Mister Roberts

by Thomas Heggen

  "Do you see those men down there?" he demanded.

  Roberts looked up with the minor annoyance of a man brushing away a fly. He nodded complacently.

  "Well!" shouted the Captain. "What're you going to do about it?"

  Roberts looked around indifferently and summoned the messenger. "Go down and tell those men to get off the rail," he said casually.

  The Captain's mustache bristled. His face and neck got red. "Get off the rail, nothing!" he shouted. "You get their names and, by God, you put them on report. You get those men on report in a goddamn quick hurry or, by God, I'll take care of you!" He started muttering then and walking agitatedly about. He never was a match for Roberts and he knew it.

  Roberts turned wearily to the messenger. "Go down and get their names," he said. The way he said it, it was understood that they were humoring a foolish child. Then he turned and walked away to the other wing, leaving the Captain muttering a familiar monologue: "By God, what do you think I make these orders for—just to be doing something? By God, when I say something's going to be done, it's going to be done, or, by God, I'll take care of you officers! Bet your ass I will ..." A few minutes later, when Thompson, the radioman, came out and told Roberts that Germany had just surrendered unconditionally, he forgot all about the Captain.

  As soon as he was relieved, Roberts went into the radio shack and put on the headset. The air was full of the great news. Roberts heard a transcription of the rolling eloquence of Churchill. He heard the text of the President's proclamation from Washington. He heard the quiet, controlled exultation of General Eisenhower. He heard the news commentators. They talked from Reims, from "somewhere in Germany," from Paris, from Rome, from Lisbon, from London. They told of the celebration in their cities on this, a day of such triumph as the world had never known. There were splendid fireworks in Paris over the Place de l'Opera. There were snake dances through the streets of Rome. In London, the pubs were jammed and the streets were jammed. Flags and bunting instantaneously bloomed from the buildings, and there were parades of crack Guard regiments. In New York, Times Square, of course, was thronged. Ticker-tape rained from Wall Street windows. The universal joy was only feebly relieved by cognizance of the still unwon Pacific war.

  Roberts sat for a long time at the headset: it must have been two hours that he listened. When one station went off the air, he switched to another. Almost frantically he would seek out a new station. Finally the news programs were all off the air, or repeating themselves. Finally there were only the sad iterations of American dance music on the radio bands. Roberts got up then.

  The movie was just letting out. There were sudden shouts in the passageways, and the loud, happy voices of the crew as they swarmed forward to the fo'c'sle. It must have been a good movie. Hearing them, Roberts felt a sudden loneliness. He felt a vague sorrow and, pressing just behind it, an awful sick despair that he had lived with for a long, familiar time. He needed suddenly to talk to someone. He needed to tell them the news, and he needed, in return, some strange assurance; and this was not understood. He went down to the wardroom.

  Carney and Billings were alone in there. They pored over their acey-deucey game. The phonograph played "Paper Doll." There was a crack in the record that clicked at every turn. The big fan droned in the corner.

  Roberts stood over them for a moment. "The war's over in Europe," he said. "Germany has surrendered." He stood waiting.

  Carney looked up politely. "Yeah?" he said. Then, evidently feeling that some amplifying comment was indicated, he added: "Well, that ought to speed things up out here a good bit."

  "Yeah," said Billings, "it should." He picked up the dice.

  "What's the name of the game?" he asked.

  "Acey-deucey," said Carney.

  "Acey-deucey," said Billings. He rolled the dice. "There it is."

  Roberts smiled a little and went out. He should have known better than to expect anything else. No one could help him because no one gave a hoot in hell what went on beyond the confines of this ship. It was to the rest of the officers a matter of indifference that a war of supreme horror had ended. Just to establish this,

  Roberts went around and told his friends the news. Lying in bed reading a year-old Street and Smith detective magazine, Ed Pauley agreed substantially with Carney: "Well, maybe they'll get on the ball out here now." Ensign Pulver was languidly militant: "I guess we took care of the bastards good this time!" Ensign Moulton was cynical. "That'll hold them for another twenty years." Ensign Keith wanted to know, did they catch Hitler? Finally Roberts went to the Doc's room. If anyone could help, it would be the Doc.

