The Thin Red Line (32 page)

“Stretcher bearers! Stretcher bearers!” Stein had suddenly turned back toward the hollow where two of the four groups had not yet departed with loads. “Stretcher bearers!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. One of the groups came on the run with their stretcher.

“But, Jim,” Lt Band said. “Really, Jim, I don’t—”

“God damn you, George, shut up! Leave me alone!” The bearers arrived out of breath. “Go get that man,” Stein said pointing over the crest to where the aidman still knelt by the casualty.

The leader plainly had thought someone of the CP group here had been wounded. Now he saw his mistake. “But listen,” he protested, “we already got eight or nine down there now that we’re supposed to—We’re not—”

“God damn it, don’t argue with me! I’m Captain Stein! Go get that man, I said!” Stein bawled in his face.

The man recoiled, upset. Of course nobody was wearing insignia.

“But, Jim, really,” Brass Band said, “he’s not—”

“God damn you, all of you! Am I in command around here or not!” Stein was in a howling rage; and he was actually almost howling. “Am I Company Commander of this outfit or am I not! Am I Captain Stein or a goddamned private! Do I give the orders here or don’t I! I said go get that man!”

“Yes, sir,” the leader said. “Okay, sir. Right away.”

“That man may die,” Stein said more reasonably. “He’s hit bad. Get him back to battalion aid station and see if they can’t do something to save him.”

“Yes, sir,” the leader of the bearers said. He spread his hands palms up toward Stein absolving himself of guilt. “We got others that’re hit bad, sir. That was all I meant. We got three down there might die any minute.”

Stein stared at him uncomprehendingly.

“That’s it, Jim,” Band said from behind him soothingly. “Don’t you see? Don’t you think he ought to wait his turn? Isn’t that only fair?”

“Wait his turn? Wait his turn? Fair? My God!” Stein said. He stared at both of them, his face white.

“Sure,” Band said. “Why put him ahead of some other guy?”

Stein did not answer him. After a moment he turned to the leader. “Go and get him,” he said stiffly, “like I told you. Get him back to battalion aid station. I gave you an order, Private.”

“Yes, sir.” The leader’s voice was stony. He turned to his men. “Come on, you guys. We’re goin’ over there after that guy.”

“Well what the hell’re we waitin for?” one of them snarled toughly. “Come on, Hoke. Or are you afraid of gettin that close to the shooting?” It was a ridiculous remark under the circumstances. The leader plainly wasn’t afraid of going.

“You shut up, Witt,” he said, “and let me alone.”

All of them were squatting. The man he had addressed stood up suddenly. He was a small, frail-looking man, and the US helmet shell, which on Big Queen looked so small, looked like an enormous inverted pot on his small head and almost hid his eyes. He marched up to where Welsh half reclined.

“Hello, Firs’ Sarn’t,” the small man said with a rapacious grin.

Only then did Stein, or any of the rest of the C-for-Charlie men for that matter, recognize that this Witt was their Witt, the same that Stein and Welsh had combined to transfer out before the division left for combat. All of them were astonished, as Witt obviously meant for them to be. Corporal Fife especially. Fife, still lying flat with the phone to his ear, sat up suddenly, grinning.

“By God! Hello, Witt!” he cried delightedly.

Witt, true to his promise of a few days before, passed his narrow eyes across the Corporal as if he did not exist. They came to rest on Welsh, again.

“Hi, Witt,” Welsh said. “You in the medics now? You better get down.”

Stein, who had felt guilty for having transferred Witt when he knew how badly Witt wanted to stay, even though he still felt he had done what was best for his company, said nothing.

Witt ignored Welsh’s cautioning. He remained standing straight up. “Naw, Firs’ Sarn’t,” he grinned. “Still in Cannon Comp’ny. Only, as you know, we ain’t got no cannons. So they’ve put us to work pushin boats up and down the river and as stretcher bearers.” He inclined his head. “Who we goin’ after over there, Firs’ Sarn’t?”

“Jacques,” Welsh said.

“Old Jockey?” Witt said. “Shit, that’s too bad.” His three companions had already gone on and were now running downhill beyond the crest of the fold and Witt turned to follow them. But then he turned back and spoke directly to Bugger Stein. “Please, sir, can I come back to the company? After we get Jockey back to battalion? I can slip away easy. They’ll give Hoke another man. Can I, sir?”

