The survivor

by Robb White

  "Well, I think this is what they call an academic discussion," the exec said. "I think this squadron has seen the last of Adam Land."

  They both turned to look at the door as someone knocked. Then the CO. said quietly, "No discussion of this thing, Charlie. I'm going to give him the word and that's all—come in!"

  Adam Land, still in the nylon flight suit, came in, closed the door, and stood at a careless attention.

  The CO. looked up at him and had a quick, disconnected thought. Adam would make a good model for a recruiting poster saying The Navy Needs You. He was taU and rugged, with brown

  hair bleached almost gold by all that sitting around on the beach he did. He had a good face, too. Not handsome, hardly even good-looking—just a good, simple face, untroubled, a Uttle amused. Happy.

  Land's blue eyes bothered the CO. a Uttle. They were so deep blue and clear and warm and very, very young. There was no trace of concern in them. They seemed to look out upon a world totally without fears or agonies, trouble or—war.

  '^You want to see me. Skipper?" Adam asked.

  **At ease," the skipper said. Suddenly he dreaded giving Land the message and, for a moment, understood how really hard it must be for parents to deny their children something which the child really wanted. "How was the flight?'* he asked, putting the thing o£F.

  "Like a bird. What*s on your mind, Skipper?*

  The exec said, trying to keep the sourness out of his voice, "You got a date or something?"

  "You know it. This one's got every brick in the right place."

  Such a happy Idd, the CO. thought, with your blue eyes shining in anticipation. And I'm going to let you have it, right between those blue eyes. "Adam," the CO. said, "you're confined to your quarters until further notice."

  The CO. watched him as, for a second, he didn't even understand the words. Then, when he did, it was as though he had been hit by a poleax —right between the eyes. "What?" Adam asked in a low, unbeHeving voice. Then as he really began to understand it he cried, "Oh nol That can't be,

  Skipper. IVe got a date with the prettiest girl in Hawaii, and the surfs perfect."

  **You're confined to your quarters, Adam."

  ''Skipper, there must be a mistakel I haven't done anything. Lately. Not in the squadron. Nowherel"

  "I'm not going to discuss it, Adam. Report to your quarters and stay there."

  "But I haven't done anything, Skipper. HonestI Nothing! I don't rate this."

  But the CO. only looked at him, and he knew there was nothing more.

  *What have I done?" Adam said in a weak, almost childish voice, as he turned and walked slowly out.

  "Adaml" the CO. called as Adam was closing the door.

  "Yes, sir?"

  "You are not to discuss this with anyone either."

  "Aye, aye, sir," Adam said listlessly and closed the door.

  For a moment the exec and the CO. sat there looking at the closed door.

  "You see," the exec said. "He's a kid."

  The CO. sat for a while looking out the window, and then he swung around to his desk, all business. "We'll need a replacement pilot, Charlie. I've got a feeling Land is out of the squadron."

  "Okay. Ill go over to ComAirPac this afternoon and see what they've got in the pool."

  "Charlie," the CO. said, "try to find one who can fly an airplane the way Land could. Even if he's just a—kid."

  OUT in the bright sunshine Adam Land was angry at himself. Here he was, ahnost twenty-one years old and behaving like a kid. He was so close to having tears in his eyes he walked along with his head down so people wouldn't notice. **Grow upr he told himself. "Or youll be crying like a baby right here in the middle of the squadron area. Grow upl"

  "Greetings, Adam* a voice said beside him.

  Adam raised his head only high enough to see the leather name tag on the guy's flight suit "Hi, pal," he said, clearing his throat.

  "Going ashore?'*

  "No."

  The man beside him stopped walking for a moment and said in a voice of exaggerated surprise, "The great lover not going ashorel What can this mean?"

  "Cut it out,** Adam said.

  The man fell in step again. **What's eating you?"

  "Nothing."

  "What'd the skipper want?"

  *To pin a medal on me."

  "Good-looking medal," the guy said, looking at Adam's chest. "Real good-looking. E Pluribus Wahine. What's the matter? Did oo break oo lil surfboard, Adam?"

  "You got real good-looking teeth," Adam said, *but they wouldn't look good where I'm about to push 'em."

