The Thin Red Line (17 page)

“Yes, well,” he said. He shifted on the log. “Well, you know, I think maybe he’s changed some, Witt. Since we got here.” He did not really believe this.

“That son of a bitch ain’t never going to change. Not in no way,” Witt stated.

Fife believed he was right. Anyway, he could never argue with statements. “Well, I tell you. It just won’t be the same old company, Witt,” he explained. “Going up there without you in it. It just won’t, that’s all. I wish you were goin’ with us.” He fidgeted on the log. “And I guess that’s why I said that.” He essayed a pleasantry he did not entirely feel. “How’s the old shootin’ arm?” Witt was a crack shot.

Witt ignored the compliment. “Fife, I tell you. When I think of old C-for-Charlie goin’ up there into them Japs without me, it like to breaks my heart. I mean it.” His eyes became all right again as he leaned forward to talk seriously. “I been in this compny—what now?—four years. You know how I feel about this compny. Everybody does. It’s my compny. It ain’t right, that’s all. It ain’t. Why, who knows how many of the guys, how many of my old buddies, I might save if I was there. I belong with the compny, Fife, old buddy.” Suddenly he slumped back on the log, his say said, his face morose. “And I don’t know what I can do about it. In fact, there ain’t a fucking damn thing I can do.”

“Well,” Fife said cautiously, “I think if you went around to Stein and told him how you feel, he’d arrange a transfer back for you. Old Bugger knows how good a soldier you are. It never was a question of that. And right now he’s feeling pretty warm and sentimental about the compny, you know, leading them into combat and all.”

Witt was leaning forward again, his eyes shy and warm as he listened eagerly. But when Fife stopped he sat up straight and his face stiffened again.

“I cain’t do that,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because I cain’t. And you know it.”

“I honestly think he’ll take you back,” Fife hazarded, cautiously.

Witt’s face darkened, and undischarged lightnings flickered in his eyeballs. “Take me back! Take me back! They never should of made me go! It’s their fault, it ain’t mine!” The storm receded, passing away inward. But the cloud, sullen and dark, remained. “No. I cain’t do that. I won’t go to them and beg them.”

Fife was irritated now, as well as uncomfortable. Witt had a habit of making you feel that way—without ever meaning to, of course. “Well—” he began.

Witt interrupted. “—But I want you to know how much I appreciate you tryin to help.” He smiled warmly.

“Yeh.”

“I mean it,” Witt said urgently.

“I know you do.” There was always this fear of disagreeing with Witt, for fear you might make him mad. “What I was about to say was this. Just how bad do you want to get back into the compny?”

“You know how bad.”

“Well, the only way you’re going to do it is to go to Stein and ask him.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“Well, God damn it,” Fife shouted, “that’s the only way you’ll ever get back in! And you might as well face it!”

“Well, then I guess I just won’t get back in!” Witt shouted back.

Fife was tired of it. Here it was the first time he had seen him in months. Also, he could not help thinking about his own encounter with Welsh, and of the seven departing raiders. But mostly it was just general irritation.

“Then I guess you’ll just have to stay out, won’t you?” he said, thinly and in a provoking way.

“I guess I will,” Witt said, glowering.

Fife stared at him. Witt was not looking at him, but was staring moodily at the ground. Somberly, he cracked his knuckles one by one.

“I tell you it ain’t fair,” Witt said looking up. “It ain’t fair, and it ain’t square. Any way you look at it. It ain’t justice. It’s a traversty of justice.”

“It’s travesty,” Fife said precisely. He knew how careful Witt was of his words. Witt was very self-conscious about his vocabulary, having taught it to himself by working crosswords. But Fife was irritated. “Tra-ves-ty,” he repeated, as if teaching a child.

“What?” Witt was staring at him disbelievingly. He had been still thinking about his martyrdom.

“I said you pronounce it tra-ves-ty.” Anyway, he had an ace in his sleeve. He knew Witt would not hit him. Witt would not hit a friend without giving him one free warning. It was against his goddamned, stupid Kentucky code.

But if he did not expect to get hit, Fife was astonished by the reaction he did get.

Witt was staring at him as if he had never seen him before. The storm cloud with its flickers of impending electrical discharge had come back on his face.

