The Thin Red Line (72 page)

Two days after Bosche arrived in C-for-Charlie the campaign for Guadalcanal ended. The last Japanese were either killed, captured or evacuated by their own people, and the island was secured. This date happened to coincide with the Regimental Commander’s promotion to Brigadier. More to celebrate this than the ending of the campaign, they were given a day off from training. It was supposed to be a party—a beerburst given and paid for by the Colonel. Unfortunately, the beer was hot, and it turned out that there was slightly less than a can per man. Perhaps this influenced the general reception of the Colonel’s speech.

He was pretty well oiled, of course. All of the higher officers sitting on the platform of planks and sawhorses were. They had been celebrating the promotion. And The Great White Father had never been noted for being much of an afterdinner speaker. When introduced, he got up swaying slightly under his mottled red face and said in his drill voice: “You men got this star for me!” He touched it on his shoulder. “Now I want you to go out and get one for Colonel Grubbe, too!” Then he sat down. There were no cheers.

Col Grubbe, who though a New Englander nevertheless closely resembled the longnosed, mean, and meanlooking Johnny Creo, contented himself with saying he only hoped he made as good a commander as his predecessor and to point the matter up asked for a cheer for the new General. This time there were a few indulgent, ironic ones. John Bell, though he could not speak for the others, went away wanting to vomit out of sheer rage and anger or maybe it was the hot beer. The next day he was made a platoon sergeant by Bosche.

There were promotions dropping like propaganda leaflets all over. Once Bosche had arrived and been installed, the TO was unfrozen and he could make whoever he wanted to fill the vacancies of the last battle. True to his own estimate of his character as given in his speech, he allowed himself to be advised by his platoon sergeants. This time the casualties had been much less high than at The Dancing Elephant. Not counting the twelve men dead at The Glory Hunter’s roadblock, there were only seven men dead in the company, making a grand total of nineteen. The wounded were also correspondingly light, only eighteen in all. Of these, seven were sergeants. An interesting statistical sidelight on The Battle for Boola Boola, and on all of the fighting done in the coconut groves those two days, was that there was an enormously greater percentage of leg wounds than normal. This was attributed to the fact that the Japanese were so starved and weak at this point that they could not raise their rifles high enough to aim any higher. True or not, more than half of C-for-Charlie’s wounded were leg wounds. One of these was Platoon Sergeant “Jimmy” Fox of the 3d Platoon, and it was the 3d Platoon which Captain Bosche gave to John Bell. The other platoon vacancy was not due to casualties at all, and came as an odd strange surprise to almost everybody. On an order coming all the way down from the Division Commander himself, but which must have been largely controlled and handled by Regiment, Sgt Skinny Culn was given a field commission as a 2nd Lieutenant. It was almost the first, it
was
the first, experience any of them (excepting John Bell) had had to do with the crossing or breaking of the officer caste system. Their Old Army was breaking up under the pressure of war and grinning with pleased embarrassment, Culn packed to leave and be sworn in and assigned to another Regiment. His 1st Platoon was given by Bosche to Charlie Dale the ex-Second Cook, who now had one whole quart mason jar full of gold teeth as the beginning of his collection. Beck of course remained in charge of the 2d Platoon. But his platoon guide second in command was out because of a wound at Boola Boola. His place was given to Buck Sergeant Don Doll, who was promoted to Staff to replace him. And all down the line others moved up to replace the promoted.

Through it all, through everything, the training went right on. Green replacements were beginning to pour into the island and get themselves apportioned out. For the first time in a long time C-for-Charlie found itself almost back at strength. These new ones were assigned to squads and incorporated in the range firings, small units’ tactics problems, the simulated landings. “Cannon Fodder” they were called, as C-for-Charlie itself had once been called, and they watched men like Beck and Doll and Geoffrey Fife with the same awe with which Beck and Doll and Fife, themselves now bearded, had once watched the bearded Marines. They were not, however, to remain bearded long.