Stein was flattered. He was also confused. This whole thing of the stretcher bearers and Jacques was getting out of hand, taking too much of his attention from the plan he had been just about to conceive. “Well, I—” he said and stopped, his mind blank. “Of course, you’ll have to get someone’s permission.”

Witt grinned cynically. “Sure,” he said. “And my rifle. Thank you, sir.” He turned and was gone, after his mates.

Stein tried to reorganize the scattered threads of his thought. For a moment he stared after Witt. For a man to want to come back into a forward rifle company in the midst of an attack was simply incomprehensible to him. In a way, though, it was very romantic. Like something out of Kipling. Or
Beau Geste.
Now, what was it that he had just about had figured out?

Close to Stein, as Bugger’s orders about the phone demanded he be, Corporal Fife had lain back down flat with his phone and shut his eyes. Even though he knew that Witt’s gesture of ignoring him had to do with their argument of a few days back, he could not help taking it as contempt and disgust for his present cowardice—as if Witt with one glance had looked inside his mind. When he reopened his eyes, he found himself looking into the white face of little Bead a few feet away, eyes popeyed with fright, blinking almost audibly, like some overgrown rabbit.

“Dale!” Bugger called. “Now, look,” he said, marshaling his mind.

Charlie Dale crawled closer. When he first returned from his mission, he had made himself stand upright quite a while, but when the mortar shell exploded wounding Jacques, he had flattened himself. Now he compromised by squatting. Bugger had been just about to tell him something, perhaps send him on another mission, when Jacques got hit and then the stretcher bearers came. Dale could not help feeling a little piqued. Not at Jacques of course. He couldn’t be mad at Jockey really. But he might have picked himself a better time to get shot up. But those goddam stretcher bearers from Cannon Company and that goddam bolshevik Witt, they certainly could have taken less of the Company Cmander’s valuable time. Especially when he was about to tell Pfc Dale something very important maybe. For Dale this was the first chance that he had had in a long time for talking to the Company Cmander personally like this, for being free of that goddam order-giving Storm and his cheating cooks, first chance to not be tied to that goddam greasy sweating kitchen cooking masses of food for a bunch of men to gorge their guts on, and Dale was enjoying it. He was getting more personal attention than he had ever had from this outfit, at last they were beginning to recognize him, and all he had to do for it was carry a few messages through some light MG fire that couldn’t hit him anyway. Gravy. Not far off he could see fucking Storm lying all flattened out beside Sgt Welsh, and looking this way. Squatting, Dale put a respectful expression on his face and listened to his commander intently. An inarticulate, secret excitement burgeoned in him.

“I’ve got to know how 3d Platoon is doing,” Bugger was telling him. “I want you to go and find out for me.” He described the position and told him how to get there. “Report to Lt Gore if you can find him. But I’ve got to know if they occupied that grassy ridge, and I’ve got to know as soon as possible. Get back as soon as you can.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Dale said, his eyes pleased.

“I want both you and Doll to stay with me,” Bugger said. “I’ll have further work for both of you. You’ve both been invaluable.”

“Yes, sir,” Dale smiled. Then, unsmiling, he looked over at Doll, and found Doll to be studying him equally.

“Now, go!”

“Right, sir.” He snapped out a tiny little salute and took off, running bent over along the low area behind the fold, his rifle slung across his back, his Thompsongun in his hands. He did not have to go far. At the corner where the hollow met the draw in front of Hill 209, he met a man from 3d Platoon already on his way back with the news that 3d Platoon had occupied the lefthand grassy ridge without firing a shot and were now digging themselves in there. Together they returned to Stein, Dale feeling a little cheated.

Stein had not waited for Dale’s return. Gradually his plan had shaped itself in his mind, even while he was talking to Dale. Whether 3d Platoon had occupied the lefthand ridge made little difference to it. They could provide more covering fire, and that would help, but it was not essential, because this movement had to do with the squad-size group of 1st Platoon men who had made it in under the machineguns, into the thicker grass at the foot of the righthand ridge. That righthand ridge was obviously going to be the trouble spot, the stumbling block. With the squad-sized group already there plus two more squads from 2d Platoon Stein wanted to make a sort of double-winged uphill frontal attack whose center would hold and whose ends would curl around and isolate the main strongpoint on the ridge, wherever it was. The remainder of 2d Platoon could fire cover from the third fold, and Stein thought the rest of 1st Platoon—the remnants, he amended sourly—could fire cover along the flank from their advanced position in their holes. With this in mind he had already, after Charlie Dale’s departure, sent Doll back down into that inferno beyond the third fold, now temporarily quiet, where 1st Platoon still clung precariously to the dirt of their holes, sweating. Doll had only just left when the stretcher bearers came back with Jacques. Stein found he could not resist the desire to look at him. Neither could anybody else.

