The Thin Red Line (67 page)

It was indeed Witt. He had walked the last six hundred yards alone in the dark from B-for-Baker’s position on the next hill back. He had found A-for-Able first, gone on, stopped to read the dogtag on the triggerguard of Big Un’s rifle, reached B-for-Baker where they gave him the password, decided to come on despite their best advice, and here he was. Hardly anyone was asleep yet, and there was a great deal of backslapping, laughter, and handshaking. The first thing he wanted to know was what was the new Battalion Commander like. Everybody was overjoyed to see him, to know that he would have searched them out like this just to be with them. Everybody included Brass Band, who with his insipid smile had only just then decided to place outside the perimeter the roadblock which he had decided the company’s position needed.

Witt of course volunteered for it immediately.

Everybody had wondered why the Japanese had decided to defend Hill 279 and not the others. The answer, which also showed on the map had anyone thought about it, was just on the other side of the hill. Following a usually dry river bed toward the coconut groves and the beach, one of the two major north-south trails across the whole island passed through the jungle just under the shoulder of Hill 279. Beaufort Trail, much further on ahead, and this one here called Dini-Danu in the native tongue but immediately renamed Ding Dong Trail by the Americans, were the only means of moving across the island. It was known that the Japanese used them both to march across their skimpy reenforcements landed from fast destroyers on the other side of the island, and it was because of this fact that Tall George Band decided to throw a block across it. He wanted to deny the Japanese any reenforcements that he could for the battle of Boola Boola tomorrow. He had received no orders about Ding Dong Trail one way or the other, from Battalion or from Regiment, but he was convinced that he could help in this way.

Witt was the first man to volunteer for it, though he had, he said, serious reservations about the whole idea. John Bell was the second, though he could not have told anybody why. The third was Charlie Dale, who still had in mind his plot for getting a platoon, and whose nose had been put out of joint by Witt’s dramatic return. Dale, however, was disallowed by Band, who said two noncoms were enough, and who thereby probably saved his life because Witt and Bell were the only two to survive the mission.

The rest of the volunteers were Pfcs and privates. A couple of men from Bell’s squad volunteered because their leader was going. A man named Gooch, an oldtime Regular and boxing buddy of Witt, volunteered because he was a good friend of Witt and wanted to talk to him. Band wanted two BARs so Bell’s BAR man volunteered. Then Charlie Dale’s BAR man volunteered to go with Witt. They were twelve Pfcs and privates in all. All of them died.

Originally Band had thought to send his entire ‘Old Vet’ 2d Platoon, but had thought better of it and asked for volunteers when he remembered Beck’s protests. In a way it was lucky, because from what happened it was pretty clear that a platoon would have done no more good than the fourteen men Band later decided to send, though more of them certainly would have survived. Band did not yet know that most of his company was already calling him by his new nickname The Glory Hunter behind his back, or that the majority of his higher sergeants already knew from Beck that he had volunteered the company to be lead company. If he had, it probably would not have influenced his decision. Witt did not yet know any of this, either. If he had, it would certainly have made him protest about the roadblock even stronger. As it was, it was strong enough to astonish Band.

“I want to go,” Witt said, when he first volunteered. “But I want to make it plain that I think the whole thing is a pretty bad idea. If they come through there like in any strength at all, Lootenant, they going to knock that roadblock to hell and flinders even if it’s a whole platoon. We couldn’t hold them. But I want to go.”

Band was staring at him in amazement from behind his spectacles. He had only just finished making him Acting Sergeant again a moment before. “You don’t have to go, Sergeant Witt,” he said thinly. “If you don’t want to. Others will volunteer.”

“No, I want to go,” Witt said. “If somethin bad happens, I want to be there so maybe I can help. Besides, nothin bad may happen at all.”

But as it turned out, there wasn’t much he could do to help. Or anybody. They were had cold turkey. The only thing that saved him himself was that he was sitting over on the far left end with Gooch, Gooch who later died silently in his arms so as not to give him away. They had been talking about the last Regimental boxing season. Gooch had just missed making Department bantam champion, winding up as runnerup, and he was explaining to Witt again his excuses for this failure. That was when it hit them.

