The Thin Red Line (54 page)

Storm for his part was glad to see Fife, too. For one thing he had been sure back up there, watching Fife walk away with all that blood running out of him, that Fife would be dead soon, and that his walking away was only one of those last gasp reflexes that headless chickens sometimes display in dying. Also Fife was the first C-for-Charlie man Storm had seen since entering this miserable, groaning hellhole of the damned which the Army called a hospital. And right now any familiar face was welcome, in this buzzing, susurrus, crowded, haunted place. He had never much cared for Fife one way or the other, never much paid him any attention, but now he began pouring out all the news of the company Fife wanted to hear: what had happened on the rest of the first day after Fife had left, what had happened on the second day. But when Storm told him they had taken The Elephant’s Head before noon on the second day—today—it was clear to him that Fife found it very hard to believe, if not impossible. And he was right. Fife himself could remember only total and complete holocaust, Armageddon, and he had expected them all to be dead—or at least ninety percent of them—before they ever got to the top of that hill. And he said as much. Nevertheless it was true, Storm said glumly inspecting his hand, and the casualties for the second day when added to the 25% of the first day still only made up a grand total of one-third of the company. This was, Storm felt and so did most of the guys, because Bugger Stein had taken them down around behind them and outflanked and surprised the position.

“But he wanted to do that the first day!” Fife said remembering suddenly with terror the third fold and the phone he’d held for Stein.

“I know.” Then Storm went on to tell him how Bugger had been relieved by Shorty Tall.

Fife was properly incensed, or at least he tried to be. He was watching Storm and listening, blinking his eyes and nodding at the proper moments, but it was clear to Storm he hardly saw or heard anything Storm did or said. Probably he was still preoccupied with being wounded. Storm didn’t blame him for that, but it was like talking to a dead man.

Storm had had some traumas and rude awakenings of his own, but being wounded was not one of them. And neither was Stein’s relief by Colonel Tall. Storm had predicted that one to himself with pinpoint accuracy. As for being wounded, in his case that was such a little thing and counted for so very little that it hardly mattered. The explosion of the knee mortar—if that was what it was, and everybody said so—had not been close enough to shake him up, and the entry of the fragment had not hurt the slightest bit. Storm’s traumas came from other things. Chief among them was the feeling that he was letting the company down by coming back down here with this hand. And next in line to that was the way he and the others in the party he had come down with had treated the Jap prisoners they had brought down with them. His rude awakening was an awakening to the fact that he did not want any part of any more combat, here or anywhere.

Storm had killed four Japs up there today during the breakthrough to Tall and the mopping up afterward, and had enjoyed every one of them. Only one of the four had had even the remotest chance of killing him, and that was all right with Storm too. That was fine. But his four Japs, each one of whom he remembered distinctly, were the only things that he had enjoyed during the whole four days C-for-Charlie had spent at the front. He had been scared shitless all the rest of the time. And the pageant, the spectacle, the challenge, the adventure of war they could wipe their ass on. It might be all right for field officers and up, who got to run it and decide what to do or not do. But everybody else was a tool—a tool with its serial number of manufacture stamped right on it. And Storm didn’t like being no tool. Not, especially, when it could get you killed; and fuck organization. Combat was for foot sloggers and rifle platoons, and he was a messergeant. He felt sorry, and perhaps even a little guilty, to have left the company and come back down here with his ‘wounded’ hand. But for a sensible man that was the only thing for it and that was all there was to it. If this hand didn’t get him clean away from this fucking island, he would go back to being a messergeant. He would cook hot food for them and get it to them—if he could. But he would not carry it himself. That, the carriers could do. A lot of people were going to come out of this war alive, more than got killed, and Storm intended to be one of them if he possibly could. Why, even that trip down from up there—which he should have been very pleased over, should have enjoyed immensely—had been ruined by those Jap prisoners they had had to bring down with them.

He had come down with the next party to leave after the one Bugger Stein left with. Stein’s party was the last of the stretcher parties, and most of the walking wounded cases had gone down long before. A few like himself and Big Queen had elected to stay till the mopping up was finished. There were seven of these, four from Baker Company three from C-for-Charlie, and with four unwounded men they were told off to act as guards to a party of eight prisoners—half of the total number taken. In this way Tall could free more unwounded men to remain up on the line for the anticipated night counterattack.

