The Thin Red Line

by James Jones

  Train and Crown took the swaying Weld by the arms to lead him away.

  “Hey!” Fife called. “Hey! Don’t do that! Don’t go! Come on and let’s have a drink. No hard feelings!”

  From ten yards away Weld stopped and looked back at him. He was weeping and at the same time trying not to. “You—You—” he choked. He seemed to be searching his fuddled head for the very worst thing he could think of to call Fife. “You clerk, you!” he cried. He turned away, and the three of them went on.

  Fife stared after him, stricken, momentarily deeply touched by the strange appellation Weld had chosen to call him after searching so hard: clerk: the very thing he himself was. But he was also still proud of himself. “Okay,” he said, and shrugged elaborately. “So be a jerk.” He turned to the two cooks who had already backed off away from the whole thing. “Either one of you guys want some of it?” he grinned. Both of them, though they were both bigger than Fife, shook their heads in silence.

  He walked back down with Doll, his old combat buddy who had, however, only come up for the last few moments of the fight. Around them the men were beginning to disperse now that it was over. But only moments later there were more cries of “Fight! Hey, fight!” from some other direction, and they all began to run that way. Fife and Doll did not go with them, Fife because he had already been a principal and was sated for the moment, Doll because of whatever private reasons of his own. They walked on back toward their grassy spot through the moonlit groves, Fife rubbing his bruised hands, Doll congratulating him. Fife, who was preoccupied with himself at the moment, did not notice the strange pained look on Doll’s face, or the odd strained way he spoke. If he had, he would never have guessed the reason. Doll had only just learned—only a few minutes before—that at least one man in C-for-Charlie believed he Don Doll was an active, practicing homosexual. A real fairy.

  The man was Carrie Arbre.

  When Fife had gotten up and so abruptly walked away, several of the little group had noticed it and somebody had said that Fife looked like he was looking for action. When the cries of “Fight! Fight!” began to come from up by the Hq tent, one of Fife’s new squad had chortled “I bet that’s Fife!” and they all jumped up and started up there. Doll however had stayed behind. So had Carrie Arbre, and Doll had suddenly felt his heart pounding excitedly. Just the two of them.

  “Ain’t you goin’ up to watch the fight, Carrie?” he said.

  “I never cared much for watchin fist fights,” Arbre said in his soft drawl. “But ain’t you goin’?”

  “I’m too tired. And too comfterble,” Doll said, trying to keep the blood pounding in his throat from making him sound choked. He settled himself more against the tree. Arbre was lying stretched out on his elbow only two feet away on his right. Doll was very aware of his nearness.

  A strange thing had happened to Doll during the fighting for Boola Boola. He had discovered, to his intense surprise, that he wanted to make love—make physical love—to Carrie Arbre. It had been early in the attack, when they were still probing to find a way in through the two defense lines in the coconut groves, and at the time when they were still taking a lot of heavy mortar. Doll had crawled back from his squad to where Band, Beck and Lt Tomms were conferring, to find out what was going on. He had started to crawl back up to the squad, and was almost there, when the searching of the mortars passed their way again. He lay, sweating, and pressed himself as close to the ground as he could get. It was unbelievable, the intensity of concentration with which his ears listened in all the racket for that faint, twoseconds’long, fluttering shu-shu-shu which marked the near ones. Twice he was bounced around by close ones. Eyes open, he lay gritting his teeth and trying to make his mind blank. Ten yards in front of him behind the crest of a tiny rise which ran across through the flatness of the groves he could see Arbre doing the same thing, and with some of that same intensity of concentration with which his ears listened for the mortars his eyes concentrated themselves upon that beautiful ass. That beautiful girl’s ass. Sweating blood, or feeling as if he were, he lay and stared at it until it became his own, his possession. And he knew from some heretofore unreached depth within himself that he wanted to make love to it—physical, gentle, fondling, sexual love. Finally the still searching mortars passed on, but what had happened to Doll did not pass on with them.

