by James Jones
Admirably conceived on paper, and existing only on paper, men were still needed to make Cannon Company an actuality. This was accomplished within the Regiment, by a strange process which might well have been named “shunting the crud.” Fife observed how it worked. A Regimental memorandum was sent out ordering each company commander to donate a certain number of men. The commanders complied and the worst drunkards, worst homosexuals, and worst troublemakers all gathered together under one roof to form Cannon Company. This command was then given to the officer in the Regiment whom the Regimental Commander liked least. Witt was one of the men donated by C-for-Charlie.
Witt, though a drunkard (like most), was not one of the worst drunkards, and neither was he a homosexual. He could perhaps, by a loose application, be classed as a troublemaker—since he had been busted several times and twice had gone to the stockade on a Summary Court Martial. All this made him something of a romantic hero to Fife (though perhaps not on a level with Bell) but it did not endear him to Stein or Welsh. Still, he was not unique, and other men who were not sent to Cannon Company had had similar careers. Witt’s trouble was that he had earned the personal enmity of Welsh by arguing back, because he did not like Welsh. Welsh did not like him, either. In fact, each thought the other stank, totally and abominably, without relief or reservation.
Though he refused to go and ask to stay, Witt was unhappy at being transferred. All his friends were in C-for-Charlie, and he liked the reputation he had there. As Witt saw it, everybody knew he loved C-for-Charlie and for Welsh to transfer him out while knowing this only proved his total contempt for Welsh correct, thus making it even more impossible for him to ask to stay. So he was transferred in silence, along with several real drunkards, and two homosexuals. And now he had come back for a visit.
Cannon Company along with other elements of the Regiment had arrived almost a month earlier with the first echelon of the Division. They had had a good deal more time to become “acclimatized,” and Witt now had malaria. He looked wan and there was a yellowish tinge to his skin. Never heavy, he was now even thinner. He had kept his ears open for news of the old company and whenever a transport arrived with troops had tried to find them. He must have repeated this process twenty times. Finally he had been rewarded. He had been on the beach with a work detail the day they arrived, but had missed them because he was up at the other end unloading the other ship. So he had started out to find them. It was harder than it sounded. The island was jammed to boiling with men and matériel. After persistent inquiry he finally found someone who knew where they were bivouacked—only to find when he arrived (after slipping off and going AWOL and making the long walk up the island) that they had moved. He had had to start the whole thing over again. The feat was indicative of Witt’s stubborn patience. It was a quality Fife wished he had more of himself.
Fife was overjoyed to see him, especially after the downhill route his friendship with Bell had taken lately. Also, Fife was not unaware that—for another reason—Witt admired him as much as he admired Witt. Fife admired and heroized Witt for all of the manly, tough, brave qualities he had; but Witt secretly admired Fife for his education. Fife was not above playing to this flattery.
As it happened, Witt showed up on the very afternoon of the gun raid. Fife had, only just a short time before, stood and watched the seven raiders depart without him. Perhaps that had something to do with what happened between him and Witt, afterward. At any rate, it was a half hour after his sour observation of the raiders’ departure that he went outside for a break and heard himself hailed by a man standing some distance off near the supply tent and leaning against a cocopalm. It was Witt, who had made up his mind not to come near the orderly tent where his archenemy Welsh would be, and so had decided to wait here until his friend came out. Fife couldn’t make out who it was at the distance. He went over to him.
“Well, Witt! By God! How are you! Christ, it’s good to see you!” he cried as soon as he recognized him, and rushed to shake hands.
Witt grinned, not without some triumph, in his taciturn way. But he looked tired and worn. “Hi, Fife.”
For Fife, on this miserable disease- and death-ridden, frightening island, it was like finding a longlost brother. Witt allowed himself to be pumped by the hand and pounded on the back, grinning triumphantly all the while. Then they went off and sat down some distance away on a downed cocopalm log.
