The Thin Red Line

by James Jones

  First Sergeant Welsh had come down from the hills at the head of his company with the same drawn, haunted face and wrinkled, too bright eyes they all wore, but unlike them he had come down triumphant—triumphant, and without a souvenir except an iron contempt for the souvenirs the rest of them all carried. He was triumphant because everything had turned out exactly as he had expected and anticipated, thus leaving him with no real shock or trauma: men got killed mostly for statistical reasons, as he had anticipated: men fought well or badly about like they would have fought for women or other Property, as he had expected. The only thing that really bothered him was that dumb punk ass Tella. But he had thought that all out carefully, and had realized that some penancemaking, selfdestructive thing in his nature which had made him go after Tella would almost certainly make him liable to other such acts in future, and had accepted that. As for his contempt of souvenirs, he had never yet had to resort to such sophomoric methods to obtain his booze, and he certainly was not about to start now. In the first place he liked gin. These punks could have their whiskey. He could drink whiskey if he had to, but as long as he could get gin he meant to have it, and if his former source of gin had removed or transferred he would find another—and he didn’t need no souvenirs to do it. He had marched along loosely through the dust under the sun, and through the mud under the jungle, chanting to himself his secret rune of “Property. Property. All for Property,” while his company struggled along behind him loaded down and gasping; about the only sane man left in the outfit, he figured. And at that moment he was just about right. When they got down he had shaved every day and had not tried to grow a stupid beard, and no one had dared say a word to him about it because he had had a moustache for years.

  From now on the punks could take care of themselves.

  Behind him Welsh heard Fife say to Band with a heavy, furious irony: “Well now that’s remarkable, Sir! I wish I could have seen my helmet. I bet it was torn up more than yours even. I was hit in the head, you know. But I never saw it.”

  Fife’s voice was shaking with fury, and Welsh grinned to himself. Everybody in the company was sick to puking of Band’s helmet. But when Fife turned to look over at him for corroboration, Welsh set his eyes like two rocks and stared right through him. Welsh had had his own run-ins with Brassass the last few days since he took over the company, but he had taken care of them himself and the punk could do the same.

  Band had bent and was putting the helmet shell carefully away. He had only the shell there now because he had taken to wearing the scratched, dented liner at formations and around the camp. “Yes. It’s too bad you couldn’t have kept it so you could take it home with you for a souvenir like I’m doing.”

  “I was thinking of other things,” Fife said, “Sir. At the time.”

  Band had straightened back up and was still smiling, but his eyes and smile did not have quite their customary eager look. “I suppose you were.” He turned to Welsh. “Well, Sergeant?”

  “There’s nothing much new, Sir.” Welsh’s own series of petty clashes with Band had come to a head two days ago when, having been rebuked for not being properly respectful to the company officers, Welsh had said quietly, “Sir, you can have my stripes and my job whenever you want them.” He had meant it, and Band knew he meant it. “Sergeant, don’t ever get the idea you’re indispensable,” Band had said narrowly. “Sir, nobody knows better than me just exactly how dispensable every man in this company is,” Welsh had countered, and that had ended it. Band had got himself off the hook by reminding him not to forget it, and he had not asked for the stripes and job.

  Now Band said, “Well, that’s good news.” Suddenly, wearing his eager smile, he clapped his hands together and rubbed their palms briskly and said in his best schoolteacher voice, “Well then! Corporal Fife! I guess we better decide what to do about you, then, Fife. Hunh?” He did not wait for anyone to answer. “Since Weld here is now Corporal and clerk, we can’t very well demote him back to private. Neither can we have two clerks. Also, since Weld is a good bit older and in less good physical shape than Fife, as well as being considerably less well-trained, I don’t see how we can send him off to take second command of a rifle squad....”

  All Fife’s anger ran down out of him like water as he realized the trend Band was taking, and he decided, too late, that he could have been much nicer about Band’s helmet. Terror ballooned in him as he remembered that hellish exposed slope up there, the exploding mortar round, the dead boy on the stretcher.

