by James Jones
With regard to the patrol there was, five hundred yards to their front, one more unjungled hill, a small one, rising out of the jungle all alone. This had been named “The Sea Slug”. Since the one bright young staffer had succeeded in nicknaming The Dancing Elephant and making it stick, there had been a rash of names proposed for just about every hill remaining to be taken, by just about every bright young aide who had access to the aerial photos. Naming hills had become a game and a great lark. The Sea Slug, a fat slightly curving ridge really, was so called because of a fanshaped series of ravines spreading out from its inland end, thus resembling the cluster of antennae-tentacles protruding from the head of the sea slug, or sea cucumber as it is more often called. This Sea Slug had been reconnoitered twice by patrols of the 3d Battalion to its seaward or tail end, which was the closer and easier approach; but both times they had been driven back by heavy MG and mortar fire. Apparently it was heavily defended. C-for-Charlie’s patrol was to come at it from the inland or head end, against the fanshaped series of ravines, to see if it was less heavily defended there because of the harder terrain. They were also, if time permitted, to do some chopping work on the trail to enlarge it for tomorrow’s big attack. 1st Lt George C Band, smiling his unfocused, somehow indecent smile, made the decision that Skinny Culn’s 1st Platoon would do the patrol.
Tactically, they were told, The Sea Slug was useless except as an outpost, and as a jumping off point for the major push against the next big hill mass: the Hills 250-51-52-and-53 area, now known in the Division Plans Bureau as “The Giant Boiled Shrimp.” But the Division Commander and the general commanding wanted it because its open length, angling forward, was a perfect approach route to The Giant Boiled Shrimp hill mass. Culn’s patrol, like the others, was being given a walkie-talkie man to call back firing data to the mortars and artillery.
They ate first, picking out of the open cases cans of meat-and-beans or hash or stew according to preference and sitting down with them around on the hillside or on watercans. Then they filled their canteens and moved out, moving slowly, even reluctantly, down the open space of The Elephant’s Trunk toward the same jungle trail which just a week ago they had climbed up from. At the bottom they disappeared into the leaves.
Up above, the rest of the company watched.
Despite fighting experience this was C-for-Charlie’s first combat jungle patrol. Open hill fighting taught nothing about that. All of them had moved through enough jungle on foot to know what to expect. The jungle was eerie. Dripping trees, disturbed birds squawking, the sounds of their own breath in the green air, their feet squishing in the trail’s mud, gloom. Ahead of them the trail branched. Theirs, the left one, immediately narrowed to a track just wide enough for men to walk in single file. It was known to take them in the direction of The Sea Slug hill. Hemmed in by wild bananas, papaya, huge looping lianas, and plants which dangled great fleshy red penises in their faces, they moved along this narrow space, announced ahead by the birds, trying to move quietly and failing, fighting down feelings of claustrophobia, and halting frequently while Culn and the green new Lieutenant took compass readings. Far enough back to be out of earshot the two rearmost squads did some feeble chopping at the trail with machetes which changed nothing. Four hours later they were back with one dead, two wounded, and faces which had aged twenty years.
The dead man was a little known and essentially friendless draftee named Griggs. He came first (after the Lieutenant and Culn) ported by four men bellyupward, his arms legs and head aflop and all dangling downward. Mortar fragments had hit him in the chest. He was placed on the hillside off by himself to wait for the medics to come cart him off, basically resented by everyone because he reminded them they might have been in his place. Of the two wounded who came right behind him one had had his thigh torn wide open by a big mortar chunk; he hobbled along on one foot between two men, groaning and sighing and occasionally weeping. The other one had gotten a piece of mortar shell through his neck and now wore a high gauze collar as he staggered along with his arm around still another man. A group of fresh men from the company took them over and got them started for the aid station while the rest of the patrol dropped down weary and shaky wherever they could on the hillside. They looked like men who had done their day’s work and felt entitled to rest, but resented that they were being underpaid for the type work they did without hope of ever correcting it. Only Culn and the Lieutenant, after seeing them all in through the line, did not sit down and instead went to collect Band and go make their report to Battalion.