“Take off!” he barked.

Now it was Fife’s turn to ask: “What?”

“I said take off! Leave! Get out! Go away from here!”

“Shit. I got as much right here as you have,” Fife said, still startled.

Witt did not move. But it was more ominous than if he had. Calm murderousness flamed in his face. “Fife, I never hit a friend before in my life. Not without givin them fair warnin they ain’t friends no more. I don’t want to start now, either. But I will. If you don’t take off right now and go, I’ll beat the livin hell out of you.”

Fife attempted to protest. “But what the hell kind of talk is that? What the hell did I do?”

“Just go. Don’t talk. You and me ain’t friends any more. I don’t want to talk to you, I don’t want to see you. If you even try to talk to me after this, I’ll knock you down. Without a word.”

Fife got up from the log, still startled and stunned, still confused. “But, Christ, for God’s sake. I was only kidding with you. I only—”

“Take off!”

“Okay, I’ll go. I don’t stand a chance with you in a fight and you know it. Even if I am bigger than you.”

“That’s tough. But that’s life,” Witt said. “I said, go!”

“I’m going. But you’re crazy, for God’s sake. I was kidding you a little.” He walked off a few steps. He could not quite make up his mind whether he was being cowardly or not, whether it was more manly to go back and stand on pride and get beaten up. After a few more steps he stopped and turned back. “Just remember the only way you’ll ever get back in the compny is like I told you.”

“Take off!”

Fife did. He was still unsure whether he was acting cowardly or not. He thought maybe he was. He felt guilty about that. He felt guilty about something else, too, terribly guilty, though he could not say exactly what it was. He was willing to accept that Witt was right and that he had done something terribly mean, vicious and insulting, something destructive to Witt’s manhood. At any rate, he felt as he had when he was a child and had done something he knew was terribly wrong. General guilt loomed over him like a mustardcolored cloud. Halfway to the camp he stopped again and looked back. Witt was still sitting on the downed coconut tree log.

“Go on! Beat it!”

The words came to Fife faintly. He went on. At the door of the orderly tent he stopped and looked back again. Witt was gone, nowhere to be seen.

Now he had lost his other friend, as well as Bell—to whom he must have done something also, although despite his guilt for that too, he could not figure out what it was. Two real friends, Fife thought, out of all these guys—and now he had lost them both. At a time like this. All he had left now was Welsh. And that was something, wasn’t it?

He brooded about it, about Witt, trying to construct in his mind other ways it might have ended, for several days—every day, in fact, up to the day that he sat outside the tent on a watercan and looked across the strapped-down windshield at Stein and his driver, and knew what they were coming back to say. And it was essentially a friendless Fife who watched them clamber out and come toward him—which was no way to be to receive the news they brought.

“Corporal Fife,” Stein said briskly. He was being formal, official and efficient today. As well he might be, Fife thought, considering the news.

“Yes, sir?” Fife tried to make his voice smooth and unshaky.

“I want every officer and platoon grade noncom who isn’t out on a detail here in five minutes. Get them all. Don’t miss anybody. Get Bead. Send him around too.” Stein paused and took a breath down into his chest deeply. “We’re moving out, Fife. We’re moving out for the line. We leave this time tomorrow. In twenty-four hours.”

Behind him the driver was nodding his head at Fife vigorously in a nervous, or perhaps sad confirmation.

CHAPTER 3

A
LONG THE ROUTE
of march the arteries of runny mud were clotted with stalled trucks. All faced in the direction of the march. Sometimes two or three or four were lined up one behind the other. Most were abandoned, sitting silent in the mud, waiting for the big tractors to come haul them out. Now and then there was one which had a knot of men around it who still struggled with it hopelessly, swarming kneedeep in the black soup. All of them were loaded with either the wirebound cases of C ration, three-handled jerrycans of water or brown chests of small-arms ammo, cases of grenades, or the clusters of black cardboard tubes containing mortar shells. Obviously supply by the big trucks was failing, or had failed.

