The Thin Red Line (25 page)

It was established later that he was a 2d Battalion man who had been killed yesterday but who had not been found until just now because he had fallen a few feet over the crest. D Company had found him while pursuing the Japanese patrol and had placed him on the ledge behind C-for-Charlie for safekeeping at a time when C-for-Charlie was too engrossed in its firing to notice. In the meantime, here he was. The flush of excited talking and laughter had all died quietly away. Angry frowns began to appear. There was muttering. C-for-Charlie did not feel they had done anything to deserve him, and they resented his being palmed off on them. Several men who cautiously approached to within six or seven yards of him returned to say that he smelled. Not strongly yet perhaps, but enough to be upsetting. Soon cries were heard: “Medic! Medic!” “Where the hell’s the goddam medics!” “Tell the medics to get that stiff out of here!” Everyone was indignant.

They came for him. Whether or not C-for-Charlie’s griping was the cause, they came for him. Two harassed-looking men climbed up from below carrying a folded stretcher. They were obviously tired and looked very short-tempered. Seizing him by a stiffened arm and leg as if they were handles, they deposited him on their stretcher on his back; but when they tried to lift it, he threatened to roll off. They put it down and turned him on his side. This time when they lifted he did roll off. The men dropped the stretcher and putting their hands on their hips, stared at each other with the air of men who have had about all they can support. Then, bending and seizing him by the handles of his arms and legs, they moved off with him that way, angling down the steep slope, one of them dragging the stretcher by a strap. They had said not one word to anyone.

C-for-Charlie had watched all this action wide-eyed and with sheepish faces. They could not help feeling the two men were a little irreverent in their treatment of this newly dead man; at the same time, they were aware that their own reaction smacked of irreverence too.
No
body wanted the poor bastard, now. Well, whatever he had accomplished for 2d Battalion in the last moments of his life, which apparently was not much, he had certainly accomplished something after his death. He had solidly and effectively put the quietus to C-for-Charlie’s short-lived mood of high, laughing confidence.

It was now after two-thirty. While these experiences were occupying C-for-Charlie’s attention, the battle round the bend which they could hear but not see had continued unabated. Now for the first time whole groups began to return from it. The attack had failed. Running, they would drop gasping over the crest and lie breathing in hysterical sobs with eyes like drilled holes dark in their outraged, furious, unbelieving faces. More and more groups kept coming in, haphazard, piecemeal, rarely even with their own squads. Everything was going to hell, they gasped. C-for-Charlie was close enough now to The Elephant’s Shoulder, where the main ridge turned and angled down to the forelegs and barrel, that as more and more men returned and spilled out along the interior slope, some of them spread over into C-for-Charlie’s area. A few even came dashing in through the extreme right of their line, hollering to them not to shoot, for God’s sake don’t shoot. Once inside they simply collapsed. One boy, sitting in a row of five or six, wept openly like a child, his forehead and hand resting on the shoulder of the man next to him, who patted him absently while staring straight ahead at nothing with smoldering eyes. None of them knew what the overall situation was, or had any idea of what was taking place anywhere except where they themselves had been. C-for-Charlie, feeling shamefaced, watched them quietly with a wide-eyed, awed hero worship, which no one could honestly say he wanted to lose, if it entailed—as it would—sharing their experiences.

What they themselves felt was illustrated by an incident most of C-for-Charlie witnessed. It was not an intellectual reaction, nor could it honestly be called the reaction of a student of war. The division commander had been observing the day’s fighting from the crest of Hill 209. Of course his career was involved in this offensive. When the groups began returning pellmell and shaken, he strode among them smiling and talking, trying to bolster them. “We’re not gonna let these Japs whip us, are we, boys? Hunh? They’re tough, but they’re not as tough as we are, are they?” One boy, young enough to be the general’s son, if not his grandson, looked up at him from where he sat with distended eyes. “General, you go out there! You go out there, general, you go out there!” The general smiled at him, pityingly, and walked on. The boy did not even look after him.