So there they were, twelve Pfcs and privates and two sergeants, one of them Acting. All normal men in a normal situation, all normal soldiers, who had accepted a normal commission to do a normal job, and death came for them in a normal way—except that nobody dies normally. Not to himself, at least. But the normality of it was what was so grotesque—afterwards, to both of the survivors. Death came for them in the form of a .31 cal machine-gun strapped to the back of a perfectly normal Japanese soldier.

Actually their tactical situation was not a bad one. They had come down the hill in the faint moonlight, explored the trail carefully for several hundred yards (at great danger to everybody), and—Witt and Bell conferring—chosen themselves the best spot available. They picked a place where the sandybottomed dryriverbed narrowed to a gulch so thin that only one man or at the most two could squeeze through it at a time. Thirty yards in front of this, on the downhill, seaward side, they spread themselves out behind a couple of downed saplings which really offered only psychological comfort, both BAR men prominently displayed. One man was told off to watch the other, seaward approach, but they all knew, somehow, that if anything came it would come from inland. Witt was over on the far left, and John Bell was on the right though not as near the nine foot bank.

What they saw, by that faint moonlight, was one man plodding along with a heavy load on his back. He must have seen them at the same instant because he fell to his hands and knees as he came through the narrow opening. The BARs killed at least one man behind him, maybe more. But it did not help, because there were many, many men behind the first one to pull the trigger of the MG on his back with which he hosed down the widening draw before him. It was like being fired at in an empty swimming pool. For the Japanese, it was fish in a barrel. Bullets ricocheted everywhere, catching on the rebound people they had missed the first time around. Japanese machine-guns, at least at this period of the war, were noted for the fact they did not have built into their tripods the ability to traverse. The veteran company in front of C-for-Charlie’s roadblock solved this problem admirably, simply by having the man who wore the gun twitch his shoulders back and forth.

The thing that saved John Bell was that he saw what was happening and was on his feet three seconds before the men around him, hollering “Run! Run!” as he sprinted for the bank. That, and luck. He made it over, into the undergrowth. Two men immediately behind him fell clawing at the bank, riddled through head, trunk and legs like some kind of strange living sieves used in some mad hospital for screening blood. None of the others got even that far. And all it was was simply one sole machinegun strapped to the back of a smart veteran Japanese who wiggled his shoulders.

Witt, on the other hand—and on the other side—saw nothing and was simply lucky. Having Gooch shot out from under him almost in midword so to speak, he leaped for the other bank just behind him in blind panic. In that second the gun swung the other way. Sheer luck. And so there he lay. He had kept his rifle in his hand by blind instinct, but now he could not fire it without muzzle blast getting him found and killed. He lay and counted one hundred and thirty Japanese pass, biting his fingers and weeping real tears because he had no grenades. Just one, even one grenade. He could have caused incalculable damage in that closed space. But Cannon Company had not been issued grenades, and he had not thought to borrow some up above on the hill. In the faint moonlight he watched them pass, able to see in the brighter patches here and there faces which were not the starved, haunted faces of the men who had held the hill. This was apparently an entire company of veteran troops from somewhere who had been landed lately as reenforcements.

How Gooch, in his condition, made it up the bank, and then found him, he would never know. Nor did Gooch tell him. All he did was whisper “Please! Please!”, twice like that, hurt all over as he was, and then Witt held his fingers to his lips. Gooch understood and nodded, and said no more. Witt cradled his head against him to try and show him how sorry he was, and so the best bantamweight the Regiment had ever had died in his arms as he watched the Japanese company file past. A couple of the C-for-Charlie men had lain moaning in the riverbottom, but the first elements of the Japanese column immediately shot these with pistols. And Witt lay thinking one grenade. One grenade, just one grenade.

All normal men. All out on a fairly normal mission. And now all dead.

John Bell on the other side of the dryriverbed had no grenades either. He had divested himself of everything except his rifle and one bandolier for lightness’ sake. But he knew, later, that even if he had had grenades he would never have stopped to use them. For the first time in this war, hysterical panic had taken him over. For him, too, the funny thing was the feeling of how normal it had all been, normal—and easy. Like a terrified jungle animal, he crawled away stealthily through the undergrowth, cunning and crafty, always uphill, always toward the company—and safety. Safety, safety. He did not care if anyone else was left alive or not. It would return often to haunt him later. It took him over half an hour to make the five minute climb. Nobody ever said a word to him about it, including Witt. Some things—unfortunately, usually only the most extreme—everybody understood.