  The Doctor was reading at his desk. The desk light shone on his forehead and on the bald part of his head. Without seeming to shift his eyes, he shot a quick, sharp glance at the doorway. "Come in!" he called to Roberts. He put the book aside.

  "Sit down. Take a load off."

  "Hi, Doc," said Roberts. He sat down in the chair beside the desk, locked his hands behind his head, and leaned back against the bulkhead. "The war is over in Europe. Germany surrendered unconditionally at Reims."

  The Doctor stroked his mustache thoughtfully. "That's fine," he said. "That's really splendid news. Has it been announced from Washington?"

  Roberts nodded.

  "That's very wonderful news," said the Doc softly. "Very wonderful."

  Roberts kept his hands locked behind his head. "Doc, here's something for you," he said slowly. "The most horrible war in history has just ended. A terrible war, Doc, a truly terrible one. You would expect this, then, to be a time of the wildest general rejoicing. And what do I feel?—Doc, I feel depressed as all hell. What do you make of that?"

  The Doctor squinted his eyes and leaned back in his chair. "Well," he said, "I shouldn't think that so remarkable. With anything as consummately absorbing as a great war there's always a great deal of transference. You know: the great general conflict swallows the little individual conflicts. Also there's the matter of war considered as a spectacle. War is a hell of a hypnotic and buoyant thing—viewed from a distance, a considerable distance—and it's quite reasonable to expect a letdown when it ends."

  Roberts shook his head and smiled. "No," he said. "It's not like that at all. I guess I'm just being ingratiating in asking, because I know what it is. So do you. It's just that I feel left out. I wanted in that war, Doc. I wanted in it like hell. Does that sound stupid?"

  "No," said the Doc, "but it is rare." He lighted a cigarette. "You never did satisfactorily explain to me how come you're so all-fired anxious to fight this war."

  "I don't know that I could," said Roberts. "I don't know how you go about explaining a compulsion. That's what it is, of course."

  Roberts had a crooked smile. "Did I ever tell you," he went on, "what a long and consistent record I have as a frustrated anti-fascist?"

  The Doctor shook his head and exhaled smoke. "I think you omitted that."

  "Well, I have," said Roberts. "A truly distinguished record of frustration. When I was eighteen I quit high school and went to New York and got signed up as an ambulance driver in the Lincoln Brigade. That time the war was over before they could ship me out." He scratched his ear. "But I guess there wasn't much anti- fascism to that. It was just a hell of a gaudy thing to do. I was quite a hero when I left."

  "Then," he went on, "in 1940, in my last year of pre- med, I quit school again. This time I went up to Montreal and tried to get in the RAF. I think by then I honestly had an idea of what was involved. It was strictly nothing doing, though"—he tapped his teeth— "they threw me out on this foolish malocclusion. Same thing in 1941 when I tried to get in the Air Corps—all three of them. They wouldn't have anything to do with me. This is the only outfit that would have me."

  The Doc looked thoughtfully at Roberts. "You give this war a lot, don't you?"

  "Yes, I do," said Roberts. "But you don't."

  "No," the Doc agreed. "I don't. I see it as a war of unrelieved necessity—nothing more. Any ideology
attaching is only incidental. Not to say accidental."

  "Well," said Roberts, "no need for us to go into that again. But Doc, if you had asked me four years ago I could have told you to hell and back what this war was about. I would have overwhelmed you with moral superiority. I would have used terms like "war against fascism," "holy war," "crusade," and so forth. I would have defined fascism as a revolution against the human soul, and I would have talked of the forces of good and evil. And perhaps, Doc, there was a lot of justice in that sort of talk. Perhaps there still is: I don't know. It seems to me that causes are hellishly elusive things, and that the moment you try to articulate them, give them a label, they shy away and become something else. I don't know, Doc."

  He paused. "I guess the minimum thing I'd say now is that the war seems to me—or should I say seemed— immensely worthwhile (positively and consciously and inherently, that is—not accidentally, as you say), and that I feel a hell of a compulsion to be in it." He held up his hands quizzically and looked at the Doctor.

  The Doc was quiet a moment; then he said: "I could kick your ass for ever leaving med school."

  "So could I," said Roberts. "Now. Particularly now. Particularly today. I chase the hell out of this war and it quits on me."