The Lieutenant would have preferred to sit down. He did not, however, feel he could do that as long as Culn didn’t. He kept darting looks at Culn. Of them all Culn was the only one this afternoon who had kept his normal disposition, which in Culn’s case was a sunny, happy, smiling one. The Lieutenant, whose name was Payne and who was still pale and stiff faced, would have attributed this to Culn’s superior experience if he had not noticed that all of the others he saw reacted more like himself than they did like Culn. Right now, as they tramped along the side of the hill, Culn was whistling pleasantly a song which Payne had heard before somewhere and which he believed was called San Antonio Rose. Once he stopped whistling long enough to look over and smile cheerily and wink. Finally Payne could stand it no longer.
“Would you mind stopping that damned whistling, Sergeant!” he said, much sharper than he had originally intended.
“Okay, Lieutenant,” Culn said amiably. “If you say so.”
And he did stop. But he went on humming the notes silently to himself under his breath. There was no malice in him toward Lt Payne; he was whistling because he felt good. Skinny Culn was an amiable, easygoing sort of man, willing to live and let live, usually laughing, but he was also a careful, well grounded soldier with nine years service. That was the way he had run his patrol, and he had been nice to the new lieutenant—who, if the Irish truth be known, knew as much about that sort of patrol as he himself did, which was nothing. Culn had waited four years and had reenlisted and shipped over to get command of this platoon—which platoon his predecessor Grove, now predeceased, and with whom he had been good drinking buddies, had also reenlisted to keep, thereby frustrating Culn. But that was all in the game. In the end only Grove’s death and the war had given it to him. Being a good Irish Catholic, if a lax one, Skinny could look upon that without guilt or horror as a sort of personal responsibility passed from Grove to him from beyond the grave. Certainly he did not intend to lose it now, either by having it shot out from under him, or having himself yanked off the top of it for some reckless swashbuckling or other. He also did not intend to lose it by antagonizing the officer who thought he led it. The reason he felt good was because he was alive and undamaged, and had before him the prospect of an easy safe afternoon and evening of loafing and banter before tomorrow, and maybe even a few drinks. It was highly possible that Brass Band would offer them both a good stiff snort when they reported to him. Culn had noticed that Band had taken good care of himself with the liquor situation, which he could more easily do, having a dogrobber orderly who had carried his personal bed roll up here for him. Walking along, he almost caught himself whistling the song again, but stopped himself just in time. They walked on.
“Didn’t you feel anything up there?” Payne asked finally in a strong voice, darting him another look and then looking away straight ahead. “Out there?”
“Feel?” Skinny said. “Yeah, I guess I felt scared. Once there, anyway. Durin the worst of the mortars.” He smiled cheerfully at Payne as though now he knew what Payne’s trouble was, which angered Payne.
“Well, you didn’t look it, Sergeant,” Payne said.
“You don’t really know me very well yet, Lootenant,” Culn grinned. But he was suddenly angry. He felt his rights were being infringed upon by Payne. He had plenty of feelings, but he didn’t have to talk about them. He was not a cog in a machine, whatever Payne thought.
“But when those men were hit!” Payne sa
id. “One died! They were in your platoon!” He was less pale now, away from the casualties, but his face was still stiff.
Culn smiled at him carefully. Payne sounded as if he had known this platoon for years. “Lootenant, I think we done pretty good. And got off pretty lucky. With them treebursts comin in on us like they were,” he said cheerfully. “It ought to of been lots worse, see? And as for feeling,” he said kindly, “the Service nor nobody pays me any extra ‘Feeling Pay’ for feeling. Like they pay flyers ‘Flight Pay’ for flyin. So I figure I ain’t required to feel. I figure I won’t feel any more than’s just absolutely necessary. The minimum feeling. Tomorrow’s likely to be really rough, Lootenant. Did you know that?”
