War Stories

by Sebastian Faulks

  Outraged at such a display of vitality, alternately sobbing and wailing, Bead rolled aside, seized the enemy rifle and on his knees raised it above his head and drove the long bayonet almost full length into the Japanese chest. The Japanese man’s body convulsed in a single spasm. His eyes opened, staring horribly at nothing, and his hands flipped up from the elbows and seized the blade through his chest.

  Staring with horror at the fingers which were cutting themselves on the blade trying to draw it out, Bead leaped to his feet, and his pants fell down. Hiking his pants up and standing spraddlelegged to keep them from falling, he seized the rifle and tried to pull it out in order to plunge it in again. But the bayonet would not come loose. Remembering dimly something he had been taught in bayonet practice, he grabbed the small of the stock and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. The gun was on safety. Fumbling with the unfamiliar, foreign safety, he released it and pulled again. There was a flesh-muffled explosion and the bayonet came free. But the fool of a Japanese with his open eyes went on grasping at his chest with his bleeding fingers as if he could not get it through his thick head that the bayonet was out. My god, how much killing did the damned fool require? Bead had beaten him, kicked him, choked him, clawed him, bayoneted him, shot him. He had a sudden frantic vision of himself, by rights the victor, doomed forever to kill perpetually the same single Japanese.

  This time, not intending to be caught in the same trap twice, instead of sticking him he reversed the rifle in his hands and drove the butt down full force into his face, smashing it. Standing above him spraddlelegged to keep his pants up, he drove the rifle butt again and again into the Japanese man’s face, until all of the face and most of the head were mingled with the muddy ground. Then he threw the rifle from him and fell down on his hands and knees and began to vomit.

  Bead did not lose consciousness, but he completely lost his sense of time. When he came to himself, still on hands and knees, gasping, he shook his hanging head and opened his eyes and discovered his left hand was resting in a friendly way on the Japanese man’s still, mustard-khaki knee. Bead snatched it away as though he had discovered it lying across a burning stove. He had an obscure feeling that if he did not look at the corpse of the man he had killed or touch it, he would not be held responsible. With this in mind he crawled feebly away through the trees, breathing in long painful groans.

  The woods were very quiet. Bead could not remember ever having heard such quiet. Then faintly, penetrating the immensity of this quiet, he heard voices, American voices, and the casual sound of a shovel scraped against a rock. It seemed impossible that they could be that close. He got shakily to his feet holding up his pants. It also seemed impossible that anything could ever again sound as casual as that shovel had. He knew he had to get back inside the lines. But first he would have to try to clean himself up. He was a mess. He had no desire to finish his crap.

  First of all, he had to go back to the vicinity of the dead man to get his roll of toilet paper. He hated that but there wasn’t any choice. His pants and his dirty behind were what bothered him most. Horror of that was inbred in him; but also he was terrified someone might think he had crapped his pants from fear. He used most of his roll of toilet paper on that, and in the end even sacrificed one of his three clean handkerchiefs which he was saving back for his glasses, moistening it with spittle. In addition he was spattered with blood and vomit. He could not remove every stain, but he tried to get enough so that nobody would notice. Because he had already decided he was not going to mention this to anybody.

  Also, he had lost his glasses. He found them, miraculously unbroken, beside the dead man. Searching for his glasses, he had to go right up to the body, and to look at it closely. The faceless – almost headless – corpse with its bloody, cut fingers and the mangled hole in its chest, so short a time ago a living, breathing man, made him so dizzy in the stomach that he thought he might faint. On the other hand, he could not forget the intent look of deliberate purpose on the man’s face as he came in with the bayonet. There didn’t seem to be any reasonable answer.

  The feet were the saddest thing. In their hobnailed infantry boots they splayed outward, relaxed, like the feet of a man asleep. With a kind of perverse fascination Bead could not resist giving one of them a little kick. It lolloped up, then flopped back. Bead wanted to turn and run. He could not escape a feeling that, especially now, after he’d both looked and touched, some agent of retribution would try to hold him responsible. He wanted to beg the man’s forgiveness in the hope of forestalling responsibility. He had not felt such oppressive guilt over anything since the last time his mother had caught and whipped him for masturbating.