It was great to be leaving with a night counterattack expected (though Storm felt a momentary sharp thrust of guilt) and everything went off well at the start. Queen’s flesh wound in his left upper arm was beginning to stiffen up, and he was not as chipper and energetic as he had been during the fighting at the bivouac. But just before leaving he roused himself to brightness again. “I’ll be back!” he cried in his bull voice. “I’ll be back! It’ll take more than a little old flesh wound to keep me from comin back to old C-for-Charlie! I don’t care where they send me! I’ll be back if I have to stowaway on a replacement boat!” A few C-for-Charlie men who were watching the departure grinned and waved and cheered, and Brass Band who was there came over to shake hands with Queen—with unnecessary showiness, Storm felt. Storm had no idea why Big Queen had elected to stay behind for the mopping up when he could have gone down earlier. As for himself, he had stayed because he was already planning to parlay this hand wound into an evacuation, if he could, which would take him as far back from this Rock as he could milk out of it; and he wanted to leave a good impression on his old outfit when he left it perhaps forever.

The eight Japanese prisoners were a sorry, sicklooking lot. Feeble, stumbling, they shambled along appearing to be totally benumbed by their experiences, and looking as though they would not have had the energy or the will to escape even if they were guarded by just one GI. All of them were suffering from dysentery, jaundice and malaria. Two of them (just why, no one ever learned) were stark bareass naked, and it was one of these who finally collapsed and caused all the serious trouble. When Big Queen came over to kick him to his feet, he just lay vomiting and shitting at the same time, leaving two yellow trails of liquid behind him as each kick slid him sideways a few feet further down the path. Half-starved, his ribs and shoulder bones showing starkly through his sick-looking yellow skin, he looked more like some lower grade type of animal and really did not appear to be worth saving. Neither did the other seven, who now squatted on their haunches in patient numb resignation under the eyes of their guards. Some Lieutenant who spoke a little Japanese had learned from them that they had all been living off lizards and the bark off of trees for the past couple of weeks. On the other hand, the party was under the strictest personal orders from Colonel Tall to see that all of these men got back to Regimental Intelligence alive for questioning.

Queen, though stiffening badly and still bleeding, was still chipper enough to enjoy booting and clubbing his charges down the trail with hysterical joyousness whenever they fell behind, and the rest of the party had joined in the fun. Now Queen gave his considered opinion.

“I say shoot the fucker,” he grinned, growling. “Look at him.”

“You know Ol’ Shorty ordered us to get them all back alive,” someone else said.

“So we’ll say he tried to escape,” Queen said.

“Him?” someone said. “Look at him.”

“So who’ll see him?” Queen said.

“I’m with Queen,” someone else said. “Remember what they did to our guys on the Bataan Death March.”

“But Shorty gave us
personal
orders,” the first man said. He was the corporal in charge of the four unwounded guards. “You know damn well he’s gonna check up if one turns up missin. What if he has Intelliegence ask these other guys what happened to their buddy? I don’t want to get in no trouble, that’s all.”

“Well, it’s either that or carry him,” Queen said with finality. “I’m not about to carry no fuckin Jap all the way back to Hill 209. Are you? Anyway, I outrank you. I’m a sergeant. I say kill him. Look at him. Be doin’ the poor fuck a favor.” He looked around at the others.

“The corprl’s right,” Storm said, putting in for the first time. He had been thinking it all over, pros and cons. “Shorty’s sure to check up if one is missin. If we shoot him or lose him, he’ll be on our ass like a bullwhip, spittin and bitin. Might even court-martial us.” He did not add that he was a S/Sgt, and thus outranked Queen.

Queen stared down at the Japanese man, then shrugged and grinned ruefully. “Okay. I guess you’re right,” he said goodnaturedly. “It looks like we carry him.” He slapped his great palms together. “All right then! Come on! I’ll take a leg! Who wants the rest of him?”