  "I would remind you that there is still a war out here which you may very well see plenty of."

  Roberts shook his head. "Not a chance. I've sat on this bucket this long. I'll sit here now till it's over."

  "And I would further remind you," said the Doc, "that it's through no fault of yours that you're on this bucket instead of in a grave in Germany."

  Roberts grinned. "What an enchanting thought!" he said.

  The Doctor pushed back from the desk. "And I would still further remind you," he said briskly, "that what we need is a drink. How about getting the orange juice?"

  "You're right," said Roberts. He went and got the orange juice and the Doc broke out the alcohol and they sat together with their drinks for over an hour. The Doc was at his best. He told some splendid stories. He told about the fairy patient of his who had tried to change his sex with a self-amputation. He told a couple of fine stories about alcoholics. When he left an hour later, Roberts felt some better. The Doc's company had smothered a little of his depression. He thought now that perhaps he could sleep: it was after eleven. He went up and turned in.

  But he couldn't sleep. Langston snored lustily in the top bunk, and he lay and studied the lights of the island circled in the porthole. At first he tried to keep his thoughts centered on neutral, tranquil things; but soon, like a car with a locked steering-gear, they ran helplessly out of control and he was back again with his old conflict, and thinking again of the war and the victory. He was thinking now of the celebrating cities, of the celebrating cities that had known the war. There were snake dances through the streets of Rome, they said. He tried to see Rome, but he couldn't make it convincing. Paris was easier: he could see the fireworks over the massed roofs of Paris and the crowds surging along the Champs d'Elysees and upsetting chairs and tables in the boulevard cafes. Surely they would upset the chairs and tables. London he could see very well: the parading regiments and the intimately cheering crowds and the grinning soldiers and the officers weaving just a little as they marched at the head of their companies. The pubs would be absolute madhouses and the beer would be passed back over the heads of the mob to be spilled or drunk before it ever got beyond the third row, and everybody would laugh and nobody gave a damn, and way at the back someone would shout despairingly for his beer. Naked girls would appear at the balcony windows of hotel rooms and call happy things down to the streets, and then an arm would appear and drag them laughing and squealing back into the room. It would be like that in all the cities that had a stake in this day; pushing, shouting, laughing, fighting, drinking, lovemaking; all personal identities frenziedly submerged in the shining common identity of a fabulous victory.

  Roberts saw all these things in separate scenes, as though they were the changing slides of a stereoscope. And now, suddenly, the series of the tumultuous cities clicked out and in its place came a very different scene. It was a scene Roberts recognized from its origin as a picture in Life magazine. (My knowledge of the war comes straight from Life, he thought ironically.) There was a field in France, and a farmer was harrowing this field, walking behind the harrow. The furrowed rows were very straight, except in the middle of the field, where they broke and gave way for the mounded grave of a British Tommy. It looked like lovely country, green with trees, with the soft haze of distant hills in the background. The rows of the harrow detoured for just the area of the grave and then they ran on straight and unswerving. It was that way the war, too, had moved off and left the Tommy. The grave looked lonely in the bright sunshine.

  The dead, Roberts mused, what could you say for the dead of this war? What could you really say? Well, there were a lot of things you could say automatically and without thought, but they were all the wrong things; and just this once, just this one war, anyhow, let us try to say true things about the dead. Begin by cancelling the phrase, "our honored dead": for that is not true—we forgot them, we do not honor them but in rhetoric—and the phrase is the badge of those who want something of the dead. If the dead of this war must have a mutual encomium, then let it be "poor dead bastards." There is at least a little humanity in that. And let us not say of them, this time, "they gave their lives" for something or other; for certainly there was nothing voluntary in their dying. And neither is it fair to speak of "dead heroes," for not at all necessarily does the fact of death include the fact of heroism. Some of these dead were shining youths scornful of the sanctity of their own lives, who lived daily with terror rarefied by inevitability and died with a flawless gesture of self-immolation: and others died as the result of injuries sustained in falling through a privy. But, thought Roberts, if they did not live equally, they are everyone equally dead; and you could say this affirmative thing of all; that in a war of terrifying consequence and overwhelming agony, they participated one hundred per cent. That was the only true thing you could say for all, but it was enough. The war demanded the shortening of how many—two million, five hundred and sixty thousand, two hundred and fourteen? --- lives, and these men were chosen. So pile them high at Austerlitz and Waterloo and Ypres and Verdun, and add a few new places, Aachen and Dunkerque and Anzio; only do not talk lies about the dead. They are the chosen.

