The Thin Red Line (31 page)

“I ain’t been seein much of nothin,” Queen called with muffled honesty.

“Well, why don’t you get your fuckin head up and look around?” Doll could not resist the gibe. He suddenly felt very powerful and in command of himself, almost gay.

“Go fuck yourself, Doll,” was Queen’s muffled answer.

“No, Sarge,” (he used the title deliberately), “I’m serious. I counted seven Japs leavin that lefthand grassy ridge. I got me one of them,” he added modestly without, however, mentioning how many times he’d missed.

“So?”

“I think they’re pullin out of there. Maybe somebody ought to tell Bugger Stein.”

“You want to be the one?” Queen called back with muffled sarcasm.

The idea had not occurred to Doll. Now it did. He had already seen the two aidmen moving about on the slope, and apparently nothing had happened to them. He could see them now, simply by turning his head a little. “Why not?” he called cheerfully. “Sure. I’ll carry the message back to Bugger for you.” Suddenly his heart was beating in his throat.

“You’ll do no such a goddam fucking thing,” Queen called. “You’ll stay right the fuck where you are and shut up. That’s an order.”

Doll did not answer for a moment. Slowly his heart returned to normal. He had offered and been refused. He had committed himself and been freed. But something else was driving him, something he could not put a name to. “Okay,” he called.

“They’ll get us out of this in a little bit. Somebody will. You stay put. I’m ordering you.”

“I said okay,” Doll called. But the thing that was driving him, eating on him, didn’t recede. He had a strange tingling all through his belly and crotch. Off to the right there was a sudden burst of the MG fire his ear now knew as Japanese, and immediately after it a cry of pain. “Aidman! Aidman!” somebody called. It sounded like Stearns. No, it wasn’t all that easy. In spite of the two aidmen moving all around. The tingling in Doll got stronger and his heart began to pound again. He had never in his life been excited quite like this. Somebody had to get that news to Bugger. Somebody had to be a—hero. He had already killed one man, if you could call a Jap a man. And nobody, not a single soul in the world, could touch him for it, not a single soul. Doll raised his left eyebrow and pulled up his lip in that special grin of his.

He did not wait for Big Queen, or bother with his permission. When he had squirmed himself around facing the rear, he lay a moment lifting himself to the act, his heart pounding. He could not quite bring himself to begin to move. But he knew he would. There was something else in it, also. In what it was that was driving, pulling him to do it. It was like facing God. Or gambling with Luck. It was taking a dare from the Universe. It excited him more than all the hunting, gambling and fucking he had ever done all rolled together. When he went, he was up in a flash and running, not at full speed, but at about half speed which was better controlled, bent over, his rifle in both hands, even as the Japanese he himself had downed. A bullet kicked up dirt two feet to his left and he zigged right. Ten yards further on he zagged left. Then he was over the third fold into the 2d Platoon, who stared at him uncomprehendingly. Doll giggled. He found Capt Bugger Stein behind the second fold where he had just arrived, ran almost headon into him in fact and did not even have to hunt. He was hardly even winded.

1st Sgt Welsh was crouching with Stein and Band behind the crest of the second fold, when Doll came trotting up, bent over, giggling and laughing, so out of breath he could not talk. Welsh, who had always disliked Doll for a punk, and still did, thought he looked like a young recruit coming giggling out of a whorehouse after the first real fuck of his life, and he eyed him narrowly, wanting to know why.

“What the hell are you laughing at?” Stein snapped.

“At the way I fooled them yellow bastards shooting at me,” Doll gasped, giggling, but soon subsided before Stein’s gaze.

Welsh, with the others, listened to his story of the seven Japanese and two guns he had seen leaving the left ridge. “I think they’re pullin completely out of there, sir.”

“Who sent you back here?” Stein said.

“Nobody, sir. I came myself. I thought it was something you’d want to know.”

“You were right. It is.” Stein nodded his head sternly. Welsh, watching him from where he crouched, wanted to spit. Bugger was acting very much the company commander, today. “And I won’t forget it, Doll.”

Doll did not answer, but he grinned. Stein, on one knee, was now rubbing his unshaven chin and blinking his eyes behind his glasses. Doll was still standing straight up.

“God damn it, get down,” Stein said irritably.