The foot marchers picked their way over drying mud rolls and mosquito-laden hummocks along the edges. The stalled trucks were no problem to them. Loaded down with full packs and extra bandoliers, they couldn’t have waded out to them if they had tried. Each company marched in a ragged single file, strung out to its fullest length, at one place bunched up to the point of having to stand still, at another spread out so that the gasping men must run to catch up. In the heavy sun the heat and humidity bore down on them, leaving them sweatdrenched, with stinging eyes, and gasping for air where there seemed only to be moisture.

In some ways it was not unlike a gala, allout, holiday parade. As far as the eye could see in both directions the two lines of overladen overheated greenclad men picked and stumbled their way along the edges of the river of mud. A Fourth of July excitement spread electric tentacles everywhere. Working parties, when they paused to ease their muscles, looked always toward the road. Men with nothing to do came out from their bivouacs to watch, and stood in clusters in the edge of the coconut trees, talking. Only a very few, possessors of more brass than the majority of men, ventured out to stare more closely. These marked the individual faces of the gasping marchers, as if wanting to memorize them. But except for the ghouls there was a curious respectfulness.

Occasionally, rarely, some watcher would call out an encouragement. His answer, if he got any at all, would be a half wave of a hand, or a quick dark look and a forced grin. The marchers needed every spark of concentration they possessed simply to keep going. Any thoughts beyond that remained their own. After an hour’s marching, even such private thoughts were displaced. The infantry forgot where it was going in the urgent immediate problem of getting there, of keeping going without dropping out.

Not all solved it. Slowly a new line was forming on each side, between the watchers and the road. Suddenly a marching man would turn aside and step out of line and sit or fall down. Others simply fainted. These were generally dragged aside by the men behind them. Sometimes the already exhausted pulled them over.

Almost always all of this was done in silence. Once in a while some still-marching man might call out hopefully to a beaten friend. But that was all. The watchers in the halfshade of the trees did not offer to help. And the stricken themselves seemed to prefer it that way. Few even attempted to crawl into the shade. They simply sat, dulleyed and lolling back in their packs as if sitting in armchairs; or lay in their packs on their sides facedown; or, if they were able to shuck out of their packs, stretched flat on their backs with fluttering eyelids.

C-for-Charlie Company’s march was one of seven and a half miles. At eleven in the morning, with a last look back at the slit trenches, kitchen fly and tied-down storage tents which served them as home, they moved out for the road edge to await a gap in the stream of moving men. They arrived at their assigned guide point at seven-thirty and nearly dusk, half dead, and by eight were encamped there in the jungle beside the road. Over forty-five percent of them had fallen out; and the last of the stragglers, heat prostrations and breakfast vomiters did not cease coming in till after midnight.

It was an incredible march. No one in C-for-Charlie, including the old timers who had hiked in Panama and the Philippines, had ever experienced anything like it. Early in the morning Bugger Stein had had hopes—had dreamed—of bringing his company in full strength without a man missing; of being able to go up to the battalion commander and report to him that he for one was all present and accounted for. When the head of the column, with Stein still shakily in the lead, turned in off the road, Stein could only laugh at himself bitterly.

Tired and shaky and still sweating after checking the platoon areas, he walked alone along the road to the battalion CP further up ahead nearer the river, to report.

He had had a strange hystericky encounter with his clerk Fife on the march. It had upset Stein, then had made him hotly furious with injured ego. Now it colored his blue mood as he walked along the road in the gathering twilight. The whole thing was strange. To take eight and a half hours to march seven and a half miles was strange enough. Add to that the terrain and it was stranger still: that march through the coconut groves with those people standing around watching like a bunch of frustrated gravediggers: after that striking the Trail and marching inland always between two crowding, gloomgreen, bird-chattering walls of jungle. They had been marching almost six hours by then, and everyone was near-hysterical. At the front of the column four of the cook force had already fallen out, and two of the company headquarters: little Bead and a new man, a draftee named Weld who because of his age had been attached to the headquarters group as a sort of combination runner and assistant clerk. All these were somewhere behind. Overhead, birds squawked or made piercing, ironic whistles which seemed specifically directed at the marchers.

Fife had been complaining for some time in a gasping, painful, wildly emotional voice that he didn’t think he could go on. Then, after a ten break, he had not gotten up right away with the rest. Stein had turned to him thinking to help, to encourage.