The Thin Red Line

by James Jones

  Storm was having his own troubles. Back at the hospital, when he had sworn to remain a mess sergeant and stay the hell off the front lines, he had also sworn to feed his pore, bleeding outfit at least one hot meal a day if it was at all humanly possible. To this end, back at the empty bivouac where MacTae the supply sergeant was the only other person of authority left and who certainly didn’t mind, Storm had commandeered both company jeeps, loaded them with his cooks, stoves and supplies and had taken off at dawn to feed C-for-Charlie, only to find them already gone when he arrived at The Elephant’s Head. They were, he was informed, on The Sea Slug digging in as Regimental reserve. Patiently doubling back and taking the other road he arrived at The Sea Slug (after considerable argument with the Provost Marshal’s MPs guarding the new jungle section) only to find them gone again. 2d Battalion was already moving into their holes. And here he was stumped. He could not go any farther. Even jeeps could not move to The Shrimp’s Tail until the Engineers made a road, and all supplies were being carried by native porters. Even when there was a road, he was told, other transport would have priority, like ammo, cold rations, water. Modern war, after first wounding him, had finally caught up with Storm in his work. Modern war didn’t give a damn whether Storm fed his company hot food or not. Modern war couldn’t care less about a solitary company mess, trying to get far enough forward to give its outfit hot food and fucking up the highway priorities, and nobody was going to help him. And it had become an obsession with Storm to feed his outfit at least one hot meal a day. Only in that way could he relieve himself of the guilts he felt for not being with them. And now all he could do was sit here with one thumb up his ass and the other in his mouth like some baby. A lesser man would have broken and wept. Storm cursed with tears in his eyes.

  On the other hand, Storm’s cooks were all glad. None of them had liked this crazy idea anyway. It was too dangerously near the firing. He had forced them to come here and try this goofy scheme over their collective objections. They didn’t even have any KPs to do the dirty work. And now they watched their near tearful leader maliciously and whispered among themselves that maybe now he would let them go home to the bivouac. Finally one of them got up nerve enough to go and ask him this. Storm delivered him such a left hook in the side of the head that it knocked him down and his head rang for two hours. While he worked. Because Storm had immediately put them all to work.

  He did not know exactly when the idea came to him. It was a simple enough connection. Here all around him were men hungering for hot food, and here he was with the stoves and supplies to fix it. So he had set up his kitchen on some nearly level ground ten yards from the main ridge. The stoves were unloaded and fired up, his cooks told off for their various shifts, the skillets put to sizzling on the ranges, and Storm was open for business. He had brought more than enough food in the two jeeps to feed the company three hot meals a day for a week. It might be a long battle. By that calculation, he could feed six companies two hot meals a day for almost two days. Or, if he ... He stopped counting and went back to work. By the time Witt arrived he had fed the two companies of the 2d Battalion holding The Sea Slug one hot meal apiece before they moved out, and had served another hot meal to the one company of the sister regiment which had relieved them. Then he had gotten an even better idea, when a strange company had marched by heading for The Giant Boiled Shrimp.

  Coming up from the jungle road back to Hill 214, the sight to these men of a foreign company mess sitting by the trail with stoves aglow and skillets sizzling had caused their eyes to bug out. Several of them had broken ranks and rushed over, only to burn their hands on the slices of hot Spam as they ran to fall back in. Storm had brought lots of bread. Now he broke it out. He also posted a sentry at the mouth of the jungle road to Hill 214. When this man signaled, the cooks on shift started frying all the Spam they could handle. The cooks not on shift sliced the bread and then did the serving, passing out along the column with armloads of hot fried Spam sandwiches while Storm roared and hollered and clapped his hands like pistol shots like some football coach to pep them up. They could not feed every single man like that, there wasn’t the time, but now and then—though rarely—an understanding company commander suddenly decided to call a ten break on The Sea Slug. And there were enough outfits moving across The Sea Slug now, heading for The Shrimp, to keep Storm occupied. Then there would be the evening meal to prepare for this stranger company here. His cooks stared at him as if he’d gone mad, but he didn’t care. Fuck all that! Fuck everything! Feed men!

