by James Jones
What Bugger Stein and Brass Band could not know was that Sergeant Beck the martinet had, on his own initiative, knocked out five Japanese machinegun emplacements in the last fifteen or twenty minutes, all at the cost of only one man killed and none wounded. Phlegmatic, sullen, dull and universally disliked, an unimaginative, do-it-like-the-book-says, dedicated professional of two previous enlistments, Milly Beck came to the fore here as perhaps no one else including his dead superior, Keck, could have done. Seeing that no reinforcements were immediately forthcoming, framing his dispositions exactly as he had been taught in the small units tactics course he had once taken at Fort Benning, he took advantage of the terrain to send six men around to the right of the ledge and six to the left under his two acting sergeants, Dale and Bell. The rest he kept with himself in the center readied to fire at whatever targets of opportunity turned up. Everything worked. Even the men he kept with himself were able to knock down two Japanese who were fleeing from the grenades of his patrols. Dale and his men on the left accounted for four emplacements and returned untouched. Finding the little ledge totally unguarded, they were able to crawl into the midst of the Japanese position and drop grenades from the ledge down into the rear doors of two covered, camouflaged emplacements they spotted below them; the other two emplacements, on the uphill side, were more difficult but by bypassing them and crawling up alongside they were able to pitch grenades into the apertures. Not a single one of them was even fired at. They returned led by the grinning Dale licking his lips and smacking his chops over his success. The importance of their accomplishment was cut down by at least fifty percent the firepower which could be directed from the left of the ridge down upon the 1st Platoon or into the flat which their reinforcements later crossed in safety.
Bell on the right was not so lucky, but he discovered something of great importance. On the right the ledge slowly graded upwards, and after bypassing and grenading one small emplacement below them Bell and his group came upon the main Japanese strongpoint of the whole position. Here the ledge ended in a twenty foot rock wall which further on became a real cliff and was impassable. Just above this rock wall, beautifully dug in and with apertures in three directions, was the Japanese strongpoint. When the lead man climbed out above the ledge to detour around the rock wall, he was riddled fatally by at least three machine-guns. Both Witt the volunteer Kentuckian and Pfc Doll were in Bell’s party, but neither of them happened to be the lead man. This distinction was reserved for a man named Catch, Lemuel C Catch, an oldtime regular and drunkard and a former boxing friend of Witt’s. He died immediately and without a sound. They pulled his body down and retreated with it, while all hell broke loose firing just above their heads, but not before—further back along the ledge—Acting Sergeant Bell got a good look at the strongpoint so he could describe it.
Why he did it even Bell himself never knew. Most probably it was sheer bitterness and fatigue and a desire to get this goddamned fucking battle over with. Bell at least knew that at the very least an accurate, eyewitness description of it might prove valuable later on. Whatever the reasons, it was a crazy thing to do. Halting his men thirty-five to forty yards back from the rockwall where Catch had died, Bell told them to wait and indulged himself in his crazy desire to look too. Leaving his rifle, holding a grenade in one hand, he climbed up the little ledge and poked up his head. The Japanese firing all had stopped now, and there was a little scrub on the lip of the ledge here, which was why he chose it. Slowly he climbed up, led on by whatever insane, mad motive, until he was out in the open, lying in a tiny little defiladed place. All he could see was the unending grass, rising slowly along a hillock which stuck up out of the ridge. Pulling the pin, he heaved the grenade with all his strength and ducked down. The grenade fell and exploded just in front of the hillock, and in the cyclone of MG fire which followed Bell was able to count five guns in five spitting apertures which he could not see before. When the firing ceased, he crawled back down to his men, obscurely satisfied. Whatever it was that made him do it, and he still didn’t know, it made every man in his little group look at him admiringly. Motioning them on, he led them back down and around the ledge until the company’s main position at the third fold hove into view. From there on it was easy to get back. Like Dale’s group, they did not see or hear a single Japanese anywhere near the ledge. Why the ledge, which was the real key to the whole position on the ridge, had been left totally unguarded by riflemen or MGs, no one ever found out. It was lucky for both groups, as well as for Beck’s minuscule little attack plan, that it was unguarded. As it was, they had cleaned out all the Japanese below the ledge and established a real line, and had changed the situation. That they changed the entire situation almost exactly at the precise moment Colonel Tall walked on the field was one of those happenstantial ironies which occur, which are entirely unpredictable, and which seem to be destined to dog the steps of certain men named Stein.
“What are you doing lying down there where you can’t see anything?” was the next thing Tall said. He himself was standing upright but, because he was ten or twelve yards away, only his head and the tips of his shoulders, if anything of him at all, showed above the crest. Stein noticed he apparently had no inclination to come closer.
Stein debated whether to tell him that the situation had changed. Almost in the last few seconds before his arrival. But he decided not to. Not just yet. It would look too much like an excuse, and a lame one. So instead he answered, “Observing, Sir. I just sent the other two squads of my 2d Platoon forward to the ridge.”