Mostly, Witt wanted to know about the company, and when it was going up on the line. He had seen Big Queen, and Gooch, his special pal, and Storm (who fixed him some hot Spam sandwiches, for the lunch he’d missed) and some of the others he used to know. But while he was happy to see them all, still nobody could tell him anything about the company. He thought perhaps Fife could. Though he was glad to see him, too, of course, naturally. He had, in fact, been waiting more than half an hour, and wouldn’t have left without seeing him.
“But aren’t you AWOL?”
Witt shrugged, and flashed his shy—but proud—grin. “They won’t do nothin to me. Not in that stinking outfit.”
“But why didn’t you come on in and get me?”
Witt’s face hardened, almost as though someone had modeled his features in quicksetting cement and Fife was watching it dry. His eyes took on a curiously flattened, deadly look—with which he stared at Fife. “I ain’t goin’ noplace where that fucking, poorly son of a bitch is.”
Fife suffered a trace of spinechill. There was something oddly snakelike about Witt at certain times such as this—like a coiled rattler ready to strike and certain it is right and, although this was only instinct, or perhaps because of that, completely satisfied in its own tiny mind. You know it is useless to argue with it. Also—because Witt was staring at him—Fife could not escape a feeling that Witt was personally insulted by his suggesting Witt might be willing to go where Welsh was. This made him uncomfortable.
“Yes, well,” he said. He shifted on the log. “Well, you know, I think maybe he’s changed some, Witt. Since we got here.” He did not really believe this.
“That son of a bitch ain’t never going to change. Not in no way,” Witt stated.
Fife believed he was right. Anyway, he could never argue with statements. “Well, I tell you. It just won’t be the same old company, Witt,” he explained. “Going up there without you in it. It just won’t, that’s all. I wish you were goin’ with us.” He fidgeted on the log. “And I guess that’s why I said that.” He essayed a pleasantry he did not entirely feel. “How’s the old shootin’ arm?” Witt was a crack shot.
Witt ignored the compliment. “Fife, I tell you. When I think of old C-for-Charlie goin’ up there into them Japs without me, it like to breaks my heart. I mean it.” His eyes became all right again as he leaned forward to talk seriously. “I been in this compny—what now?—four years. You know how I feel about this compny. Everybody does. It’s my compny. It ain’t right, that’s all. It ain’t. Why, who knows how many of the guys, how many of my old buddies, I might save if I was there. I belong with the compny, Fife, old buddy.” Suddenly he slumped back on the log, his say said, his face morose. “And I don’t know what I can do about it. In fact, there ain’t a fucking damn thing I can do.”
“Well,” Fife said cautiously, “I think if you went around to Stein and told him how you feel, he’d arrange a transfer back for you. Old Bugger knows how good a soldier you are. It never was a question of that. And right now he’s feeling pretty warm and sentimental about the compny, you know, leading them into combat and all.”
Witt was leaning forward again, his eyes shy and warm as he listened eagerly. But when Fife stopped he sat up straight and his face stiffened again.
“I cain’t do that,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Because I cain’t. And you know it.”
“I honestly think he’ll take you back,” Fife hazarded, cautiously.
Witt’s face darkened, and undischarged lightnings flickered in his eyeballs. “Take me back! Take me back! Th
ey never should of made me go! It’s their fault, it ain’t mine!” The storm receded, passing away inward. But the cloud, sullen and dark, remained. “No. I cain’t do that. I won’t go to them and beg them.”
Fife was irritated now, as well as uncomfortable. Witt had a habit of making you feel that way—without ever meaning to, of course. “Well—” he began.
Witt interrupted. “—But I want you to know how much I appreciate you tryin to help.” He smiled warmly.
“Yeh.”
“I mean it,” Witt said urgently.
“I know you do.” There was always this fear of disagreeing with Witt, for fear you might make him mad. “What I was about to say was this. Just how bad do you want to get back into the compny?”
“You know how bad.”
