally it was over, and as they departed, the newly minted marines passed a bunch of incoming recruits, still in civilian clothes.
“They look terrible, don’t they, Sergeant Wilcox?” Will said.
Wilcox looked at Will angrily. “They look about like you did when you got here!”
“Ah, come on now, Sir. We haven’t done bad, have we?”
Wilcox struggled with himself and then finally allowed a slight grin. “Time you smell a little powder, you might make a marine,” he admitted grudgingly.
Will sat talking with the others as they waited for the supply trucks that would take them to the next stage of their training, the really rough part, they were told. As the fervor of activity went on around him, he thought how he had been made into something that he was not. He had learned part of the mystique of the marines. He spoke despairingly of soldiers as “dog faces,” and sailors as “swab jockeys.” He called West Point that “boys’ school on the Hudson.” He still could not accept as gospel truth unverified accounts of army or navy officers resigning their commissions to sign up as marine privates—but he was a marine.
At New River, where the First Marine Division was being formed, there were no dress blues, no women, no dance bands, nothing to make a man happy. As their sergeant warned them, “It’s dull and depressing, gun drills and nomenclature. Know your weapon, know it intimately.” Every hour there was a ten-minute break, and the major gave them the same talk every day. “There’ll be no thinking!” he would shout. “No enlisted man is permitted to think! The moment you think, you’re weakening the outfit!”
No one, however, was allowed to forget he was a marine. It came out in the forest green of the uniform, in the hour-long spit polishing of the dark brown shoes. It was in the jaunty angle of the campaign hats worn by the gunnery sergeants. Everything, every day, every hour, whether bayonet practice, the rifle range, or simply marching, was all marines. H Company was like a clan, or a tribe, and Will found himself in something like a family group. They all sank their differences into a common dislike for officers and for discipline, and later they would trade these off for the twin enemies in the Pacific: the jungle and the Jap.
As Will stood on the deck of the troop carrier, he saw fires flickering on the shores of Guadalcanal Island. In a drizzle in June of 1942, his ship had passed under the Golden Gate Bridge. Today, with battle imminent, he wished he were somewhere else.
“First Platoon over the side, down those cargo nets!”
The ship swayed in a gentle swell, and Will’s rifle muzzle knocked his helmet forward over his eyes as he scrambled the nets. He held on tightly, but three feet above the rolling Higgins boats, the cargo nets came to an end. If a man missed, he could sink and drown, but there was no choice. Will shoved off and hit the boat, sprawling on the floor of it, and was immediately half crushed as two other marines landed on top of him.
The boat was soon filled, and Will poked his head up despite warnings from the sergeant. His ears were strained for the sound of battle, and his body tensed for the leap over the side. The boat finally struck the shore, came to a halt, and he scrambled out with the others.
“Hey, there ain’t nobody here!” Bill Taylor said.
Along with the others Will expelled a sigh of relief. The marines wandered around Red Beach, and for ten minutes they had something like bliss and unspeakable relief at finding their landing unopposed—but even as they stepped from the white glare of the beach into the sheltering shade of the coconut groves, somewhere came a yammer of antiaircraft guns. The Japs had come, the war was on, and it would never be the same.
For two days they crossed rivers and recrossed them and climbed hills. They reached the Tenneru River and looked over the miles and miles of coconut groves. Then they reached a spot called Grassy Knoll. Exhausted almost to the state of unconsciousness, they waited for the enemy to come, as intelligence told them it would.
The night came on, and Will, along with the others, was cold and afraid. All night long he listened to the sounds that came from the jungle—the sound of moving things that seemed to creep closer. The darkness closed in, the trees dripped, the jungles whispered—but no one came. All the next day they waited for the enemy. The terrain of Guadalcanal seemed to be composed of mud, and their feet were continually churning on these undulating paths. But they saw no enemy. That night, however, Will awoke with a start. “Hey!” he yelled. “What’s on fire?”
The squad came awake at once and grabbed their rifles.
“Those things are flares!” Sergeant Maddox said. He had come to stand beside the squad.
“Why are they firing flares? Are they coming after us?”
“No,” Maddox said, “they’re out over the ocean. They come from Japanese sea planes.”
The flares hung over the whirls, swaying gently on their parachutes.
Soon they heard the sound of cannonading, and the earth seemed to tremble.
“What’s going on, Sarge?”
“I reckon it’s the navy.” He hesitated, then said, “I sure hope they rip them Japs!”
“Ah, they will!” A young marine with a pale face said. “They can’t whip us!”
They did whip us. The Japanese hammered out one of their greatest naval victories that night. It was called the Battle of Savo Island, which the marines learned to call the Battle of the Four Sitting Ducks. Three American cruisers and one Australian cruiser were sunk that night, and as the marines huddled in the slimy jungle, they did not understand what it meant.
Finally, dawn came and Sergeant Maddox led the men down to the beach.
“Hey, where are the ships?”
Will looked out with a sinking feeling.
The navy was gone, not a ship in sight.
“Uh, oh,” Sergeant Samuels groaned, “that tears it!”
“What does it mean, Sarge?” Will asked.
Sergeant Samuels was a veteran of forty, his face lined with experience. “It means we’re stuck on this island. The Japs got control of the ocean; they can bring in all the supplies and the men they want to to get us.”
Will Stu
art was tired and exhausted, but he knew what that meant. He wanted to ask the sergeant, “Do you think we’ll make it?” but knew it was a foolish question. He moved back to the squad and thought about his family and the slender chances he had of ever seeing them again. He wondered about his brother, Woody, who was fighting in a tank corps in Africa, and wondered if he would ever see him again.
Slowly he pulled his helmet off, looked toward the jungles where the hidden enemy lay in wait, and muttered softly, “Take care of yourself, Woody. One of us has to last through this war.”
NEW PILOT
Hey—look out, there!”
Clint Stuart, who had been sweeping the debris around the bunk and had leaned the broom up against the bed in order to get the dustpan, looked around at Asa Peabody, who had come off his bunk in a wild leap. Peabody’s eyes were staring, and his face was pale.
“What’s the matter, Asa?” Clint asked, startled, thinking that a bombing raid was coming, at the very least.
“Don’t you see what you did? Look at that!” Peabody pointed at the broom that was leaning against Clint’s bunk. Peabody’s hand trembled and he said, “I thought you had better sense, Clint, than to lean a broom up against a bed!”
“Lean a broom against a bed? What are you talking about, Asa?”
“It’s plumb bad luck to lean a broom against a bed! When you do that, the evil spirits in the broom will cast an evil spirit on the bed. Now, when you lay down in it, Clint, you’re going to soak that bad luck in like crazy!”
Clint heaved a slight sigh, a mixture of disgust and relief, but allowed no irritation to show in his voice. He had become accustomed to Peabody’s rampantly superstitious nature, and now he simply reached over, picked up the broom, and said, “I guess I forgot!”
“I guess you did! Now, if I was you, I’d carry that bunk out of here and get me a new one.”
“Well, we don’t have time for that, Asa, but I won’t ever do it again.”
Winds of Change Page 15