  **Man, you re in trouble," the guy said.

  Adam stopped and looked at him. "WHiat do you mean?"

  *Waitl Hold hardl Take it easy, pall" the guy said, backing away from Adam.

  ''What do you laiow about my troubles?" Adam asked.

  "Nothing, good buddy. Nothing."

  *You said, I was in trouble."

  "I mean, just the way you're acting. You look kind of down, that's all. Shook. If you got trouble, I don't know anything about it"

  Adam started walked again, his hands shoved down in the deep pockets of the flight suit. "No trouble," he said. "No trouble at alL*

  ADAM Land was in bachelor oflBcers* quarters -tV talking on the phone to the girl, Gloria, when the Marine Corps jeep drove up and stopped out-

  "Listen, honey, I told youl I can t get out there today . . . Why? Because they're going to pin a medal on me for heroism, is why . . . But tomorrow I'll be there . . . Well, maybe not tomorrow.. .."

  As he went on talking, the driver of the jeep, a sergeant in the Marine Corps, came into BOQ and asked at the desk where he could find Lieutenant (j.g.) Adam Land, and the man at the desk pointed at the phone booth. The sergeant, a .45 automatic in a holster strapped to his leg, walked over to the phone booth and rapped on the glass door. Adam,

  Still talking to Gloria, turned and looked at him with irritation. The sergeant ignored this and rapped again.

  Adam opened the door a crack and said, "Go away, Sergeant. I am talking to a girl. You know, one of those pretty things." Then he closed the door. The sergeant pulled it open and said, **! have orders for you, Lieutenant.**

  "Listen, honey,** Adam said to Gloria, *T11 call you right back, hear? Tve got to go win the war now." Then he hung up and glared at the sergeant. "You interrupted me in a conversation vital to the war effort. Sergeant.**

  The sergeant looked at him with the way sergeants have—not exactly insulting, nor even personal. It's as though you, as a person, dont exist. You're just a unit in the sergeant's mind.

  "The jeep's outside. Lieutenant," the sergeant said.

  'TTiHis MABiNE SERGEANT is," Adam Land thought: J. "(a) tongue-tied; (b) too dirnib to talk (but he sure didn*t look dimib); (c) just not very talkative.**

  "Where*d you say we were going, Sergeant?" Adam asked innocently.

  "I didn*t. Lieutenant," the sergeant said, keeping his eyes on the main road to Pearl Harbor.

  "Do you know where we're going. Sergeant?"

  **I do, Lieutenant."

  "And how long are we going to stay there, Ser-

  geant? I don't ask this idly, but only because I've got a date at Makaha and the tide's turning."

  "Long enough, Lieutenant," the sergeant said, stopping the jeep at the Pearl Harbor gate where the marine sentry looked in, read a slip of paper the sergeant held up, sahited, and let them pass.

  As they drove along the harbor front, Adam w^as pleased to see that almost all the damage done by the enemy attack had been cleaned up. The first time he'd seen Pearl it had made him sad and sick and angry. The ships were still out there in the water, mangled and ruined; Ford Island was still a mess, with hangars burned out and skeletons of planes pushed into a somehow shameful heap.

  The sergeant stopp>ed the jeep in the marine area and waited until Adam got out, then led him into one of the camouflaged buildings. To another sergeant at a desk the first sergeant said, *This i
s the lieutenant, Smitty. Wlien you get through with him, let me know."

  'Wilco. Come on. Lieutenant."

  'Whither away?" Adam asked.

  "In here," the sergeant said, and opened the door to a small bare room. As Adam came in, the sergeant stood at the door. "Take off all your clothes, everything except your dog tags. Put your gear in that box, tie it up, seal it, put your name and duty station and serial number on it and turn it in to me, sir."

  "Look," Adam said, wondering if he was being pushed around. "I'm wearing about everything I own, including two weeks' pay."

  "It will all be locked un by the supply officer and returned to you ... if the occasion warrants. Otherwise it will be sent, intact, to your next of kin."

  ''Come on!'' Adam said. "Fun's fun, but let's don't get carried away. What's all this about?"

  "Orders from headquarters, sir. Just strip do^vn.'* The sergeant looked him over. "Six two, one-sixty, forty-six, twenty-eight, thirty-four, size ten D. Rightr

  "You're very good, Sergeant, but I think I'U just go back to my tailor."