  “... Soo—How would you like to become second in command of a top-rated rifle squad, Fife?” Band said cheerily. “Sergeant Jenks’s squad of the 3d Platoon has no corporal.”

  Even in his sudden fear Fife did not see, Band having put it as he had, that there was any other answer he could give except to say Yes, he would like that. But he was saved from having to say it by Welsh.

  “Sir, Sergeant Dranno back at Rear Echelon has been devilling me to give him someone to help him. He’s had a lot of work over casualties since this action. And he’s gonna have a lot more.” Welsh stared at Band. “Fife here has more clerical knowledge than anybody in the company except for Dranno.”

  “All right! There you are!” Band gave Fife his curiously bland smile. “Now you have a choice, Fife! Which do you prefer?”

  “I’ll work for Draino,” Fife managed to say lamely.

  “All right!” Lt Band said cheerily, with that smile. He swung in his chair toward Welsh. “When do you want him to leave, Sergeant?”

  “Hell,” Welsh said. “Today.”

  “There you are, Corporal,” Band smiled. “Okay. You can go.”

  Fife got as far as to pack. Pack?! All he had to do was put his messkit spoon in one pocket, his extra pair of socks in another, buckle on his new riflebelt, pick up his new rifle. The Imperial quart of Australian whiskey he had managed to wrangle from the new magnanimity of the newly promoted Sgt Doll (which he hated), he would carry in his hand. But then the rebellion came. All of his fury returned, his fury at Band, his fury at Welsh, his fury at the world. Fuck them. Fuck them all. With it came back also that tragic sense of sorrow and loss he had felt so strongly on the evening in the jungle beside the trail before they were to go into battle the next morning. He was alone. There was nobody in the world who gave a damn whether he lived or died. So be it. He would die alone then. He knew what he felt was unrealistic; he knew he would regret it immediately; he was sure he was signing his own death warrant; but in spite of the fear and terror which filled him in equal parts with and right alongside of the fury and sorrow, he would not go back there to work for Draino. He would show these bastards. He would show them all. With a curiously selfgrinding, selfcastigating hatred of everything but most of all himself, he rejected Welsh’s goddamn charity. He unpacked. Had Welsh tried to keep him in the orderly room? Had Welsh tried to get him back for the orderly room? He returned to the orderly room tent to tell them that he had changed his mind, that he intended to stay. When Welsh heard him, his face turned so red it appeared his whole head would explode like a bomb with furious rage, but he said not a word in front of Band. Band himself gave Fife a curiously sharp, not truly pleased look which when Fife left the tent made Fife feel he had been actually and actively seduced. But it was too late now. He moved in with Jenks’s squad. As he had anticipated, he immediately regretted what he had done. The only real pleasure he got out of it was Welsh’s face.

  Sergeant Jenks—he who as Corporal Jenks had once fought with fists with Pfc Doll back in the old days—had only been made Sergeant since the battle, when his own squad leader was killed in the fight at the Japanese bivouac. He was a dark, lean, tall, long-torsoed, short-legged man from Georgia who spoke little and took his rank and his soldiering seriously as jobs. He made Fife welcome with few words and went about his business, which at the moment was serious drinking, and that night Fife got drunk with Jenks’s squad and 3d Platoon instead of with Storm and the Headquarters gang; but he never did feel part of
them.