“I saw them leaving as we were coming along,” Tall nodded. The rest of his party, Stein noted, which included three privates as runners, his personal sergeant and a young Captain named Gaff, his Battalion Exec, had decided that it might be just as well to be lying down flat on the ground. “How many of them were hit this time?” Right to the point, it was.
“None, Sir.”
Tall raised his eyebrows under the helmet which sat so low on his small, fine head. “None? Not one?” A mortar round mushroomed exploding dirt without hurting anybody somewhere along the rearward slope of the third fold, and Tall coming forward to where Stein lay permitted himself to squat on his haunches.
“No, Sir.”
“That doesn’t sound much like the situation you described to me over the sound power.” Tall squinted at him, his face reserved.
“It’s not, Sir. The situation’s changed.” Stein felt he could honorably tell it now. “In just the last four or five minutes,” he added, and detested himself.
“And to what do you attribute the change?”
“Sergeant Beck, sir. When I last looked, half of his men had disappeared. I think he sent them off to try and knock out some emplacements, and they seem to have succeeded.”
From somewhere far off a machinegun began to rattle and a long line of bullets struck up dirt twenty-five yards below them on the forward slope. Tall did not change his squatting position or alter his voice. “Then you got my message to him.”
“No, Sir. I mean, yes, Sir, I did. It went forward with the two new squads. But Beck had already sent his men off before they got there. Some time before.”
“I see.” Tall turned his head and squinted his blue eyes off at the grassy ridge in silence. The long line of MG bullets came sweeping back from Stein’s left, this time only fifteen yards below them. Tall did not move.
“They’ve seen you, Sir,” Stein said.
“Stein, we’re going over there,” Tall said, ignoring his remark, “all of us, and we’re taking everybody with us. Do you have any more formal complaints or demurrers?”
“No, sir,” Stein said lamely. “Not now. But I reiterate my request to take a patrol down into the jungle on the right. I’m convinced it’s open down there. There hasn’t been a shot fired from there all day. A Jap patrol could have enfiladed the hell out of us from there with very little trouble. I was anticipating it.” He pointed away down the hollow between the folds to where the tree tops o
f the jungle were just barely visible, while Tall followed his gaze.
“In any case,” Tall said, “it’s now too late in the day to send a patrol down there.”
“A patrol in force? A platoon? With an MG? They could make a perimeter defense if they didn’t get back before dark.”
“Do you want to lose a platoon? Anyway, you’re emptying your center. We don’t have A-for-Able in reserve, Stein. They’re off on your right rear fighting their own fight. B-for-Baker is our reserve, and they’re committed on your left.”
“I know that, Sir.”
“No, we’ll do it my way. We’ll take everybody over to the ledge. We may be able to take that ridge before nightfall.”
“I think that ridge is quite a way from being reduced, Sir,” Stein said earnestly, and adjusted his glasses, the four fingers on the frame above, the thumb below.
“I don’t think so. In any case, we can always make a perimeter defense for the night there. Rather than withdraw like yesterday.” The conference was over. Leisurely Tall stood up to his full height. Again the MG in the distance rattled, and a swishing line of bullets struck the ground a few feet from him as Stein ducked, the bullets seeming, at least to Stein, to go whining off all about Tall’s feet and between his legs. Tall gave the ridge one contemptuous amused look and started walking down the rearward slope still talking to Stein. “But first I want you to get a man down there to your 1st Platoon and move them by the flank over to the ridge. They are to take up position behind the ledge and extend the left flank from Beck’s left. As soon as a man reaches your 1st Platoon safely, I’ll sound power Baker to move out, and then we’ll move.”
“Yes, Sir,” Stein said. He was unable to keep his teeth from grinding, but his voice was level. Slowly, very slowly, because he was reluctant, he too stood up to his full height also, then followed Tall down the slope. But before he could give an order young Captain Gaff, who had been lying prone not far away, had already crawled up to them.
“I’ll go, Sir,” he said to Tall. “I’d like to. Very much.”
Tall gazed at him fondly. “All right, John. Go ahead.” With strong fatherly pride he watched the young captain move away. “Good man, my young Exec,” he said to Stein.
There was really no need for the glasses this time. 1st Platoon wasn’t all that far away. Standing upright, their heads just showing above the crest, Tall and Stein watched Gaff zigzag his way professionally down into the shellhole area on the main flat to the left of the grassy ridge. Stein had told him roughly where to find Skinny Culn, now platoon commander by attrition. In a few moments men began moving to the right in rushes, by twos and threes.
“All right,” Tall said. “Give me the sound power.” He spoke into it at length. “Okay,” he said. “Now we’ll go.”
Around them, as if sensing something or other was in the wind, the men began to stir.