Doll looked around leisurely, then consented to squat, since it was obviously an order.

“George,” Stein said, “get a man with glasses and have him spot the back of that ridge. I want to know the second anybody leaves it. Here,” he said, removing his own, “take mine.”

“I’ll do it myself,” Band said, and bared his teeth in a brilliant-eyed, weird smile. He took off.

Stein looked after him a long moment, and Welsh wanted to laugh. Stein turned back to Doll and began to question him about the attack, casualties, the present position and state of the platoon. Doll didn’t really know very much. He had seen Lt Whyte die, knew Sgt Grove was down but not whether he was dead. He had—they all had, he amended—been pretty busy when the first big bunch of mortars began to hit. He thought he had seen a group of about squad size go into the deep grass at the base of the right ridge, but wasn’t sure. And he had seen the machinegun squad run far out ahead and all go down together with one mortar burst. Stein cursed at this, and demanded what they were doing there in the first place. Doll of course didn’t know. He thought that the center, ensconced in their U.S.-made shellholes and depressions in the bottom, were safe enough for the moment, provided the Japs did not lay a heavy mortar barrage on them. No, he himself had not been very scared the whole time. He didn’t know why, really.

Welsh hardly listened to them. He was looking over the crest at the 2d Platoon flattened out in a long line behind the crest of the third fold, and thinking his own thoughts. 2d Platoon was as flattened as it could get, cheeks and bellies pressed tight to the earth, faces scarred with the white of staring eyeballs and bared teeth, all looking back his way, watching for their Commander, who conceivably might order them to go over this crest again. 2d Platoon would make a great photograph to send back home, Welsh’s eyes told him—without in the least disturbing his thinking—except that of course when the newspapers, government, army, and
Life
got ahold of it, it would be subtly changed to fit the needs of the moment and probably captioned:
TIRED INFANTRYMEN REST IN SAFETY AFTER HEROIC CAPTURE OF POSITION. THE FIRST TEAM AT HALFTIME. BUY BONDS TILL IT HURTS YOUR ASSHOLE
.

But all of this more or less visual thinking had nothing to do with what Welsh was thinking on another, deeper level. Mostly, he was thinking about himself. He found it satisfying to contemplate the fact that if he got it, got knocked off, the government wouldn’t have anybody to send a Regrets card to for him. He knew how those fuckfaces of government whitecollar workers loved their jobs and their authority. When he first enlisted, he had given a false first name and middle initial. He and his family had not heard from each other since. On the other hand if he only got crippled, maimed, his enemies the government would have to take care of him, since they had no next-of-kin for him. So he had the bureaucracy fucked both ways. His view of 2d Platoon misted over slightly with a vision of himself in one of those horrible Veterans Hospitals across the country, an aged man in a wheelchair, with a pint bottle of gin hidden in his cheap flimsy robe, cackling and quacking at the weight-lifter lesbian Napoleons of nurses, at the pinheaded, pipsqueak, hard-jawed Alexander-the-greats of doctors. He’d give them a hard time.…

“You’re not really pinned down, then,” he heard Stein say. “I was told—”

“Well, we are, in a way, sir,” Doll said. “But, like you see, I got back all right. We couldn’t all come back at once.”

Stein nodded.

“But two or three at a time could make it, I think. With 2d Platoon firing covering fire,” Doll suggested.

“We don’t even know where those goddamned fucking emplacements are,” Stein said sourly.

“They could fire searching fire, couldn’t they?” Doll suggested professionally.

Stein glared at him. So did Welsh. Welsh wanted to boot the new hero in the ass: already giving the company commander advice—about searching fire, yet.

Welsh interrupted them. “Hey, Cap’n!” he growled. “You want me to go down there and get them men back up here for you?” He glared murderously at Doll, whose eyebrows went up innocently.

“No.” Stein rubbed his jaw. “No, I can’t spare you. Might need you. Anyway, I think I’ll leave them there a while. They don’t seem to be getting hurt too bad and if we can get up onto that right ridge frontally maybe they can flank it.” He paused. “What interests me is that squad on the right that got into the deep grass on the ridge. They—”

He was interrupted by George Band who, bent over, came running down the little slope. “Hey, Jim! Hey, Captain Stein! I just saw five more leaving the left ridge, with two MGs. I think they really are pulling out.”