  However, every now and then, he would think of C-for-Charlie, all those faces that he knew so well passing slowly in review before his eyes. Then he would know that it didn’t mean anything, what he was doing, didn’t help at all, was worthless to him. And then that look, whether of rage, frustration, guilt or pain, or all four, would come back over his face. Modern war. You couldn’t even pretend it was human. Then he would plunge back in.

  This comic routine, this emotional strophe and antistrophe, was what he was doing when Witt came up the road alone, a solitary figure, humping along under his combat pack with slung rifle and bandoliers, thin and frail looking, his peanut head sunk deep into his helmet shell, Witt the Kentuckian, Witt who hated niggers because they all wanted to vote. Even if one told him he didn’t want to vote, Witt would not believe him. He would simply have to be lying. From beneath the shell, in shadow, his hard implacable eyes peered out like the eyes of some ferretlike animal.

  There was a great deal of handshaking. The kitchen had not seen Witt since the night he tried to run down the mountain. A huge meal was prepared for him. Storm fed him all the fried Spam, dehydrated mashed potatoes, and stewed dehydrated apples his small belly could hold. Storm broke out an Imperial quart.

  “What the hell are you doin’ up here? Like this? All by yourself.”

  “I’m headin back to the company,” Witt said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “You’re what?!”

  Witt grinned. “Goin’ back. Shorty Tall got promoted yesterday.”

  “You must be out of your mind,” Storm said.

  Witt’s helmetshadowed eyes turned slowly in their sockets to stare at him. “No I ain’t.”

  “In the first place nobody knows where they are. They’re way to hell and gone off on their own someplace. They’re not even on The Giant Boiled Shrimp anymore.”

  Witt nodded. “I can find them. Somebody’s got to know.”

  “The last dope we had here said that all companies of both 1st and 3d Battalions have been authorized to act as independent commands. You know what that means.”

  “Sure. They probably out of contact.”

  “You must be off your rocker.”

  “Why?” Witt said. “It’s the company, ain’t it? They must of left a trail. And Tall’s promoted, ain’t he?” He looked straight at Storm out of his black Kentucky eyes.

  Storm stared back. “Have a nuther drink,” he said.

  “Thank you, I will,” Witt said politely. Then he smiled his shy smile. “It’s good to see you, Stormy. But what are you doin’ up here feeding all these strangers?”

  “I tried to catch up to the company, but we missed them. And these guys was here.” Storm shrugged lamely. “I figured I might as well feed somebody.”

  “Well, I guess it’s a good deed,” Witt said. “It was good for me, anyway.”

  “Angh,” Storm said and shrugged again. He looked around the ridge. “For two cents I’d go with you.”

  Witt got up. “Come on along.”

  “But I don’t know what these dumbasses would do if they didn’t have me around to take care of them,” Storm said.

  “We’d have some fun.”

  “The truth is,” Storm said, “I don’t like to get shot at.”

  “Everybody to his own taste,” Witt said. Then he grinned. “I think I like it. But honestly I wouldn’t be doin’ this if it wasn’t the old company, I guess.”

  They left it at tha
t. Witt was well aware of the effect his odyssey was creating, and he was openly proud of himself. He hung around talking and having a couple more drinks so that he did not get away heading for The Shrimp, shtumping along in solitary splendor, until just after four, which was just about the time that C-for-Charlie unaided captured their second undefended hill.

  Storm watched him until he disappeared from sight going down into the jungle toward The Shrimp behind some native porters at the front end of The Sea Slug ridge. Witt was not aware of this because he was too proud to let himself look back, but he could not help wondering if some of them weren’t watching. Because of having to stop and ask directions so often from so many people who could tell him nothing or only the vaguest rumors, he had to cover almost every foot of The Giant Boiled Shrimp and it was a quarter to five in the afternoon of the next day when he finally reached The Shrimp’s Head and had pointed out to him the trail 1st Battalion had taken. This was almost precisely the same moment that C-for-Charlie was beginning its attack against Hill 279, its fourth, which was defended by a platoonsized body of Japanese.