Payne did not answer this. His face looked like a stormcloud and even stiffer than before, and Skinny worried that he had gone too far. Nervously (why antagonize him?), to soften his statement, he chuckled and looked over at Payne and grinned and winked. He saw gratefully that in front of them a little uphill Brass Band had come out of his command post to greet them. Payne saw it too, and looked away in that direction recomposing his face. The CP had been located in one of the old Japanese stick shanties in the shade of the big trees just down behind the crest. Band now stood in front of it. Band was smiling at them proudly.
He did offer them a drink. A good stiff one, at his suggestion. They took it straight from the beautiful, lovely White Horse bottle. And then Band had one himself. George Band did not see why he should not indulge himself in a few little luxuries if they were available without too much trouble, since he was now Company Commander. Jim Stein, memory of whom was fading swiftly day by day, would have considered that highly immoral. But Band didn’t see it that way at all. He had told off his new clerk Corporal Weld and Weld’s number one assistant Train that between them he wanted his bedroll carried up on the march, and into it he had packed six bottles of the best, in addition to his canteens. As it had turned out, they would be leaving here tomorrow and he would have to leave both bedroll and whiskey to somebody, but they might very well have spent a week here before beginning the new attack. In any event he would have one good night’s sleep out of it, and it hadn’t really been too much extra work for his two clerks. If 1st/Sgt Welsh could use them as personal slaves, so could the Company Commander certainly. Like his men, Band had been drinking rather more heavily since the week of ‘rest’ began. He had another one out of the bottle before putting it away and turned his attention to his new lieutenant, Payne.
He watched Payne’s pale, stiff face while they made their report, and decided things might be working out. When they had finished the report, he said, “Well, we better go along to Battalion and tell them all. The new Commander’s arrived, I think.” Band was thinking privately that maybe this new commander might very well offer them all a drink, and Culn was thinking the same thing. “You’re sure everything’s been done for the wounded?” Band added piously. Both men nodded.
Actually there really wasn’t very much to do for them and everybody knew it. They had crossed over into that Other Realm. They had taken their sulfa pills. The medic on the patrol had given them each a syrette of morphine. There was nothing the group who helped them down to the aid station could do for them except give them water and a shot of whiskey. The one with the leg wound kept groaning and weeping and wailing over and over in a child’s voice, “Goddam, it hurts! It hurts!” Quite a large group walked them down, many more than were needed. It was as if they thought they could give the two wounded comfort in sheer numbers, and at the same time satisfy their own curiosity. Also, it was a welcome relief from the boring duty of having to stay in the holes on the line. The group hung around the aid station watching while the doctors worked on them and shipped them out swiftly on a stretcher carrying jeep. Neither of them would ever come back, and the general opinion seemed to be that they were the both of them pretty goddamned lucky. The man with the leg wound, when the doctor unwrapped it to have a look at it, screamed with pain. His name was Wills. The other man’s larynx was damaged and he could not talk at all. The tiny mortar fragment had gone completely through his neck and come out the other side without hitting any major nerves or blood vessels. Once they were gone, waving feebly back from the jeep, there was no more point in hanging around and the group walked back up to the position together. One of these was Corporal Fife, newly of the 3d Platoon, and another was Buck Sergeant Doll.