Half way down the main ridge the battalion aid station was filled to overflowing with more wounded than the three doctors could take care of, and more were still coming in. Along the rearward slopes of the basin leading to Hill 206, where just since yesterday the jeep road had been extended forward, jeeps were coming as far out onto the steep slope as they dared to pick up the hand-carried litter cases, and red-and-white-splashed walking wounded tottered rearward in groups, trying to help each other.

Finally the correlated news reached C-for-Charlie, as well as the other companies. The plan had called for two companies to attack abreast after artillery preparation. Fox and George, the workhorses of yesterday, were given the dirtiest work. They were to assault Hill 210, on the left. E-for-Easy was to attack right, into the area of the Elephant’s Forelegs labeled Hill 214. Beyond Hill 209 on the left the short, fat Elephant’s Neck rose slowly to the eminence of Hill 210, a U shaped ridge with its open end toward the attackers; to go up there was like walking down a bowling alley toward the bowlers, and before the battle was over that was what it came to be called: The Bowling Alley. This area, as well as the couple of hundred yards of open ground immediately in front, was cut by numerous low ridges and hills which might afford protection to attacking troops. On the right, divided from The Elephant’s Head by a low-lying salient of jungle, the broader, lower, more level area of The Elephant’s Forelegs spread itself. This was the terrain, still as yet never seen by C-for-Charlie, which 2d Battalion had had to attack.

Everything had begun to go wrong almost immediately. First of all there was very little water, hardly half a canteen per man. Fox had led off, followed by George, who were to come abreast of them later for the assault up both sides of The Bowling Alley. But almost at once Fox was caught in a narrow impasse between two of the preliminary ridges. Heavy fire from in front stopped them. Jammed in the narrow space they were hit repeatedly by mortars which apparently had the ranges all taped out. When they tried to maneuver and work out of it, heavy flanking machinegun fire from hidden emplacements forced them back. George, immediately behind them, could do nothing either and suffered their own mortar casualties. The two companies had remained there through most of the morning and through the early afternoon. Fox Co’s commander was hit by mortar fire around twelve-thirty and was evacuated, but died on the way back to Regiment’s aid station. Squeezed in together under the hot tropic sun and the heavy fire many men, still exhausted from yesterday and waterless today, passed out. When the battalion commander gave the order to retreat, the two companies had broken in rout and returned in bunches.

E-for-Easy’s attack was likewise a failure. The lead platoon, moving out onto the broader, but flatter area of The Elephant’s Forelegs, had been caught in a withering crossfire from the jungle on its right and left. Easy’s commander, trying to send up an attached machinegun platoon from H, had them almost annihilated. And after that the rest of the company did not try to move and remained just a few yards in front of the crest of Hill 209.

That was the story. By three-thirty all those who were able had returned. Medical parties, at considerable risk, were searching out the others. There was no dictated bulletin that night by the regimental commander. Casualties for the day were 34 killed and 102 wounded. Speculations as to why, with this holocaust, today’s casualties were only slightly higher than yesterday’s, were left without any answer. The only reasonable thing to say was that yesterday there had been more hours of actual fighting. But more important than all of this news was the news that the regimental commander had ordered the exhausted 2d Battalion back to Hills 207 and 208 into regimental reserve. This meant that tomorrow 1st Battalion would take over the attack. The battalion from the division’s reserve regiment on their left would then, undoubtedly, take over their lines on Hill 209.

This was exactly what happened, and their orders reached them soon enough. There had existed a remote possibility that the regimental commander might order the battalion of the division reserve to make the attack, and C-for-Charlie clung to this hopefully, but nobody really believed it. Their orders, which reached them around six o’clock, confirmed their wisdom.

Colonel Tall’s plan was not radically different from the 2d Battalion’s colonel. Two companies would attack abreast; C-for-Charlie would be on the left and would capture The Elephant’s Head, Hill 210, and A-for-Able on the right would move into The Elephant’s Forelegs, Hill 214, and hook up there with the 3d Battalion who were encountering less resistance. Baker would be in reserve behind Charlie. The plan was really no different from today’s. The only difference was that tomorrow there would be water and whatever casualties 2d Battalion may have inflicted today, if any.