  The sergeant said ominously, "I wouldn't keep them waiting. Lieutenant," and started for the door. "Make that in Hghtveight gabardine. Sergeant, with a Httle break at the cuffs."

  The sergeant looked at him bleakly and closed the door. He was back in less than two minutes with a laundry bag which he dumped on the floor, saying, "Here's your outfit, Lieutenant."

  Adam opened the strings of the bag and shook its contents out. There was a suit of marine fatigues, the blouse and trousers, now stiff with newness and still folded, the dirty-looking green cloth still a little shiny. There were two pairs of underpants dyed the same dirty green, and two green skivvy shirts. There were two pairs of the blotchy green socks and one pair of the heavy marine boots they called "boondockers." There was one green web belt with the brass buckle blackened with something. And, worst of all, a pair of stiff, flat canvas leggins.

  And, of course, the two pairs of skivvy tie-ties, also dyed green.

  Since he had nothing else to put on, he got dressed in this ridiculous outfit, not knowing that he had the leggins on backward and, although the things fitted him very well, he felt like that Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz. The fatigues were so new and so starched that they crackled when he walked and stood out from him in stiff creases.

  Gloria was certainly going to be surprised when he appeared in this cockeyed uniform. But, as he looked down at the two-piece fatigues with the big pockets starched flat against the cloth he decided that he now looked like a man of mystery off on a dangerous mission. He could tell Gloira a real sea story about how all this came about.

  The silent sergeant was waiting for him in the hall. "I like the uniform," Adam said, **but I dont think ni join up."

  The sergeant handed him a long slim piece of stiff cardboard, a short black brush, and a bottle of black ink. Adam saw now that his name. "A. Land* had been pionched out of the cardboard. "Stencil that on the back of your jacket," the sergeant said.

  **! prefer the gold one with the wings and my rank," Adam said.

  "They don't," the sergeant said, motioning him toward the jeep.

  Adam got in again, his stiff clothes crackling, and the sergeant drove him to another building, where they got out and again went up to a desk occupied

  by another sergeant. "This is the lieutenant," Adam's sergeant said. "I'll wait."

  "Ah, the lieutenant," the other sergeant said. *'Right this way, Lieutenant"

  The sergeant led him into a huge, somewhat dim, and cavernous room that smelled of moth balls, oiled leather, grease, and mildew. A low, wide counter ran the length of the room, and behind the coimter were rows of shelves such as those in a library, row after row, v^dth, dimly in the back of the room, bins and boxes. The sergeant leapt neatly over the counter, did an about-face, and produced a low, narrow shp of paper with a list of printed entries on it. "Let's see now," the sergeant said, checking the Hst. Then he frowned. "Be easier wdth the field kit full," he said and disappeared into the gloomy rows of shelves. In a moment he reappeared, banged two empty canteens down on the counter and, as he disappeared again, said, "Canteens, two, with stopper."

  He came back in a moment with two stiff, folded hunks of canvas and dropped them on the counter. "Canteen covers, two, canvas, with belt hooks."

  As the sergeant moved away again Adam picked up a piece of canvas and, with some effort, got it unfolded and read the black letters USMC stenciled on it. The thing was much too small to fit around a canteen, he decided.

  The sergeant came back with a three-inch-wide canvas belt, stiff as a board and dotted with brass gronmiets into some of which black metal hooks

  had been forced. "Cartridge belt, one, with grom-mets and hooks. Right.''

  "IVe aheady got a belt," Adam said, raising the stiff blouse to show him. He pushed the other belt toward the sergeant.

  The sergeant seemed offended. 'Xieutenant, sir, I have here a Hst of items to be issued to you. It is not part of my duty to know what you will do with them or why you need them. But, being government property, it is your duty to take care of them and it is your duty to return them to me when you finish with them. The only excuses I can accept for not returning them are: you get yourself killed, or you get yourself wounded, or you are reported missing —in action, that is, not AWOL—or you are reported a prisoner of war. Sometimes I'll also let guys get away with it if their ship gets sunk. But only by the enemy. Other excuses—and IVe heard 'em aU, sir —wiU not do." He disappeared again, to return with two brown bottles. "Halazone, one bottle of twenty-four tablets."