Storm, who wisely had already considered this problem, too, and decided he preferred vomit to feces, moved over to him and took an arm. Two of the other wounded got hold of the other arm and leg, and with Queen comically in command and calling the movements for them like a coxswain of a crew shell hollering “Stroke!”, the party moved off down the trail again.

Queen’s goodnatured surrender to wisdom, plus his comical commands about portaging the sick Japanese, had put them all back into the high humor of their departure. Whooping and hollering they descended the steep hillside in a sort of nonsensical hysteria of cruel fun, slipping and sliding, one or another of them falling from time to time, and all of them except the four portagers who had all they could take care of, booting or shoving their seven walking prisoners to make them keep up. “Hey, Jap,” one of them cried once. “Come on, Jap! Tell the truth! Ain’t you glad you don’t have to fight no more now? Hunh? Ain’t you?” The Japanese he had addressed, who obviously did not understand a word, bobbed and bowed and nodded his head smiling numbly. “See there!” cried the guard. “I told you! They don’t want to fight no more than we do! What’s all this Emperor shit?” “Just you don’t give him your loaded rifle,” laughed another, “and then see how much he want to fight.” Queen soon caught on to the fact that he had made a mistake by taking a leg to carry. Both of the men on the sick man’s legs had difficulty keeping out of the way of the jets of yellow liquid the nude Japanese kept squirting as they bobbled him along down the steep hillside, and Queen goodnaturedly chided Storm for being smart enough to take an arm without letting him in on the idea. Then he had an idea of his own. “Let’s bump him a little,” he said as they came to a rock. “Maybe we can
knock
the shit out of him, hunh? Or, at least, enough of it to make him stop till we get him down.” Swinging him in unison, they bumped his behind against the rock and made him squirt, all of them laughing uproariously. The other Japanese bobbed and grinned, because they too had gotten the idea by now. Nevertheless, the bumping did little good. He kept right on squirting as they continued to carry him down. Conscious enough to blink his open eyes from time to time, he was too far gone, too near out, to control his bowels, and when his head hit the ground from time to time it did not even make him flinch. They would bump him against every rock they came to as they went on down, and then go on. When they delivered him to Regimental Hq, a doctor was called and went to work on him immediately. It was interesting to note that Big Queen passed out two minutes later on his way down the reverse slope and rolled the rest of the way down into the Battalion aid station, causing great consternation.

Storm on his hospital cot with his head in his hands (he had given up trying to talk to the dead face of Fife in front of him) remembered everything in a state of agonized numbness which try as he would, he could not pull himself back up out of. His whole soul seemed anesthetized as if shot with a massive hypo of some powerful drug. This scared him, but he could not shake it. How long ago had it been? that all that had happened? Only a couple of hours. And laughing. They all laughed. Storm didn’t care about those Japs. All those Japs had coming to them everything they got and more. That didn’t bother him. But it had all been done in that state of numbness, he could see that now. Not only him but the other guys, too. Maybe even the Japs too. Storm had always thought of himself as a decent man. Sure, he had been rough on KPs and cooks in his time, to make them work. Had even beat up a couple, when he had to. But he did not believe in kicking a man when he was down, taking advantage of a weak person, or stealing from the poor. That was his code and he had always tried to live by it. Now he had to face the possibility that maybe he wasn’t so decent after all. And not only that, he who had always believed in never letting a friend down, was here preparing to try and use his hand to get him out of the company, out of the Battalion, out of the whole fucking combat zone. And what was more, he knew it was the only sane thing to do.

“Well what about your hand there?” Fife said hollowly from in front of him. The silence had gone on and on, and Fife had been thinking about himself again. To have gone through all that: the explosion, the blacking out, the pain, the blood, the fear, and then to find out that it all really meant nothing. He had suffered all the terror, fear and agony of being killed in action and had not gained a thing from it. Fife felt he must talk to somebody about it, but he did not see how he could come out and boldly admit to someone he was that much of a coward.

Storm had raised his head and was now staring at Fife with dark, haunted eyes. “Since you ain’t a doctor I guess I can tell you the truth,” he said, and looked down at it glumly in his lap. He raised it and flexed it and they both could hear it grate. “I got a pretty solid hunch it ain’t ever gonna get me off this Rock,” Storm said.