  It was on that same night that Private Witt paid them his angry, drunken visit. And so it was from Witt, whose Cannon Company outfit was bivouacked at Regimental Rear Echelon Headquarters, that C-for-Charlie learned for the first time that Captain Johnny Gaff had been recommended for the Medal of Honor, and that he had been evacuated to Esperito Santo for safekeeping. Witt naturally first looked up his old buddies from Gaff’s ‘assault force’ for some drinking, and it was to them he told the story. But it soon spread like wildfire through the whole company, and there was a big laugh about it. Because, naturally, everybody knew that Gaff had never looked up his little ‘assault force’ to pay off that big drunk he had promised them, everything paid for by him. It was a bitter laugh. Witt himself waxed drunkenly eloquent about the treachery of any man who could use them as Gaff had and then shuck them off like a wornout fatigue blouse. Gaff had buggered them all in the ass, was Witt’s opinion and he thought they all ought to admit it. But the rest of them tried to laugh it off, as the company in general had. Gaff was the final bitter sauce on the bitter meat all C-for-Charlie had been masticating without appetite for most of this past week. Neither, as far as Witt or anybody else could find out, had Gaff recommended Doll for the Distinguished Service Cross he had promised personally to recommend him for. Sergeant Doll—who now could remember clearly how he had shrewdly saved the group by deliberately drawing the Japanese fire knowing the ledge was ten yards off to the right—tried to laugh this off too, but he found it a little harder to do than the others did. As far as medals were concerned, from what any of them could find out, nobody from C-for-Charlie had been recommended for any medals at all so far. Except of course for Gaff.

  “If you can count him!” John Bell laughed drunkenly. “After all, he was the Battalion Exec. He was never in C-for-Charlie.” Bell found the whole thing sourly, indigestibly amusing: the bitter, cold-Spam of knowledge; the mastication of it; the sauce of Gaff and medals.

  But this was about the only thing Bell found amusing. There had been one mail call, a big one, during the past week and Bell had received six letters from his wife. This was the first mail call they’d had since first boarding the transports, and Bell did not think six seemed like too huge a number. Of course, a lot of them could have got shunted aside on other ships or delayed. Couldn’t they? Anyway, in the light of his revelatory knowledge which had come to him up there in the saddle above the Japanese strongpoint, Bell strove to read between the lines for signs. Had this batch seemed colder? Or was he only reading that into them? As he always did when this sort of mood came over him he got up, holding his Imperial quart by the neck, and walked off by himself away from the others. Drunkenly he sat down on the hillside and sat looking out over the darkened shape of the island toward the sea in the half-moonlight. The airraids had already come and gone, but there were no fires burning. Of course, back home … back home … there were always so many more opportunities for—what was it?—love partners—wasn’t that what they called it in all the psych courses back at State?—sure, that was it—than there were here on this beautiful, Godforsaken place. But he had to believe in her. If he couldn’t believe in Marty, he couldn’t believe in anything now. With a half-erection from thinking about her he got up and came back to find Witt holding forth again—with much laughter, but bitterly—about Gaff.

  “Why don’t you transfer back into old C-for-Charlie?” he asked suddenly of Witt. “You know you’d like to. And you only got tomorrow and tomorrow night. Left.”

  “Me? Not me!” Witt whooped. “I won’t never come back in this Battalion long as Shorty Tall commands it. No, sir. Much’s I might like to. If Tall ever gits promoted, or shipped out … But not now. As matter fact, I ought be movin long ratt now, for I contamnated,” Witt cried, and got up swaying. Suddenly, in great giant strides, he began leaping off down the steep hillside, an Imperial quart in each hand, while his voice came back to them with the diminishing tone of a train whistle moving away from the listener: “Airraids over, think I take a look down there see they do any damage, then I meander on home to dear ol’ Cannon Company, see if …” He had already disappeared from sight long since, but his voice kept coming back to them, then there was a crash and a loud “Owwwww!”

  Several of them had already been on their feet starting to follow and stop him. When they reached him, they found him lying on his side grinning foolishly.

  “I slipped,” Witt said, peering up at them owlishly. A rock had gashed his cheek, and while he still grasped the necks of both Imperial quarts firmly, only one of the bottles was still whole. The other had broken out from under his grasp so that he now held only the jagged empty neck.

  “You can’t go back there anyway tonight!” Bell hollered at him. “You fool! You’ll get your ass shot off by some triggerhappy sentry!”

  “I guess yore ratt,” Witt said. He allowed himself to be led docilely back up to the others. “But at fuckin Shorty Tall better stay way fum me, at son of a bitch, or I punch his fuckin haid in!” he yelled once, struggling to get his arms loose. But after that he was quiet.