  "I know all about your best friend won't tell you," Adam said, "but what's this Halazone for? B.O. or something?"

  "The government is not interested in your personal problems, sir," the sergeant said. "But it is interested in keeping you alive so you can fight Halazone is for purifying water."

  "Oh," Adam said.

  "Atabrine, one bottle, twenty-four tablets," the sergeant said, putting the otiier bottle on the counter.

  Adam knew about atabrine. "So now youVe got me fixed up for pure water and no malaria. But what does the government give me for, say, a bullet holer

  "That's not my responsibihty," the sergeant said. That's the responsibility of the Medical Depart-ment.** He went back into the stacks and turned up with his hands full of more of the stiff, folded canvas. He dumped this on the counter and checked his list. "Ammo pouches, six . . . No, no," he said, taking two of them back. "OflBcers only get four. Enlisted men get six. Ammo pouches, four. Sheath knife, one," he added, tapping one of the canvas objects. "Meat-can cover, one."

  Adam waited as the sergeant disappeared again. The counter was littered now with the strange little objects, and as he looked at them his amusement began to die. This was taking the whole afternoon.

  "Canteen cups, with handle, two," the sergeant said, clanking them down on the counter. "Meat can, vdth knife, fork, spoon, one." And he clanked that dov^m. "Grease, black, one."

  ^'What?" Adam asked, looking at the Httle packet about the size of a cake of soap.

  "For the face and hands, sir. Camouflage. Man of distinction."

  Adam had to laugh as he picked up the black grease and looked at it. That was one good thing about the Marine Corps—a surprise a minute.

  The sergeant came back with the wickedest-looking dagger Adam had ever seen. The hilt was sHm and checkered all over, there was practically no

  guard, the hilt going directly into a blade in the shape of a long tapered pyramid, sharp on aU edges and with a dagger point. The knife was thickly coated with a pale brown grease.

  "Good tool," the sergeant said, "particularly for the throat and ribs. Lot better than those old butcher knives the Navy gave us. It would take you five minutes to get one of those into a fellow."

  "This is quicker?" Adam asked, looking at the greasy dagger.

  "Oh, yeah. And comes out fast, too. Lets you get on with your work."

  "Absolutely,"
Adam agreed, eyeing the dagger.

  "Not good for much else, though," the sergeant said, "so IVe given you the navy sheath knife, too."

  "IVe always wanted to be a two-knife type," Adam told him, "Any switchblades?"

  "For kids," the sergeant said. "We dont issue them. Now, if you'll pardon the expression, sir-being an oflBcer you don't get a real gun. You get a httle peashooter."

  "Don't bother," Adam told him. "I've got a real gun. Lots of 'em. Big ones. Fifty-caliber."

  "Ah, so," the sergeant said, disappearing. He came back carrying one of the short-barreled .30-caUber carbines still wrapped in grease with this, in turn, wrapped in brown paper. The sergeant stripped the paper away in one section, rubbed the grease clear and pointed. "Serial number," he said, writing on the sHp of paper. "This one, with this serial number, is the only one you can bring back, Lieutenant. You can't just pick up one off the

  ground and bring that back because, you see, you do that and you foul up some other guy, and so he gets himself a gun and so until finally the whole Marine Corps is fouled up.**

  **What are we waiting for?** Adam asked.

  "Ammo, eight clips, sir." He dropped them on the counter and stood a moment, checking his fist **Oh, yes. Helmet."

  "Come onr Adam objected. "No helmet. How can I get the earphones on wearing a tin bucket?'*

  The sergeant looked worried about this and checked his hst again. Then he smiled contentedly. "Look there. Lieutenant. Right there, Hne eighteen. You see, it says: 'Helmet, combat, with liner and netting—one.'"

  "Forget it," Adam told him, but the sergeant was already on his way back with a helmet, which he put on Adam's head. The liner had not been tied, so the helmet plunged down over his eyes and the steel dome of it clanked down on his skull.

  This was too much, entirely. Adam wrested the helmet off and dropped it, clanging, down on the counter. "Look, Sergeant," he said, "let's you and I forget the Marine Corps for a moment and act like two human beings. Okay?"