Whatever else Stein could find to say about him, and Stein could find plenty, he nevertheless had to admit that with Tall’s arrival on the battlefield a change for the better had come over everything and everybody. Partly of course the change was due to Beck’s feat, whatever that was exactly. But it could not all be that, and Stein had to admit it. Tall had brought with him some quality that had not been here before, and it showed in the faces of the men. They were less in-drawn looking. Perhaps it was only the feeling that after all in the end not everybody would die. Some would live through it. And from there it was only a step to the normal reaction of ego: I will live through this. Others may get it, my friends right and left may die, but I will make it. Even Stein felt better, himself. Tall had arrived and taken control, and had taken it firmly and surely and with confidence. Those who lived would owe it to Tall, and those who died would say nothing. It was too bad about those ones; everybody would feel that; but after all once they were dead they did not really count anymore, did they? This was the simple truth, and Tall had brought it with him to them.
The whole thing was evident in the way Tall handled the move forward. Striding up and down in front of the prone 3d Platoon, his little bamboo baton in his right hand, tapping it lightly against his shoulder as he frowned in concentration, he explained to them briefly what he planned to do, and why, and what their part in it must be. He did not exhort them. His attitude said quite plainly that he considered any exhortation to be cheating and trickery and he would not indulge in it; they deserved better than that; they must do what they must do, and do it without any chauvinistic pleading from him; there would be no jingoism. When the move was completed and both 1st and 3d Platoons were installed behind the ledge to the left and right of the 2d, only two men had been wounded and these lightly, and everybody knew they owed this to Colonel Tall. Even Stein felt the same way.
But having got them that far, it was evident that even Tall was not going to get them very much further. It was now after three-thirty. They had been out here since dawn, and most of them had not had any water since mid-morning. Several men had collapsed. Nerves frayed by being almost constantly under fire and without water, many more were hysterically close to collapse. Tall could see all this himself. But after taking the reports of Beck, Dale and Bell, he wanted to have, before dark, one more go at reducing the strongpoint on the right. The little assemblage of officers and noncoms around the Colonel now included those of B-for-Baker. When Charlie Co was making its move to the ledge, Baker on Tall’s telephoned orders had made its third attack of the day. Like the others it too had failed, and in the confusion half of Baker had overlapped Charlie’s 1st Platoon on the left and hung there. In returning the rest had tumbled in and stayed there also, so Tall had sent for their leaders, too.
“That strongpoint is obviously the key to the ridge,” he now said to the whole of them. “Se—uh—Sergeant Bell here is quite right.” He gave Bell a sharp look and went on, “From their knob there our little brown brothers can cover the whole of the flat rising ground in front of our ledge from our right clear over to Baker on the left. Why they left the ledge unguarded I have no idea. But we must exploit it before they see their error. If we can reduce that big bunker, I see no reason why we can’t take the whole ridge before nightfall. I’m asking for volunteers to go back there and knock it out.”
Stein, hearing for the first time this news about a further attack, was so horrified he could hardly believe his ears. Surely Tall must know how depleted and worn out they all were. But Stein’s impetus to argue with Tall had worn out, especially in front of over half the Battalion officers.
To John Bell, squatting with the others, it was all once again like some scene from a movie, a very bad, cliché, third rate war movie. It could hardly have anything to do with death. The Colonel still remained fully upright, still paced back and forth with his bamboo baton as he talked, but Bell noted that he carefully remained far enough back down the slope so that his head did not show above the ledge. Bell had also noted the hesitation and then italicized pronunciation when Tall applied the title Sergeant to himself. This was the first time Bell had ever met his Colonel, but there was no reason to assume Tall did not also know his story. Everybody else knew it. Perhaps it was this, more than anything else, which made him say what he said.
“Sir, I’ll be glad to go back again and lead the way for a party.” Was he mad? He was angry, he knew that, but was he insane as well? Ah, Marty!
Immediately, off to Bell’s right, another voice piped up. Hunchshouldered, grapplehanded, crackfaced, Acting Sergeant Dale was making his bid for future fame, future sinecures, future security from army kitchens. For whatever it was that drove him. Bell did not know.
“I’ll go, Colonel, Sir! I want to volunteer!” Charlie Dale stood up, made three formal paces forward, then squatted again. It was as if Dale, the liberated cook, did not believe his offer legal without the prescribed three paces forward. From his squat he glanced all around, his beady little eyes bright with something. To Bell the effect was distastefully ludicrous, laughable.
Almost before Dale had s
quatted, two other voices were added. Behind Bell, from among the privates and within the remnant of his own little patrol group, Pfc Doll and Private Witt came forward. Both sat down, much closer to Bell than to Dale who still squatted by himself. Bell felt impelled to wink at them.
Pfc Doll, who was still outraged over the success of Charlie Dale’s patrol as against their own, was startled by Bell’s wink. Why the fuck would anybody want to wink? From the moment he spoke and started to move forward Doll had felt his heart in his throat again, making his eyes swim dizzily. Moving his tongue in his mouth was like rubbing two damp pieces of blotting paper together. He had had no water for over four hours, and thirst had become so much a part of him that he could not remember ever having been without it. But this other was extra, this blotting paper in his mouth was the thirst of fear, and Doll recognized it. Was Bell ridiculing him? He essayed a small cold guarded smile at Bell.