  The next morning he left considerably chastened with a bandaid on his cheek, obviously reluctant to go. But no amount of persuasion could talk him into just staying and coming with them, not as long as Colonel Tall commanded the Battalion. So that night—the last night—they got drunk by themselves, without Witt.

  There was plenty of whiskey left, and now most men carried three canteens instead of two: two for water, one for whiskey. The whiskey they could not take, as well as the remaining unsold souvenirs, was left with Sergeant MacTae and his supply clerk and Storm and his cooks, none of whom were volunteering to go up this time, and who promised to keep it all for them until they got back. And the last Storm saw of them was the last man of the last platoon who, just before he dropped over the crest of the hill, stopped and turned back and yelled plaintively: “Goddam you, you take care of my whiskey now!”

  As they began the long march up Privates Mazzi and Tills were again no longer speaking. They had sold their heavy Jap MG for a fair price, and had split the take, but one night giggling drunk Tills had told the tale of Mazzi’s fright over the mortar shells that first day in the midst of his brave talk. Mazzi had stomped away back to his hep friends from New York in the 1st Platoon, saying he had got from Tills all he wanted anyway, which was half of the machinegun. Later he told other people he would have requested transfer out of the Weapons Platoon were it not that rifle platoons were so dangerous. Now they marched along back into combat side by side, one carrying the buttplate, the other carrying the tube, staring straight ahead and not saying a word to each other. Both men, like many others, had had their first serious attack of malaria during the week of rest.

  CHAPTER 7

  EVERYTHING LOOKED CHANGED. Behind Hill 209 things had been tidied up and civilized. Camp sites had appeared, and the old jeep track had been regraded and leveled until it was passable to other vehicles. Hiking, C-for-Charlie regarded all of this with interest. Beyond Hill 209, where they had fought and been terrorized on the second and third folds a week ago, puptents were now pitched. On the side ridge where Keck had led his three squads up through the grass and later died of his own mistake, laughing men were bivouacked. The brushy hollow where 2d Battalion had been caught and mortared so badly the first day was now a bustling Message Center. And the new jeep track, with the Engineers still working on it, passed between the left and righthand grassy ridges across the flat and on up the Bowling Alley onto Hill 210, The Elephant’s Head. As they swung along it, raising dust and winded but stepping out smartly because they were being watched by people they now thought of as rear area troops, C-for-Charlie was the lead company of the Battalion and it was their pride that they had effected all these changes they were noting, even though they hadn’t done the work. Because they had done the killing.

  This triumph did not last long. Under the shade of the tall jungle trees along the line that followed the crest of Hill 210, the reli
ef went off smoothly. The company they were relieving had been patrolling the past week and had lost two dead and five hurt. But they had not fought any major battles like The Dancing Elephant, and this showed in their admiring faces as they watched C-for-Charlie come up and take over. C-for-Charlie only glared back dourly. There was, they had learned immediately from the men they were relieving, a patrol scheduled for this afternoon. The attack itself was scheduled for tomorrow at dawn.

  The march up had been fun, but it had brought them right back here, they suddenly realized, back here where everything counted.

  Colonel Tall, however, was not with them today. Colonel Tall, the grapevine had it, was just in the process of being promoted. Nobody in the Battalion had seen him this morning when the march began, and he had not shown up at the rendezvous point by the river where the four companies met. By that mysterious process which nobody understood but which always seemed to know everything about Regimental (and even Division) events before they began to take place, rumor said that Tall was going away to command the detached sister regiment fighting in the mountains, whose CO was so ill from malaria that he could no longer command. This brought sour smiles to the lips of malaria sufferers in the Battalion, most of whom were running consistent temperatures of 104+ during their attacks. Another thing that brought laughter was the comprehension that Old Shorty was being promoted because of their exploits and their shed blood, was being, because of this reputation, jumped in over the Exec of the detached regiment with the temporary rank of full colonel. Nobody really cared very much that he was leaving. They were much more concerned with what his successor was going to be like, and with their forthcoming afternoon patrol.