“Really?” Stein said. “Really?” He sounded as relieved as if he had just been told the battle had been called off until another time. At least now he could act. “Gore! Gore!” he began to bellow. “Lt Gore!”

It required fifteen minutes to summon Gore, instruct him, assemble his 3d Platoon, and see them off on their venture.

“We’re pretty sure they’re pulling out completely, Gore. But don’t get overeager; like Whyte. They may have left a rearguard. Or maybe it’s a trap. So go slow. Let your scouts look it over first. I think your best approach is down the draw in front of Hill 209. Go left behind this middle fold here till it hits the draw, and then down the draw. If you get hit by mortars like they did there yesterday, you got to keep going, though. If there’s a waterhole in that brush at the foot of the ridge, let me know about it. We’re running very short of water; already. But the main thing. The main thing, Gore, is not to lose any more men than you absolutely have to.” It was becoming an increasingly important point to Stein, almost frantically so. And whenever he was not actually occupied with something specific, that was what he brooded over. “Now, go ahead, boy; and good luck.” Men; men; he was losing all his men; men he had lived with; men he was responsible for.

It required another half hour for Gore’s reserve 3d Platoon to reach its jumpoff point at the foot of the grassy ridge. He was certainly following orders and going slow, Stein thought with impatience. It was now after 9:00. In the meantime Band had come back from the crest of the fold with a report that he had counted three more small bodies of men leaving the left ridge with MGs, but had counted none in the last fifteen minutes. Also in the meantime little Charlie Dale the second cook had returned, his narrow closeset eyes snapping bright, and at the same time dark and thunderous. He showed Stein where he had brought the stretcher bearers to the low between the first and middle folds, four parties of four, sixteen men in all, who were already starting to collect the first of the eight litter cases which had by now accumulated. Then he asked if there were any more little jobs for him to do.

Corporal Fife, lying not far from the Company Commander with the sound power phone which had more or less become his permanent responsibility, thought he had never seen such an unholy look on a human face. Perhaps Fife was a little jealous because he was so afraid himself. Certainly there wasn’t any fear in Charlie Dale. His mouth hung open in a slack little grin, the bright and at the same time lowering eyes darting everywhere and filmed over with an unmistakable sheen of pleased selfsatisfaction at all this attention he suddenly was getting. Fife looked at him, then sickly turned his head away and closed his eyes, his ear to the phone. This was his job; he’d been given it and he’d do it; but he’d be damned if he’d do anything else he wasn’t told to do. He couldn’t. He was too afraid.

“Yes,” Bugger Stein was saying to Dale. “You—”

He was interrupted by the explosion of a mortar shell amongst the 2d Platoon on the rear slope of the third fold. Its loud thwonging bang was almost simultaneous with a loud scream of pure fear, which after the explosion died away continued until the screamer ran out of breath. A man had thrown himself out of the line back down the slope and was bucking and kicking and rolling with both hands pressed behind him in the small of his back. When he got his breath back, he continued to scream. Everyone else hugged the comforting dirt, which nevertheless was not quite comforting enough, and waited for a barrage to begin to fall. Nothing happened, however, and after a moment they began to put their heads up to look at the kicking man who still bucked and screamed.

“I don’t think they can see us any better than we can see them,” Welsh muttered, tight-lipped.

“I believe that’s Private Jacques,” Lt Band said in an interested voice.

The screaming had taken on a new tone, one of realization, rather than the start and surprise and pure fear of before. One of the aidmen got to him and with the help of two men from 2d Platoon tore open his shirt and got a syrette of morphine into him. In a few seconds he quieted. When he was still, the aidman pulled the hands loose and rolled him over. His belt off, his shirt up, he was looked over by the aidman, who then was seen to shrug with despair and reach in his pack and begin to sprinkle.

Behind the middle fold Bugger Stein was whitefaced, his lips tight, his eyes snapping open and shut behind his glasses. This was the first of his men he had actually seen wounded. Beside him Brass Band watched the same scene with a look of friendly, sympathetic interest on his face. Beyond Band Corporal Fife had raised up once to look while the man was still bucking and kicking and then lain back down sick all over; all he could think of was what if it had been him? It might easily have been, might still yet be.