They had laid him on his stomach on the stretcher. The aidman had a gauze compress over the wound, but it was apparent that there was a long glancing hole in the small of Jacques’s back. His face hung over the side of the stretcher, and his half-closed eyes, dulled of intelligence by the morphine and by shock, held only a peculiar questioning look. He appeared to be asking them, or somebody, why?—why he, John Jacques, ASN so-and-so, had been chosen for this particular fate? Somewhere a stranger had dropped a metal case down a tube, not knowing exactly where it would land, not even sure where he wanted it to land. It had gone up and come down. And where did it land? On John Jacques, ASN so-and-so. When it had burst, thousands of chunks and pieces of knife-edged metal had gone chirring in all directions. And who was the only one touched by one of them? John Jacques, ASN so-and-so. Why? Why him? No enemy had aimed anything at John Jacques, ASN so-and-so. No enemy knew that John Jacques, ASN so-and-so, existed. Any more than
he
knew the name, character and personality of the Japanese who dropped the metal case down the tube. So why? Why him? Why John Jacques, ASN so-and-so? Why not somebody else? Why not one of his friends? And now it was done. Soon he would be dead.

Stein forced himself to look somewhere else. At the tail, off end of the stretcher he saw Witt, who, being shorter, had to strain more to keep his end up level. Thinking about Doll and 1st Platoon, Stein was just about to send someone after Sgt. Keck, the new commander of 2d Platoon, when Charlie Dale and the messenger returned.

Doll had gone back reluctantly. He had not intended, when he first came back, to set himself up as a troubleshooting messenger to dangerous areas for Bugger Stein. Truthfully, he did not really know why he had done it. And now he was hooked. Also, he was angered at the easiness of Charlie Dale’s mission when compared to the hardness of his own. Any damn fool could go
back
, after stretcher bearers, or even forward when he had a covered route all the way. For himself, he did not know how he was going to accomplish his job. Whyte was dead, Grove dead or badly wounded, and that left the command of the platoon to Skinny Culn, the platoon guide. If he was not hit or dead too. Sgt Culn was a round, red-faced, pugnosed, jovial Irishman of 28, an old regular who ought to be all right leading the platoon. But Doll had no idea where to find him. The only man whose whereabouts Doll knew was Big Queen. This meant that he would have to hunt, maybe even run from hole to hole, looking, and down there Doll did not relish that idea. He’d like to see Dale do it.

Before going, he lay behind the crest of the third fold amongst the 2d Platoon and raised his head to look down into the low area where he must go. The 2d Platoon men nearby, cheeks pressed to the earth, stared at him with indifferent, sullen curiosity. He was aware that his eyes were narrowed, his nostrils flared, his jaw set. He made a handsome picture of a soldier for the 2d Platoon men who watched him without liking. Out in front one of the medics was helping back a fat man who had been shot through the calf and was groaning audibly. Doll felt a sort of amused contempt for him; why couldn’t he keep his mouth shut? Once again the sick excitement had taken hold of him and gripped him by the belly, making his crotch tingle and his heart pound and paralyzing his diaphragm so that he breathed slower and slower and slower, and even slower still, until his essence and being ran down and seemed to stop in an entranced totality of concentration. Then he was up and running. He ran bent over and at half speed and exposed to the world, the same way he had run up out of there. Some bullets kicked up dirt to right and left. He zigged and zagged. In ten seconds’ time he was back down flat in his little depression already calling breathlessly for Queen and wanting to laugh out loud. He had known all along he’d make it. A burst of MG fire tickled the rim of his hole and whined away, showering him with dirt.

But the getting here was only the beginning. He still had to find Culn. And the muffled information which came to him from Big Queen down in his hole was that Culn was somewhere over on the right; at least Queen had seen him there before the charge. But when Doll rolled over and called off to his right, the man who should have been, must
be
somewhere there, did not answer. A great soft lump of fear had risen in Doll’s throat as he talked. He tried now to swallow it, but it remained. This was the situation he had been dreading back at the third fold before taking off. He was going to have to run down the line of holes looking for Culn.