Fife had done nothing to help either of the wounded, and indeed had not wanted to get close enough to them to touch them. But he could not resist coming along and watching them with obscene fascination from the outskirts of the group between the heads of those who clustered around them. He remembered in detail his own trip back to the aid station, was haunted by it and by the fact that he could have been hit again and killed at any moment. Also, he could not forget the bloodstained trip down to the beach in the jeep, knowing all the time that no matter how bad it looked his wound was not as serious as he had hoped it was. Fife had nightmares about this trip now every night, sometimes waking up screaming sometimes not, but always in a cold sweat of fear and panic the essential essence of which was a feeling of complete entrapment. Trapped in every direction no matter where he turned, trapped by patriotic doctors, trapped by longfaced crewcut infantry Colonels who demanded the willingness to die, trapped by Japanese colonial ambitions, trapped by chic grinning S-1 officers secure in their right to ask only after other officers, trapped by his own government and its faceless nameless administrators, trapped by Stein and his increasingly sad face, trapped by 1st/Sgt Mad Welsh who wanted only to laugh at him. In the dream all these came in on him in an insane jumble of shrieks and accusations while they sat waiting in the middle distance positive that he would prove them all right and show himself to be yellow. Even when he drank himself to sleep those nights after getting out of the hospital during the week of ‘rest’, the nightmare or one of its variations came. Sometimes it was bombers and polyglot faces laughing down at him from the bombbay doors as they released their loads on him: they had trapped him into bravery and killed him. Either way he lost. Naturally, he was somewhat upset by watching the two wounded being handled and cared for. And yet he could not not watch. The worst thing was the element of chance which came into it. The most perfect, most perfectly trained soldier could do nothing to protect against, or save himself from, the element of chance. As he walked away back up the hill, Fife did not feel it was safe, could not trust himself, even to speak. To anyone. And naturally, it was then that newly promoted Sergeant Doll chose to come over and talk to him.
Doll, in fact, thought he had interpreted correctly the painful look on Fife’s face, and that was why he came over. Since making sergeant, a new and powerful sense of paternal responsibility had blossomed in Doll. It applied mainly to his own squad, but it could be extended to every rank below his own in the company. Before being promoted Doll had never realized what a marvelous thing it was to help other people or what sheer pleasure it could give you. When noncoms used to want to help him out with something, he hated them and thought they were pompous. But now he understood it. Fife was the only man who had been wounded and returned to the company, if you left out Storm in the kitchen who wasn’t combat. Doll thought he could understand what a violent shock it must be to get hit and find you were not invulnerable. But all it really needed was a return of confidence, and Doll thought he could help. He had confidence enough for damn near everybody. He had it because he never thought about being wounded or killed. Take tomorrow: by this time tomorrow they were certain to be in it up to their ass; but did he think about that? What was the good of that?
Doll, when he’d been promoted, had requested transfer to the 2d Platoon and a squad there. His own former Squad Leader in 1st Platoon, Sgt Field, had been promoted to Staff and made Platoon Sgt of 3d Platoon; but Doll had asked expressly not to be given his own old squad. He explained to Brass Band that this was because he didn’t think it would look good if he was jumped from Pfc to Sgt over the sq
uad’s former Corporal, who by rights should (and did) get the rating. Also, he said he wanted to be with the rest of the old Hill 210 ‘Assault Force’, all of whom except for Witt were now noncoms in the 2d Platoon. All this sounded good, and Band immediately accommodated him. But the real reason Doll didn’t want to take his own old squad was that he was afraid that there his new authority might be questioned or even laughed at. He could smile at that now. But he was a lot more sure of himself now than he had been a week ago.
There had been a few bad moments when he first began to use his new authority. For instance, one morning at the single formation they had every day during the week off, when the platoon had straggled untidily into its long single line, Doll had stood out in front of them and harangued and harangued them to dress up their line, shouting and cursing, and getting almost no results, though they bobbed and shuffled and looked at each other. It went on like that, with him shouting louder and louder, until finally one of the oldtime squad leaders—a guy who had been one a long time but would never get promoted beyond it—had stepped up, simply called them to attention, then given them the command, “Dress right, Dress!” In seconds the line was perfect, and the whole platoon was grinning at Doll who was standing there with his mouth hung open. The only thing was to grin with them and laugh it off, and Doll did. But for hours afterwards his ears burned whenever he thought of it. But bad incidents like that had been few, and he had his heroisms with the assault force working for him. His squad admired him for that. And he had done other things, like taking on himself more than his share of the dirty jobs instead of passing them out to the guys in the squad. It was astonishing how great his protective sense had grown once he knew they’d accepted him as their leader. And right now, hiking back up the hill to the position, Doll felt that same overwhelming all-pervasive protective feeling for poor Fife. They had used to talk together a lot out in front of the messhall or the orderly room, back in the old days.