  If he’d had to kill him, and apparently he had, at least he could have done it more efficiently and gracefully, and with less pain and anguish for the poor man. If he had not lost his head, had not gone crazy with fear, perhaps he might even have taken him prisoner and obtained valuable information from him. But he had been frantic to get the killing over with, as if afraid that as long as the man could breathe he might suddenly stand up and accuse him. Suddenly Bead had a mental picture of them both with positions reversed: of himself lying there and feeling that blade plunge through his chest; of himself watching that riflebutt descend upon his face, with the final fire-exploding end. It made him so weak that he had to sit down. What if the other man had got the bayonet down quicker? What if he himself had tackled a little higher? Instead of merely a bruise on his collarbone, Bead saw himself spitted through the soft of the shoulder, head on, that crude blade descending into the soft dark of his chest cavity. He could not believe it.

  Settling his glasses on his face, taking a couple of deep breaths and a last look at his ruined enemy, he got up and started clumping up out of the trees toward the crest. Bead was ashamed and embarrassed by the whole thing, that was the truth, and that was why he didn’t want to mention it to anybody.

  He got back through the line all right, without questions. ‘Have a good shit?’ the man from the 2nd Platoon called to him. ‘Yeah,’ he mumbled and clomped on, down the slope toward the CP. But on his way he was joined by Pfc Doll, on his way down from 1st Platoon with a message to ask again about water. Doll fell in step with him, and immediately noticed his damaged hands and the blood spatters.

  ‘Christ! What happened to your knuckles? You have a fight with somebody?’

  Bead’s heart sank. It would have to be Doll. ‘No. I slipped and fell and skinned myself,’ he said. He was as stiff and sore all over as if he had had a fistfight with somebody. Horror welled in him again, suddenly, ballooningly. He took several very deep breaths into a sore rib cage.

  Doll grinned with frank but amiable scepticism. ‘And I spose all them little blood spatters came from your knuckles?’

  ‘Leave me alone, Doll!’ Bead blazed up. ‘I dont feel like talking! So just leave me alone, hunh? Will you?’ He tried to put into his eyes all the fierce toughness of a man just returned from killing an enemy. He hoped maybe that would shut him up, and it did. At least for a while. They walked on down in silence, Bead aware with a kind of horrified disgust that already he was fitting the killing of the Japanese man into the playing of a role; a role without anything, no reality, of himself or anything else. It hadn’t been like that at all.

  Doll did not stay shut up, though. Doll had been a little taken aback by Bead’s vehemence, a forcefulness he was not used to expecting from Bead. He could smell something when he saw it. And after he had delivered his message, receiving the answer he expected which was that Stein was doing everything he could to get them water, he brought it up again, this time by calling it to the attention of Welsh. Welsh and Storm were sitting on the sides of their holes matching pennies for cigarettes, which were already beginning to be precious. They would match four best out of seven, to lengthen the game and cut down the expense in cigarettes, then both pull out their plastic pack holders which everyone had bought to keep their butts dry and carefully pass the one tube between them
. Doll went over to them grinning with his eyebrows raised. He did not feel, at least not at the time, that what he was doing had anything to do with ratting on someone or stooling.

  ‘What the fuck happen to your boy there? Who the hell he beat up with them skinned knuckles and all them blood spatters on him? Did I miss somethin?’

  Welsh looked up at him with that level gaze of his which, when he wasn’t pretending to be crazy, could be so penetrating. Already, Doll felt he had made a mistake, and guilty. Without answering Welsh turned to look at Bead, who sat hunched up by himself on a small rock. He had put back on his equipment.

  ‘Bead, come over here!’

  Bead got up and came, still hunched, his face drawn. Doll grinned at him with his raised eyebrows. Welsh looked him up and down.

  ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘Who? Me?’

  Welsh waited in silence.

  ‘Well, I slipped and fell down and skinned myself, that’s all.’

  Welsh eyed him in silence, thoughtfully. Obviously he was not even bothering with that story. ‘Where’d you go a while ago? When you were gone for a while? Where were you?’