  Chosen? thought Roberts. Was that the right word? Perhaps it was. Perhaps it was just the word. Maybe there was some gigantic over-all selection that named the men good enough to fight the war and consigned to ships like this the ones who weren't. Perhaps they were all, on here, something less than men in a war that demanded men; subtly deficient in a war that required completeness. Take the Captain; what could be more blatant than his inadequacy? Maybe it was that way with all of them—with Ed Pauley and Carney and Billings and Keith and himself—and all the others. Perhaps it was that in some infallible system of measuring men they fell short: some incompetency in the nerve endings, the white corpuscles, the adrenal gland; the stamina of their mother, the integrity of great- great-great-grandfather; the shape of their remembrance of first-known fear; something . . .

  Sleep was out of the question. Roberts sat up suddenly, rubbed his eyes. Langston snored above him in a perfect monotone. He got up, and in the dark put on his clothes. He bumped against the coaster chair and made a noise, but there was no hitch in Langston's breathing. Roberts went out and down the ladder to the quarterdeck. It was a cool night with a little breeze blowing, and overhead there were patches of clouds. Over on the island the lights burned their night vigil, and now and then a jeep or a truck went by along the beach road. Tonight, perhaps because it was a cool night for sleeping, there were no late-talking groups sitting about on the deck. Roberts couldn't see another soul on deck. He started walking up and down on the quarterdeck.

  V-E day aboard the Reluctant, he composed, was observed quietly, without ostentati
ous display, and with a grim awareness of the still unfinished Pacific war. Appropriately, the ship's company marked the great day in restrained but distinctive fashion. Lieutenant Carney and Lieutenant (jg) Billings, swept up in the spirit of the moment, played a game of acey-deucey in the wardroom. Lieutenant (jg) Pauley celebrated with quiet taste by reading a detective magazine. Lieutenant (jg) Langston observed the day by retiring at nine instead of ten, and by sleeping a little more soundly than usual. Ensign Pulver was moved to the extent of rigging a new portable fan at the foot of his bunk. The gruff but lovable Captain couldn't quite conceal an unusual generousness of spirit, placing only twelve men on report during a fifteen-minute period. But in these small though significant ways it was, for the Reluctant, just another work day on the road to Tokyo . . .

  And all of a sudden Roberts had to do something. And it had to be against the Captain: it had to be. This thing was suddenly just as obligatory and inevitable as his next breath; and just the thought of it was like a door opening out of prison. And he knew right away what to do. The Captain's palm tree. The Captain kept a small palm tree in a painted five-gallon can on the wing of his bridge, and it was the joy of his life. With slow, deadly certainty Roberts walked up to the boat deck and out on the Captain's wing. There, in the corner, was the palm tree. It was very dark and he couldn't hear anyone moving about on the bridge overhead. He jerked the palm out by the roots and threw it over the side. Then he took the can and scattered the loose earth about on the deck. Then he put the can down and went around aft of the house. Already he felt worlds better, but still there was something undone. And immediately that thing was revealed to him too.

  Automatically he recalled the Captain's obsessional hatred of noise, particularly noise at night, particularly noise in the area of his cabin. He went down to the cabin deck and found what he wanted. It was a gangway stanchion, about the size of a baseball bat, and solid lead. He went up to the port wing of the Captain's bridge and calculated. The Captain's bedroom was just inside, and the Captain slept athwartships. The head of his bunk was right against this bulkhead. Roberts figured: it was about three feet off the deck; it was right about here. He swung the stanchion with all his strength against the bulkhead. Then he swung a second time and a third. The blows shook the house like an explosion. Next morning every single officer confessed to having been awakened, and Ensign Moul- ton, who lived just aft of the Captain, said he had been knocked almost out of his bunk. Roberts placed the stanchion carefully at the Captain's door, walked calmly down the ladder and around the house, and returned to his own room by the starboard ladder. He undressed carefully and got into bed.