  And after all, why couldn’t he? He knew lots of oldtimer regulars who had their punks, their “boys”, back in peacetime. He could do a lot for Arbre. Protect him from the worst missions. Get him made Corporal of the squad finally. Get him a squad sergeantcy even, if he ever got the platoon himself. And what about the Navy? They didn’t call candy “pogeybait” for nothing. If he wanted to pogey Arbre and look after and adopt him, that didn’t make him homosexual. It only made Arbre homosexual, if he accepted it—as Doll was certain Arbre would accept it. Why else had Arbre talked to him so strangely that time going up The Shrimp’s Head? Arbre was offering to make a deal. Crawling on back up to the squad after the mortar passed, Doll remembered again deliciously that time when he had accidentally fallen on Arbre’s back, back there on The Sea Slug ridge.

  And he remembered it again now, sprawled back against the coconut tree in the gossamer moonlight, with Arbre only two feet away from him.

  It wouldn’t make him queer, it would only make Arbre queer. Which was all right with Doll, he didn’t mind that, he was liberal. What Doll wanted was a relationship. There were lots of queer Cooks and Bakers and such, coke sackers, sock tuckers, and cork soakers, all around on the island, and everybody knew about them. But you had to stand in line. It was like standing in line out on the street for those upstairs whorehouses in Honolulu when the Division had passed through. And Doll didn’t want that. He wanted a girl of his own.

  Cautiously, after taking a big bolstering drink, his right hand set the bottle down and came to rest by accident on Arbre’s ankle. Trying to control his heavy breathing, he waited. Arbre didn’t move, or say anything.

  “Sure is one hell of a beautiful night out,” Doll said, a little hoarsely.

  “Sure is,” Arbre said in his sweet, girl’s voice. Doll suddenly loved him. He really did need somebody to look after him and take care of him, the poor kid.

  Suddenly, by its own volition and without him knowing it, Doll realized his hand had worked its way up Arbre’s pantsleg along his hairless shin to his hairless knee. He let it stay there.

  “Be a great night for lovemakin,” he said chokingly. “Back home.”

  “Sure would,” Arbre said sweetly. Then suddenly he moved. His hands came down from behind his head to his crotch and began unbuttoning his fly. “Come on,” he said.

  Doll was aghast. Arbre had misinterpreted everything. He was reasonably sure Arbre could not see his face, but he himself could feel it from inside and knew it had frozen itself into a sickly look. It was a couple of seconds before he could force it into a stiff smile. He snatched his hand back as if it had been burned by something.

  Arbre was going ahead with what he was doing. “Come on,” he said softly. “Come on. I won’t tell.”

  Doll forced himself to laugh, loudly, and got up.

  “Ah, come on,” Arbre said. “Look at it. I know what you want. I promise I’ll never tell a soul.”

  “Listen. Don’t forget I’m still in charge of this squad,” Doll growled in a low, truly murderous tone. “Watch your step.” Then, in a much more normal tone, too normal under the circumstances, he felt, he said, “I think I’ll go and see how that fight up there’s makin out.”

  Arbre didn’t answer him. Maybe he was just catching on to what Doll had really intended. “Why, you son of a bitch!” Arbre said, after a moment. Doll heard it but he was already gone. Let the bastard sit on it, he thought furiously. His whole head was suffused in such a rosy red blush that it must look black in the moonlight, he thought. And so that was what Arbre meant by his ambiguous remarks up on The Shrimp’s Head! He thought that Doll wanted to—And that Doll would make h
im Corporal and take—God! Doll thought painfully, how could anybody think that about—

  And walking back down with Fife after the fight he blushed deeply again, thinking about it. No wonder his voice sounded strained. When they arrived back at the grassy spot, Arbre was still there. “Hello, Carrie,” he said in a flat, cold voice. “Hi, Doll,” Arbre answered in the same tone. “You should of seen the fight,” Doll said airily. And then they all sat down to do some more serious drinking, Doll perhaps doing the most serious drinking of them all.

  But if Doll was doing the most serious drinking at that particular moment, there were others who did as much or more during the rest of the night and the drunken day that followed. And when the whiskey ran out at four the next afternoon, there was real consternation everywhere. There was not a single piece of loot from Boola Boola to trade to the Air Corps for more.