  ‘I went off to take a crap by myself.’

  ‘Wait!’ Doll put in, grinning. ‘When I seen him, he was comin down from the 2nd Platoon’s section of line on the ridge.’

  Welsh swung his gaze to Doll and his eyes blazed murderously. Doll subsided. Welsh looked back at Bead. Stein, who had been standing nearby, had come closer now and was listening. So had Band and Fife and some of the others.

  ‘Lissen, kid,’ Welsh said. ‘I got more problems than I know what to do with in this screwy outfit. Or how to handle. I got no time to fuck around with kid games. I want to know what happened to you, and I want the truth. Look at yourself! Now, what happened, and where were you?’

  Welsh apparently, at least to Bead’s eyes, was much closer to guessing the truth than the unimaginative Doll, or the others. Bead drew a long quavering breath.

  ‘Well, I went across the ridge outside the line in the trees to take a crap in private. A Jap guy came up while I was there and he tried to bayonet me. And – and I killed him.’ Bead exhaled a long, fluttering breath, then inhaled sharply and gulped.

  Everyone was staring at him disbelievingly, but nevertheless dumbstruck. ‘Goddam it, kid!’ Welsh bellowed after a moment. ‘I told you I wanted the goddam fucking truth! And not no kid games!’

  It had never occurred to Bead that he would not be believed. Now he was faced with a choice of shutting up and being taken for a liar, or telling them where and having them see what a shameful botched-up job he’d done. Even in his upset and distress it did not take him long to choose.

  ‘Then god damn you go and look!’ he cried at Welsh. ‘Dont take my word, go and look for your goddam fucking self!’

  ‘I’ll go!’ Doll put in immediately.

  Welsh turned to glare at him. ‘You’ll go nowhere, stooly,’ he said. He turned back to Bead. ‘I’ll go myself.’

  Doll had subsided into a stunned, shocked, whitefaced silence. It had never occurred to Doll that his joking about Bead would be taken as stoolpigeoning. But then he had never imagined the result would turn out to be what it apparently had. Bead killing a Jap! He was not guilty of stooling, and furiously he made up his mind that he was going along; if he had to crawl.

  ‘And if you’re lyin, kid, God help your fucking soul.’ Welsh picked up his Thompson-gun and put on his helmet. ‘All right. Where is it? Come on, show me.’

  ‘I’m not going up there again!’ Bead cried. ‘You want to go, go by yourself! But I aint going! And nothin’s gonna make me!’

  Welsh stared at him narrowly a moment. Then he looked at Storm. Storm nodded and got up. ‘Okay,’ Welsh said. ‘Where is it, then?’

  ‘A few yards in the trees beyond the crest, at the middle of the 2nd Platoon. Just about in front of Krim’s hole.’ Bead turned and walked away.

  Storm had put on his helmet and picked up his own Thompson. And suddenly, with the withdrawal of Bead and his emotion from the scene, the whole thing became another larking, kidding excursion of the ‘Tommy-gun Club’ which had held the infiltrator hunt that morning. Stein, who had been listening in silence nearby all the time, dampened it by refusing to allow any of the officers to leave the CP; but MacTae could go, and it was the three sergeants and Dale who prepared to climb to the crest. Bead could not resist calling a bitter comment from his rock. ‘You wont need all the goddamned artillery, Welsh! There’s nobody up there but him!’ But he was ignored.

  It was just before they departed that Doll, his eyes uneasy but nonetheless steady, presented himself manfully in front of the First Sergeant and gazed at him squarely.

  ‘Top, you wouldn’t keep me from goin, would you?’ he asked. It was not begging nor was it a try at being threatening, just a simple, level, straightforward question.

  Welsh stared at him a moment, then without change of expression turned away silently. It was obviously a reprimand. Doll chose to take it as silent acquiescence. And with himself in the rear the five of them started the climb to the line. Welsh did not send him back.