“Well, the only way you’re going to do it is to go to Stein and ask him.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“Well, God damn it,” Fife shouted, “that’s the only way you’ll ever get back in! And you might as well face it!”
“Well, then I guess I just won’t get back in!” Witt shouted back.
Fife was tired of it. Here it was the first time he had seen him in months. Also, he could not help thinking about his own encounter with Welsh, and of the seven departing raiders. But mostly it was just general irritation.
“Then I guess you’ll just have to stay out, won’t you?” he said, thinly and in a provoking way.
“I guess I will,” Witt said, glowering.
Fife stared at him. Witt was not looking at him, but was staring moodily at the ground. Somberly, he cracked his knuckles one by one.
“I tell you it ain’t fair,” Witt said looking up. “It ain’t fair, and it ain’t square. Any way you look at it. It ain’t justice. It’s a traversty of justice.”
“It’s travesty,” Fife said precisely. He knew how careful Witt was of his words. Witt was very self-conscious about his vocabulary, having taught it to himself by working crosswords. But Fife was irritated. “Tra-ves-ty,” he repeated, as if teaching a child.
“What?” Witt was staring at him disbelievingly. He had been still thinking about his martyrdom.
“I said you pronounce it tra-ves-ty.” Anyway, he had an ace in his sleeve. He knew Witt would not hit him. Witt would not hit a friend without giving him one free warning. It was against his goddamned, stupid Kentucky code.
But if he did not expect to get hit, Fife was astonished by the reaction he did get.
Witt was staring at him as if he had never seen him before. The storm cloud with its flickers of impending electrical discharge had come back on his face.
“Take off!” he barked.
Now it was Fife’s turn to ask: “What?”
“I said take off! Leave! Get out! Go away from here!”
“Shit. I got as much right here as you have,” Fife said, still startled.
Witt did not move. But it was more ominous than if he had. Calm murderousness flamed in his face. “Fife, I never hit a friend before in my life. Not without givin them fair warnin they ain’t friends no more. I don’t want to start now, either. But I will. If you don’t take off right now and go, I’ll beat the livin hell out of you.”
Fife attempted to protest. “But what the hell kind of talk is that? What the hell did I do?”
“Just go. Don’t talk. You and me ain’t friends any more. I don’t want to talk to you, I don’t want to see you. If you even try to talk to me after this, I’ll knock you down. Without a word.”
Fife got up from the log, still startled and stunned, still confused. “But, Christ, for God’s sake. I was only kidding with you. I only—”
“Take off!”
“Okay, I’ll go. I don’t stand a chance with you in a fight and you know it. Even if I am bigger than you.”
“That’s tough. But that’s life,” Witt said. “I said, go!”
“I’m going. But you’re crazy, for God’s sake. I was kidding you a little.” He walked off a few steps. He could not quite make up his mind whether he was being cowardly or not, whether it was more manly to go back and stand on pride and get beaten up. After a few more steps he stopped and turned back. “Just remember the only way you’ll ever get back in the compny is like I told you.”
“Take off!”
Fife did. He was still unsure whether he was acting cowardly or not. He thought maybe he was. He felt guilty about that. He felt guilty about something else, too, terribly guilty, though he could not say exactly what it was. He was willing to accept that Witt was right and that he had done something terribly mean, vicious and insulting, something destructive to Witt’s manhood. At any rate, he felt as he had when he was a child and had done something he knew was terribly wrong. General guilt loomed over him like a mustardcolored cloud. Halfway to the camp he stopped again and looked back. Witt was still sitting on the downed coconut tree log.
“Go on! Beat it!”
The words came to Fife faintly. He went on. At the door of the orderly tent he stopped and looked back again. Witt was gone, nowhere to be seen.
Now he had lost his other friend, as well as Bell—to whom he must have done something also, although despite his guilt for that too, he could not figure out what it was. Two real friends, Fife thought, out of all these guys—and now he had lost them both. At a time like this. All he had left now was Welsh. And that was something, wasn’t it?