  When Band was relieved a day and a half later, the liquor problem still had not been solved and it concerned the company much more than Band’s removal. A number of solutions had been put forward, most of them in desperation: silent theft in the night; armed robbery of the Air Corps at open gunpoint; the trading off of Governmentowned company equipment such as weapons and stoves and blankets; a companyrun cartel which would supply the raw materials to and collect the finished product from certain Kentucky and Tennessee personnel of the outfit who knew how to make moonshine from back home. None of these were really feasible. Night theft simply would not supply enough; armed robbery and the trading of company equipment would certainly eventually get everybody caught. And moonshine was out because not only were the raw grains impossible to come by, the steel “worms” so necessary to Kentucky or Tennessee distillation of spirits could not be located and stolen anywhere on the island. When the longnosed, mean, and meanlooking Italian Exec and new temporary Company Commander Johnny Creo made a speech about how he was going to tighten this outfit up and the things that had been going on in it were going to cease, nobody paid the slightest attention. They had a more serious problem and anyway, everyone knew that nobody as green and inexperienced as Johnny Creo was going to stay in command of their company very long.

  Nobody really knew, or cared, what The Glory Hunter’s sentence was, or how it was arrived at and brought about. Actually, it was the Regimental Commander himself, The Great White Father, who gave Band the Word, not Col Spine the Battalion Commander as had been the case with Jim Stein and Tall. Band could not help feeling that that was at least a step up.

  He marched into the whitehaired old drunkard’s presence in good order, at a solid one twenty per with his glasses and their steel rims gleaming. He wore a clean uniform and his shoes and bars were shined. Band did not know how he knew, but he did. There was always gossip, and you could always read things in the faces of your equals around the mess or the club. He was convinced in his own mind that everything he had done was right and proper and valid, that he had in fact—rather than making any mistakes—contributed strongly to the success of the whole operation after The Giant Shrimp’s Head. What his men might think was one thing, they didn’t have the overall view. This was different.

  The old Colonel hummed and hawed. Rumor also had it that he was making Brigadier soon, on the strength of this campaign. The handsome, distinguishedlooking Col Spine was there. So was full Colonel Grubbe the Regimental Exec, a New Englander from Newport who bore a startling resemblance to the longpickle-nosed, mean, and meanlooking Johnny Creo, C-for-Charlie’s Exec. So were the other Battalion Commanders there. But it was Old Whitehair who did the talking.

  The upshot of what he had to say was that Band had committed two serious faults, the two of them together serious enough to have set the campaign for Guadalcanal back by a whole week, maybe more. One was his continued radio silence, his what Old Whitehair could only deem deliberate and persistent refusal to contact his Headquarters. This was inexcusable. The second was a fault of grand tactics, for which he could hardly be held responsible; but he should have turned left coming out of the jungle. He should have ignored Boola Boola, which was Item Company’s job, and swung left up the coast in an effort to roll up the Jap line which at that particular moment was up in the air and totally confused. Had he done so, Baker and Able would have followed him, and the other companies pressing over the Hill 279 trail would have followed them, to form a line in real strength. Had that happened, they might now have Kokumbona and Tassafaronga in their hands, together with the entire Japanese Army on Guadalcanal. Had Band maintained his proper radio contact he would have been informed of this. Both Battalion and Regiment had tried and tried to call him all that morning for this very reason.

  Band took it like a man. He recognized that almost everything the whitehaired old drunkard said was absolutely true, drunkard or not. But there were bigger minds than his behind this tactical strategy. He did not point out that, since they were in contact with Baker Company by walkietalkie, they might have ordered Baker to swing left, leaving him—however erroneously—in Boola Boola. He contented himself with saying only that he had been told he was functioning as an independent command. Independent command!

  “Ah!” the old Colonel smiled through stained teeth, pouncing like a falcon. “Yes! Yes! ‘When communication was impossible’, I think my phrase was. In your case communication was not only possible, it was easy. No excuse. There’s no excuse.”