C-for-Charlie had drawn the worst assignment: the Bowling Alley. They believed the drawing of the worst assignment to be their perpetual destiny. And that evening when a company of the divisional reserve battalion moved in to take over their slit trenches so that they might rest up for tomorrow, C-for-Charlie received them without friendship. They came smiling and talking, filled with flattering hero worship and eager to please, because they believed C-for-Charlie to be veterans and themselves green; and C-for-Charlie treated them to the same morose silences which yesterday morning they themselves had received from E-for-Easy going up to attack.

But some time before any of this had happened, young Pfc Bead had killed his first Japanese, the first Japanese to be killed by his company, or for that matter by his battalion.

It was, Bead reflected about it later, when indeed he was able to think about it at all, which was not for some time, typical of his entire life; of his stupid incompetence, his foolish idiocy, his gross mismanagement of everything he put his hands on; so that whatever he did, done so badly and in such ugly style, gave no satisfaction: action without honor, travail without grace. A man of a different temperament might have found it funny; Bead could not laugh.

At just about five o’clock he had had to take a crap. And he had not had a crap for two days. Everything had quieted down on the line by five and at the aid station below them the last of the wounded were being cared for and sent back. Bead had seen other men taking craps along the slope, and he knew the procedure. After two days on these slopes the procedure was practically standardized. Because every available bit of level space was occupied, jammed with men and equipment, crapping was relegated to the steeper slopes. Here the process was to take along an entrenching shovel and dig a little hole, then turn your backside to the winds of the open air and squat, balancing yourself precariously on your toes, supporting yourself on the dirt or rocks in front of you with your hands. The effect, because of the men below in the basin, was rather like hanging your ass out of a tenth floor window above a crowded street. It was an embarrassing position to say the least, and the men below were not above taking advantage of it with catcalls, whistles or loud soulful sighs.

Bead was shy. He could have done it that way if he’d had to, but because he was shy, and because now everything had quieted down to an unbelievable evening peace after the terror, noise and danger of the afternoon, he decided to have himself a pleasant, quiet, private crap in keeping with the peacefulness. Without saying anything to anyone he dropped all of his equipment by his hole and taking only his GI roll of toilet paper, he started to climb the twenty yards to the crest. He did not even take an entrenching tool because on the other side there was no need to bury his stool.

Beyond the crest he knew that the slope did not drop precipitously as it did further to the left, but fell slowly for perhaps fifty yards through the trees before it plunged in a bluff straight down to the river. This was where D Company had caught the Japanese patrol earlier in the day.

“Hey, bud, where you going?” somebody from the 2d Platoon called to him as he passed through.

“To take a shit,” Bead called back without looking around and disappeared over the crest.

The trees began three yards below the actual crest. Because the jungle was thinner with less undergrowth here at its outer edge, it looked more like the columnar, smooth-floored woods of home and made Bead think of when he was a boy. Reminded of times when as a Boy Scout he had camped out and crapped with peaceful pleasure in the summer woods of Iowa, he placed the roll of paper comfortably near, dropped his pants and squatted. Half way through with relieving himself, he looked up and saw a Japanese man with a bayoneted rifle moving stealthily through the trees ten yards away.

As if feeling his gaze, the Japanese man turned his head and saw him in almost the same instant but not before, through the electrifying, heart stabbing thrill of apprehension, danger, disbelief, denial, Bead got a clear, burned in the brain impression of him.

He was a small man, and thin; very thin. His mud-slicked, mustard-khaki uniform with its ridiculous wrap leggins hung from him in jungledamp, greasy folds. Not only did he not wear any of the elaborate camouflage Bead had been taught by movies to expect, he did not even wear a helmet. He wore a greasy, wrinkled, bent up forage cap. Beneath it his yellowbrown face was so thin the high cheekbones seemed about to come out through his skin. He was badly unshaven, perhaps two weeks, but his greasy looking beard was as straggly as Bead’s nineteen-year-old one. As to age, Bead could not form any clear impression; he might have been twenty, or forty.