He brooded about it, about Witt, trying to construct in his mind other ways it might have ended, for several days—every day, in fact, up to the day that he sat outside the tent on a watercan and looked across the strapped-down windshield at Stein and his driver, and knew what they were coming back to say. And it was essentially a friendless Fife who watched them clamber out and come toward him—which was no way to be to receive the news they brought.
“Corporal Fife,” Stein said briskly. He was being formal, official and efficient today. As well he might be, Fife thought, considering the news.
“Yes, sir?” Fife tried to make his voice smooth and unshaky.
“I want every officer and platoon grade noncom who isn’t out on a detail here in five minutes. Get them all. Don’t miss anybody. Get Bead. Send him around too.” Stein paused and took a breath down into his chest deeply. “We’re moving out, Fife. We’re moving out for the line. We leave this time tomorrow. In twenty-four hours.”
Behind him the driver was nodding his head at Fife vigorously in a nervous, or perhaps sad confirmation.
CHAPTER 3
ALONG THE ROUTE of march the arteries of runny mud were clotted with stalled trucks. All faced in the direction of the march. Sometimes two or three or four were lined up one behind the other. Most were abandoned, sitting silent in the mud, waiting for the big tractors to come haul them out. Now and then there was one which had a knot of men around it who still struggled with it hopelessly, swarming kneedeep in the black soup. All of them were loaded with either the wirebound cases of C ration, three-handled jerrycans of water or brown chests of small-arms ammo, cases of grenades, or the clusters of black cardboard tubes containing mortar shells. Obviously supply by the big trucks was failing, or had failed.
The foot marchers picked their way over drying mud rolls and mosquito-laden hummocks along the edges. The stalled trucks were no problem to them. Loaded down with full packs and extra bandoliers, they couldn’t have waded out to them if they had tried. Each company marched in a ragged single file, strung out to its fullest length, at one place bunched up to the point of having to stand still, at another spread out so that the gasping men must run to catch up. In the heavy sun the heat and humidity bore down on them, leaving them sweatdrenched, with stinging eyes, and gasping for air where there seemed only to be moisture.
In some ways it was not unlike a gala, allout, holiday parade. As far as the eye could see in both directions the two lines of overladen overheated greenclad men picked and stumbled their way along the edges of the river of mud. A Fourth of July excitement spread electric
tentacles everywhere. Working parties, when they paused to ease their muscles, looked always toward the road. Men with nothing to do came out from their bivouacs to watch, and stood in clusters in the edge of the coconut trees, talking. Only a very few, possessors of more brass than the majority of men, ventured out to stare more closely. These marked the individual faces of the gasping marchers, as if wanting to memorize them. But except for the ghouls there was a curious respectfulness.
Occasionally, rarely, some watcher would call out an encouragement. His answer, if he got any at all, would be a half wave of a hand, or a quick dark look and a forced grin. The marchers needed every spark of concentration they possessed simply to keep going. Any thoughts beyond that remained their own. After an hour’s marching, even such private thoughts were displaced. The infantry forgot where it was going in the urgent immediate problem of getting there, of keeping going without dropping out.
Not all solved it. Slowly a new line was forming on each side, between the watchers and the road. Suddenly a marching man would turn aside and step out of line and sit or fall down. Others simply fainted. These were generally dragged aside by the men behind them. Sometimes the already exhausted pulled them over.
Almost always all of this was done in silence. Once in a while some still-marching man might call out hopefully to a beaten friend. But that was all. The watchers in the halfshade of the trees did not offer to help. And the stricken themselves seemed to prefer it that way. Few even attempted to crawl into the shade. They simply sat, dulleyed and lolling back in their packs as if sitting in armchairs; or lay in their packs on their sides facedown; or, if they were able to shuck out of their packs, stretched flat on their backs with fluttering eyelids.