  While they were gone no one bothered Bead. He sat by himself on his rock, head down, now and then squeezing his hands or feeling his knuckles. Everyone avoided looking at him, as if to give him privacy. The truth was nobody really knew what to think. As for Bead himself, all he could think about was how shamefully he and his hysterical, graceless killing were going to be exposed. His memory of it, and of that resolute face coming at him, made him shudder and want to gag. More times than not he wished he had kept his mouth shut and let them all think him a crazy liar. It might have been much better.

  When the little scouting party returned, their faces all wore a peculiar look. ‘He’s there,’ Welsh said. ‘He sure is,’ MacTae said. All of them looked curiously subdued. That was all that was said. At least, it was all that was said in front of Bead. What they said away from him, Bead could not know. But he did not find in their faces any of the disgust or horror of him that he had expected. If anything, he found a little of the reverse: admiration. As they separated to go to their various holes, each made some gesture.

  Doll had hunted up the Japanese rifle and brought it back for Bead. He had scrubbed most of the blood and matter from the butt-plate with leaves and had cleaned up the bayonet. He brought it over and presented it as if presenting an apology offering.

  ‘Here, this is yours.’

  Bead looked at it without feeling anything. ‘I dont want it.’

  ‘But you won it. And won it the hard way.’

  ‘I don’t want it anyway. What good’s it to me.’

  ‘Maybe you can trade it for whisky.’ Doll laid it down. ‘And here’s his wallet. Welsh said to give it to you. There’s a picture of his wife in it.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Doll.’

  Doll smiled. ‘There’s pictures of other broads, too,’ he hurried on. ‘Filipino, it looks like. Maybe he was in the Philippines. That’s Filipino writing on the back, Welsh says.’

  ‘I don’t want it anyway. You keep it.’ But he took the proffered wallet anyway, his curiosity piqued in spite of himself. ‘Well –’ He looked at it. It was dark, greasy from much sweating. ‘I don’t feel good about it, Doll,’ he said, looking up, wanting suddenly to talk about it to someone. ‘I feel guilty.’

  ‘Guilty! What the hell for? It was him or you, wasn’t it? How many our guys you think maybe he stuck that bayonet in in the Philippines? On the Death March. How about those two guys yesterday?’

  ‘I know all that. But I cant help it. I feel guilty.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Why! Why! How the fuck do I know why!’ Bead cried. ‘Maybe my mother beat me up too many times for jerking off when I was a kid!’ he cried plaintively, with a sudden half-flashing of miserable insight. ‘How do I know why!’

  Doll stared at him uncomprehendingly.

  ‘Never mind,’ Bead said.

 
‘Listen,’ Doll said. ‘If you really dont want that wallet.’

  Bead felt a sudden clutching greed. He put the wallet in his pocket quickly. ‘No. No, I’ll keep it. No, I might as well keep it.’

  ‘Well,’ Doll said sorrowfully, ‘I got to get back up to the platoon.’

  ‘Thanks anyway, Doll,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah. Sure.’ Doll stood up. ‘I’ll say one thing. When you set out to kill him, you really killed him,’ he said admiringly.

  Bead jerked his head up, his eyes searching. ‘You think so?’ he said. Slowly he began to grin a little.

  Doll was nodding, his face boyish with his admiration.

  ‘I aint the only one.’ He turned and left, heading up the slope.

  Bead stared after him, still not knowing what he really felt. And Doll had said he wasn’t the only one. If they did not find it such a disgraceful, botched-up job, then at least he need not feel so bad about that. Tentatively he grinned a little wider, a little more expansively, aware that his face felt stiff doing it.

  A little later on Bugger Stein came over to him. Stein had remained in the background up to now. The news of Bead’s Japanese had of course spread through the whole company at once, and when messengers or ration details came down from the line, they looked at Bead as though he were a different person. Bead was not sure whether he enjoyed this or not but had decided that he did. He was not surprised when Stein came over.

  Bead was sitting on the edge of his hole when Stein appeared, jumped down in and sat down beside him. Nobody else was around. Stein adjusted his glasses in that nervous way he had, the four fingers on top of one frame, the thumb beneath, and then put his hand on Bead’s knee in a fatherly way and turned to look at him. His face was earnest and troubled-looking.