In a way it was sort of sad. Their beards, since they first started to nurture them in the week after The Dancing Elephant, were precious status symbols. They symbolized the comparative freedom of the frontline combat infantryman, when compared with the tighter, more disciplined, ‘garrison’ type life of the rear area troops. Even the thinnest most straggly nineteenyearold beard was worn proudly by its grower as the symbol of a combat man. Now, on orders from the Division Commander, these were being taken from them. As the fighting with its attendant excitement and hysteria faded—that same fighting which they were so proud of having done, and felt they deserved some credit for—as this faded, they were being forced back into the tighter discipline of garrison living, just as if they were real garrison troops who had never fired a shot in anger. In fact, it was like living in garrison, now: Saturday inspections, crappy training every weekday, work and fatigue details, Sundays off. Everybody knew the training was mostly bullshit, that when they got up there again next time nothing would happen like it was supposed to in the training manuals, and all this fucking training would be useless. The only thing really worthwhile was the range firing practice, at which they were teaching these incredibly badly trained replacements how to shoot their rifles; but the rest was crap. And now their beards. After a few late night meetings and passionate swipe-inspired speeches, it was decided to make a formal protest to Captain Bosche. Milly Beck, as the senior platoon sergeant now, was delegated to carry the message. It would be the first time they would see Bosche in action with his you-back-me-up-?ll-back-you-up declaration.

“You know this trainin is mostly horseshit, Captain,” Milly told him earnestly. “It ain’t gonna mean a fuckin damn thing when we get up there again. We—”

“No, Sergeant Beck,” Bosche said, rubbing his always immaculately and smoothly shaven, little fat round jaw. “Let me make it plain that I don’t agree with you there at all.”

“Well, Okay, Captain. Like you say, you probly seen more combat than we have. But we still think it’s bullshit. Except for the range firin, a course. But we’ve gone right on and done ever bit of it, and nobody’s goofed off and nobody’s complained. We’ve backed you up on it right down the line.”

“I know you have, Sergeant,” Bosche said.

“Well, now they want to take away our beards. That’s nothin but just plain, lowdown, dirty pool. We—”

“Unfortunately, there happens to be in Army Regulations a paragraph which specifically states that beards will not be worn in the Army. I think it dates back to the Cavalry and Indians Wars. The Division Commander has seen fit to invoke that particular Regulation. I don’t see that there’s a damn thing I can do about it.”

“Well, will you write him a letter of protest for us?” Milly Beck asked earnestly. “We—”

“You know you can’t go around writing letters of protest like that in the Army, Sergeant,” Bosche said evenly. “When I get an order from a superior, I have to obey it just like you do.”

“I see,” Beck said. “Then you won’t write the letter for us?”

“I don’t see how I possibly can. I can’t.”

“Okay.” Beck scratched among his own tangled growth and thought for a moment. “Well, what about mustaches, Captain?”

“The order says nothing about mustaches. As far as I know, there is nothing in Army Regulations which says an enlisted soldier cannot wear a mustache. In fact, I think there is somewhere a paragraph specifically permitting it.”

“I know,” said Milly Beck. “I mean, I think there is, too. I think I’ve seen it. But you won’t write the letter for us about the beards? How much they mean to us?”

“I would,” Bosche said simply. “I’d be glad to. But I simply can’t. My hands are tied.”

“Okay, Sir. Aye aye,” Beck said and saluted.

And that was all he had to bring back and report. In the first test of his you-back-me-up-I’ll-back-you-up policy Bosche, it was decided, had come off a little less well than his promise. He was, it appeared, just like everybody else in this world, and no titan at all. If just one officer, one Company Commander, had seen fit to write the Division Commander about the importance of beards, maybe the Division Commander would have rescinded the order. No Company commander did. Almost overnight, beards disappeared from Guadalcanal, except for a few New Zealand Pioneer outfits, and some small US Marine units who had never seen any combat anyway. But the mustaches stayed. The only way left to protest the loss of beards now was to grow the most ridiculous, outlandish mustaches possible, and those who had sufficient face hair tried. And the training went right on.

The sense of doom was growing now. Nobody really wanted to go up to New Georgia, not even the swashbucklers. Doll and Fife had become bosom buddies since the night of Fife’s fight, and they discussed the thing privately. Fife found himself oppressed by a deep and penetrating sense of the doom growing everywhere within the Division. This on the other hand did not bother Doll at all and, while he admitted that he really did not want to go, he found certain things exciting and intriguing about going up to New Georgia.