  It was a tough fight and, curiously enough, a boring one. For almost everybody. One man, however, it was not boring for, and this was Corporal Geoffrey Fife, newly of 2d Squad, 3d Platoon, because during it Fife killed his first Japanese.

  Most of them could not even remember how many hills they had captured and passed. Everything ran together in one long stumbling breathless rush of green leaves and ropy lianas interspersed with blazing sunshine on bare knobs and dustysmelling masses of kunai grass. Somewhere in the midst of this a night passed. Band, though he told no one, still meant to be in on the capture of Boola Boola (as even he was calling it, now) and he had pushed them so hard that by the time they occupied their third undefended hilltop the next morning they were more like seven hundred yards ahead of Baker instead of the proper two, and everybody including himself was in a stupor of exhaustion which could no longer be the whiskey they had gulped down at The Shrimp because that had long since been sweated out of them. Twice they had run out of water and had had to search off the trail with the map for the marked waterholes. It was at the second of these that Big Un Cash was killed by a light Nambu. So that, while they mightn’t remember the hills, nobody forgot that particular waterhole.

  It was located off the main trail on a little side trail which the Japanese had cleverly hidden by leaving a thick screen of undergrowth at its mouth between it and the big trail. They had to search for it until they began to doubt the map or else their own understanding of it. It was defended by five starving Japs with rifles and that one Nambu. This was between the second and third undefended hills, in the morning. Finally somebody stumbled blindly into the side trail. It led downhill into a deep hollow where a muddy stinking pool had been formed by springs. The jungle hid it forever from the sun. Green scum floated on its surface. In spite of that it looked good. Sgt Thorne’s squad of 2d Platoon was point squad at the time. Cash (who had been made Corporal after The Dancing Elephant and had requested 2d Platoon) had been assigned to Thorne’s squad as second in command. When Thorne’s squad took over from Dale’s, he had placed himself in front as point man and had been there since.

  The five Japanese had planned their defense cleverly, given their poor circumstances, and had hidden themselves and their little camp behind some downed trees directly across from the side trail so they could fire enfilade on it. They were obviously a suicide group, left behind to take with them in death as many Americans as they could get, but they got only Cash. He was perhaps ten yards in front of the second man as they came down to the pool. He fell forward on his face in the mud hit through the hips, crotch and lower groin by the first burst of fire. Everybody else scattered. Dale’s and Bell’s squads worked around to the right and left while two BAR men under Doll kept the Japanese pinned, and grenaded most of them. Two survivors who stood up were shot and fell into the pool. The two squads met in the center and assured themselves nobody was left. Then they came back for Cash. He was conscious and had managed to turn himself over and wipe some of the mud off his face.

  The two dead men bleeding pink, dissolving streams into the pool did not keep them from filling their canteens. It ran out into the muddy water from their bodies only a little way, and then swirling diluted itself into invisibility. “Everybody’s got to drink a little enemy blood in his lifetime some time or other,” Charlie Dale growled cheerfully, whereupon two men vomited, but filled their canteens nevertheless. “You can’t see it, but it’s there!” Dale sang. He was told to shut up by several men and the watergetting work went on, men standing around vigorously shaking their canteens up and down to dissolve the purifying pills, while the two medics did what they could for Cash.