In the morning they went down for the bodies. But before that had happened Witt had gone back to Cannon Company.

It was more than an hour before he could get back up the hill to C-for-Charlie’s perimeter. It took a half hour for all the Japanese troops to pass. And after that, since Gooch was dead now anyway and there was no hurry, he waited almost another half hour to make sure they had left no rear point or booby trappers. But they hadn’t. He was almost afraid to move enough to peep around and look. Finally, he sprinted across, stepping carefully among the bodies of the American dead. When he got back inside the company, he went straight to Band who was squatting by, and still questioning, Bell.

“I ought to kill you!” Witt said in a voice that was higher than he had meant it to be.

The longnosed, mean, and meanlooking, Italian Exec, who was standing near Band, pulled down with his carbine and covered him. Witt laughed at him.

“Don’t worry!” He turned back to Band. “You’re a lowlife, nogood, worthless, ignorant, stupid, legbreaking, shiteating bastard! You just got twelve men shot to hell and killed for nothin. Absolootly
nothin!
I hope yore happy! I love this compny better’n anything, but I wouldn’t serve in no outfit commanded by a son of a bitch like you! If they ever kill you or get rid of you, I might come back.”

He still had his rifle with him, and with this speech he slung it, turned his back on them to express his outrage, picked up the rest of his gear, and he left. He hiked the six hundred and fifty yards back through the night jungle, back to Baker Company, as he had earlier hiked it forward. At Baker, he paused just long enough to borrow some water and tell the story of the roadblock fiasco, and then went on. He did not get killed. Before daylight he was back with Cannon Company, which had been moved forward to The Shrimp’s Head to carry more rations and water, and where when he reported his section sergeant said only “Christ! You? I thought you’d been knocked off,” and rolled over and went back to sleep.

“I had every right and every reason in the world to shoot him down,” the longnosed, mean, and meanlooking, Italian Exec said after he had left. “Like a dog!”

“No, you did right. I think he was a bit hysterical from what he went through,” Band murmured. Band had not moved and was still squatting, by Bell. He was blinking slowly behind his steel-rimmed spectacles.

“I should have shot him,” the Italian Exec said, bitterly. “He threatened his own Company Commander!”

“No, no. It’s all right,” Band murmured. He went on blinking slowly behind his glasses.

Over on the other side of the perimeter Sergeants Skinny Culn and Milly Beck looked at each other.

“Well?” Culn said.

Beck shrugged. “He’s still the Company Commander.”

Back with the officers Bell finished telling them his story for the second time. “I guess we better wait till morning,” Band murmured. He was still blinking slowly behind his glasses.

It was a pretty sorry sight. Two had been shot in the back of the head with pistols as they lay in the sand. The dryriverbed seemed to be strewn with all of them. One other, like Gooch, had managed to creep up the bank without the Japanese seeing him, and had crawled off a few yards to die, alone, in the underbrush. They carried them all back up the hill and buried them with the two men from yesterday. It made quite a little cemetery. They did all this as soon as there was the faintest light to see by, and they hurried with it as much as they could. Band, who still blinked slowly behind his glasses from time to time when he addressed someone directly, was still pushing hard to make Boola Boola.

The Japanese had taken every weapon and every bit of ammunition they could find down in the draw. Luckily, one of the men to die directly behind Bell against the bank had been a BAR man, who accidentally had tossed his weapon ahead of him up into the undergrowth as he fell. That one was found. But it was with one BAR short—as well as being short twelve more Pfcs and privates—that they started off for Boola Boola just as the sun came up out of the sea, beautifully and gloriously, on the third morning of the attack. On the other hand, they now had the Ding Dong Trail all the way and would have no chopping work to do except possibly for those hills they would have to take along the way. B-for-Baker came up just as they were moving out, bringing new stretcher bearers. Then it was the jungle all over again for C-for-Charlie. Hours and hours. Heat.