“We got it and it’s here,” he said. “There ain’t a fucking damn thing we can do about it. So there it is. And there’s certain things about combat that I find enjoyable.

“Do you believe there’s any life after death?” he asked after a moment.

“I don’t know,” Fife mumbled. “Certainly not like all the churches say anyway. The Japs believe if they die fighting they go straight to heaven forever. How primitive can you get? I just don’t know. That’s the truth.”

“Well, I don’t know either,” Doll said. “But sometimes I can’t help wondering about it.

“Let’s go down to the dump and get some canned fruit,” he grinned after a pause.

This was one of their favorite pastimes, ever since the making of swipe had started. The two of them had, in effect, become the canned fruit suppliers for the whole of C-for-Charlie. There was, Fife knew, something deathlike about it. He was not like Doll. And yet he always went. It was like biting on your own wound.

They would swagger up, hands resting on their holster flaps. They were swashbucklers. Fife had a pistol too now, come by at Boola Boola where he had taken it off a dead American he had found lying facedown with his toes turned in or was it out? They really were swashbucklers, and Fife loved it. Because for these few moments he could believe he was what the new cannonfodder thought he really was. A soldier? a pirate? anyway, a swashbuckler. The moment he found out about the swipe making, the General Commanding had ordered armed guards posted on all the ration dumps. They had orders to shoot to kill. That was what made it fun.

So they would walk up. The armed guard would be sitting way up there up on top, rifle in hand, and he would always be a cannonfodder. What you gonna do with that gun, bud? one of them would say. Shoot me or somethin like that? Nobody who was really hep called it a piece or arm any more. Usually they would be shouted at. By the cannonfodder. There would be threatening gestures. Somebody, some wit, in the company made up a word for the especially weak ones, which was cannonmudder. They would simply stand and look at him, hands resting on their holster flaps. Then they would take what they wanted and walk away, turning their backs disdainfully. Nobody was ever shot. But Fife was not like Doll. And he knew it.

When he first realized it, it was that bad time after the combat numbness left them and they had not yet found out about the swipe. He had never believed that he could be terrified by any of these puny piddling little air raids again, but he was. And Doll obviously was not. Fife had thought the combat numbness was a new state of mind. And when it went away and left him again a quivering mass of jelly, he was not prepared. He was forced to face once again the same fact he had faced before, which was that he was not a soldier. He was right back where he started. It took every ounce of courage he could muster to continue sitting under the cocopalm drinking and not run dive into his slit trench during the air raids. He could do it and he did but it cost him more than it did other people, like Doll. So he was forced to face up once again to the same old fact he had always known. He was a coward.

Perhaps it was that, that knowledge, which made him take advantage of the loophole when it appeared and Old MacTae the young supply sergeant told him he should. Of course, everybody who possibly could was taking advantage of the loophole. Even Doll tried to take advantage of it, but he was so disgustingly healthy that there was nothing at all he could do. The loophole was the recently discovered fact that Division hospital had relaxed the sternness of their evacuation policy.

It all started with Carni, Mazzi’s hep pal from Greater New York in the 1st Platoon. Almost everybody except a few like Doll now had malaria in the company. But Carni had it so bad that he really could not function. Day after day he went on sick call with it, was handed a handful of atabrine, and came back to lie on his bunk totally incapacitated. And now, because of the atabrine, he had yellow jaundice to boot. Then one day he did not come back from sick call. Two days later they were informed he had been evacuated.

He was the first. Immediately almost everybody who had any malaria at all went on sick call. Unfortunately it helped almost no one. But slowly, over the weeks, first one then another of the honestly serious cases began to disappear and not come back from sick call. They were being sent, for the present moment anyway,—or so rumor had it—to either Naval Base Hospital No. 3 on Ephate in the New Hebrides, or to New Zealand. Naturally New Zealand was better, and there was much anguish in almost every outfit at the thought of friends getting drunk and laid in Auckland New Zealand. Ephate had only one small town in which there was nothing except natives who tried to sell souvenir handcarved boats to everybody and to each other.