  After filling their canteens, a small group explored the little Japanese camp for booty and discovered there the first evidence any of them had seen of cannibalism. They had all heard rumors, but this was no rumor. A dead Japanese man, who apparently had died from artilleryinflicted chest wounds, had been strung up from a branch by his heels and strips of flesh about two inches wide had been cut from his buttocks, lower back and thighs. Apparently they had carried him back this far from The Shrimp before he died, and then they had utilized him. The charred remains of the little campfire where they had cooked him was only a few feet away. All five of the other corpses were ragged, filthy dirty, near shoeless, and starved looking. They obviously had been given little or no rations to sustain them, and curiously enough nobody was very shocked or horrified by the cannibalism. In this mad jungle world of mud, perpetual wet, gloom, green air, stink, and slithering animal life, it seemed far more normal than not normal. Carrie Arbre poked at one of the evenly cut strip wounds with his bayonet and giggled. “He still looks pretty fresh.” “Maybe he was good,” Doll grinned. “Anybody want to try some?” somebody else said. When he heard about it, Brass Band came over to have a look with the new Exec, a longnosed, mean, and meanlooking, Italian 1st Lieutenant named Creo. Charlie Dale found two gold teeth in the head of one corpse. He was finding out that not nearly as many Japanese had gold teeth as he had been led to believe.

  The two medics had propped Cash up against the bole of a tree where he leaned his head back and kept both hands between his legs. Sgts Thorne and Bell had somehow gotten themselves tacitly designated to sit up with him. Thorne, of course, was his squad leader and should have been there. But John Bell never did figure out why the hell he should have been stuck with the job. Big Un was bleeding to death internally and they all knew it. It took him about fifteen minutes.

  “You guys write my old lady, will you?” he growled toughly, raising his head to look at them. “Don’t forget. I want her to know I died like a man.”

  “Sure, sure,” Thorne said. “But nobody’s gonna haf to write your old lady. You’ll come out of this. We got stretcherbearers with us, remember? Battalion Aid Station’s movin up all the time. They’ll have you back to the docs in no time.”

  Big Un had laid his head back against the trunk. “Bullshit,” he said. “Don’t bullshit me.” Then he said, “I’m cold.”

  The four men sat looking at him with the sweat streaming from them in rivulets. “There, there,” Bell said. “Just take it easy.”

  “You guys don’t forget to write my old lady I died like a man,” Big Un said. Then he sighed, first sign of the approaching breathlessness of massive hemorrhage. “You’d think there wouldn’t be any of them here, though, would you? When there wasn’t any on either one of them hills. What was it old Keck said? What a fucking recruit trick to pull.” He raised one arm to rub at his face with his sleeve. “This fuckin mud on my face,” he said. “This fuckin mud on my face.”

  Bell sacrificed his one remaining handkerchief and wet it in the pool to clean his face for him. This somehow seemed to make him feel better. “Just don’t forget to write my old lady I died like a man.”

  “Just take it easy,” Bell said. “Don’t talk like that. You’ll make it out of thi
s.”

  Big Un raised his head again. “Horse shit,” he said. “I’m bleedin to death inside.” He looked at one of the medics. “Ain’t I?”

  The medic nodded dumbly.

  “See? Maybe it’s just as good. I’m all shot up on the crock. What if I couldn’t fuck any more? Just don’t forget to write my old lady I died manly.”

  “Sure, sure,” Thorne said. “I’ll write her. Just take it easy.”

  When the breathlessness really hit him, they knew it wouldn’t be too long. “Christ, I’m cold!” he gasped. “Freezin!” The last thing he said, from somewhere down there inside the breathlessness, was, “Don’t—forget—write—oldlady—diedlike—aman.” He went on gasping for almost another full minute before he finally stopped.

  The four men stood up.

  “You going to write his wife?” Bell asked.

  “Fuck no!” Thorne said. “I don’t know his old lady. That’s the Compny Commander’s job, not mine. You out of your mind? I ain’t no good at writin letters.”

  “But you told him you would.” Bell looked back down at him who was no longer Big Un, no longer anything.

  “I tell them anything when they’re like that.”

  “Somebody ought to do it.”

  “Then you write her.”

  “I didn’t tell him I would.”

  Charlie Dale came over to them. “All over?” Thorne nodded. “Yeah.”

  A detail buried him at the edge of the main trail, and jammed his rifle in the ground with his helmet on it and one dogtag tied to the triggerguard. Nobody had a blanket to wrap him in, but it was better than leaving him to be eaten by rats or whatever it was lived in this undergrowth. Once they had covered his face and bare hands first, it wasn’t so hard to fill in the hole over the rest of him.