  The verdict was that he should be taken hence, delivered to another company in another regiment, and remain there till dead. He would not go as a Company Commander. Would he remain an Executive Officer? or would he be demoted to a platoon? No, he would remain as Company Exec. But he must not, the old man said, uhh, expect any promotion through attrition—or for any other reason. There would be an eye on him there certainly, watching him. There would be no official disgrace. But war was teamwork, Old Whitehair said, softly pounding his fist in his other palm. Teamwork, teamwork, teamwork. Any Army was a team. A regiment was a team. A company, platoon, squad—all were teams. No one single man had a right to do anything. Not in war. Team, team, team! Too many lives depended upon every point. He need not go back to his outfit. His things were already being packed for him by his former orderly on orders from Lt Creo the new temporary Commander. And so George Band, too, passed from the life of C-for-Charlie, and was never seen or heard of again. As he saluted, withdrew, and walked across the mud of the Regimental area erect and undestroyed, he was absolutely certain that he had done nothing wrong, not one single, solitary thing, since taking command of the company and his conscience did not bother him. It was ironic he felt that had he done as Old Whitehair wanted and turned left, the casualties among his troops who so misunderstood and disliked him would have been 50% higher.

  Meanwhile back at the bivouac C-for-Charlie was still trying desperately to solve its liquor shortage. Liquor, as almost all of C-for-Charlie saw it, was their only hope. Slowly as each day passed the hectic situation of the Regiment which pertained when they were relieved was becoming more organized, more clarified, more controlled. Work detail rosters were already beginning to come in, curtailing the free time available to search for a large and easily accessible source of alcohol. Soon training schedules, drill periods, and physical fitness schedules would be coming in also, curtailing it even further. It was becoming a vicious circle. And nobody could come up with a source of alcohol. The infrequent shipments of Aqua Velva at the PX simply would not provide enough. Nobody had enough cash money left now to buy more than one or two Imperial quarts at the most. Only Mad Welsh, grinning sardonically, was able to carry on, continue tapping his private, secret source for gin. And not only did they have all of this to plague them, they now found that the combat numbness was beginning to leave them, and as it did they became afraid of the air raids again.

  John Bell calculated that this time it took the average man more than six full days to lose the combat numbness—as against the two days required after The Dancing Elephant. In reality this campaign, though longer, was not nearly as tough in eit
her fire power or casualties as The Dancing Elephant. Bell could only conclude that the thing was cumulative. Cumulative or not, as it left them the air raids began to scare them again. Actually, the air raids were not nearly as dangerous now; and they themselves were in a much better position now than they had ever had. North of the Matanikau here, they were more than two miles from the air field.

  It didn’t make any difference. And anyway, the Japanese were executing more nuisance personnel raids now than they were attacks against the air strip, and were liable to drop their loads anywhere along the island.

  Not one single man in C-for-Charlie had believed he would ever again be afraid of these puny air raids once he got back off the line, but when a man in a nearby company had his jaw taken off as he lay on his bunk by an unexploded dud antiaircraft shell, a number of men in C-for-Charlie rather shamefacedly began to dig themselves slit trenches outside their tents. To be killed in one of these silly, asinine air raids after all the combat they had lived through? It was an ironic flick of God which no one could face. Soon they would be back in the dull, mudhaunted, airraidfear-ridden routine of life they had lived before—B.C., as some wit said: Before Combat. A source of liquor simply had to be found. Then one morning at Reveille Pfc Nellie Coombs the sharpy card dealer fell down twice, dead drunk.

  When the same thing happened two more days in a row, a group of vigilantes was formed among the noncoms to shadow him to his source. This proved to be an old cracker tin covered with a cheesecloth, sitting in a sunny place in the tongue of jungle near the bivouac and surrounded by buzzing millions of insects. Nellie, like many of the other oldtimer regulars, had served in both the Philippines and Hawaii before the war, when a private’s pay could afford only the homemade bootleg mess made by the natives out of fruit and called ‘swipe’. He had utilized this knowledge to steal some gallon cans of cherries and peaches and put it up with yeast, sugar and water to ferment in the sun. The scout shadowing him, who happened to be Sgt Beck, came back drunk to report that the stuff tasted awful but it certainly was potent. Wow! Why Nellie Coombs had decided to keep his treasure find completely to himself nobody knew. It was just his secretive way. But immediately raids were organized to steal tins of crackers and cans of fruit from the ration dumps, which were simply loaded with them. Finally a true source had been found! A source that would never run out. Balance had been achieved, and at last they could sit out again at night drinking, and laugh drunkenly at the air raids.