The Thin Red Line

there were many dead on the ridge but the big brass kept ordering: "attack!" Part II

In the preceding installment, the author once more revealed his mastery in depicting a single engagement against the broad panorama of war, as he told how C Company, under the command of Captain Stein, suffered heavy casualties while attacking Hill 210 during the bloody Guadalcanal campaign. Stein's superior, Colonel Tall (via field telephone from behind the lines) had just ordered a fresh attack on the enemy's heavily entrenched defense of the hill -- to impress a group of visiting brass.

"Do you want me to go ahead with my attack?" Stein had asked, because it wasn't plain from what he'd heard. "Over."

"What else?" the Col's thin, outraged voice piped at him. "What else, Stein? You're not supposed to be down there on a goddamned asshole vacation. Now, get cracking!" There was a pause and Stein could hear electrical whinings and what sounded like polite mumblings. He heard one distinct, respectful "Yes, sir" in Tall's voice. Then the Colonel's voice came back on again, much kinder now, more jovial. "Get cracking, boy! Get cracking!" Tall said heartily. "Over and out."

Stein came back to himself to find himself looking into the wide, nervous eyes of Fife. He handed him the phone. Well, that was that. He had not even got to explain his attack plan, and he would have liked to because once again he could not be sure that he was right. But the big brass had arrived at the phone station, obviously. There was no point in trying to call back while Tall had those people clustered around him.

Yes, the big brass. The observers. Today they even had an Admiral. Stein had a sudden and unholy, heartfreezing picture, which transfixed him for a moment, bulge-eyed, of an identical recurrence up there now of the scene he himself had witnessed on Hill 207 two days ago. The same harassed, apprehensive Battalion Colonel with field glasses; the same diffident, but equally apprehensive little knot of eagles and stars peering over his spiritual shoulder; the same massed mob of pawns and minor pieces craning to see like a stadium crowd; all were up there right now, going through the identical gyrations their identical counterparts had gone through two days ago. While down below were the same blood-sweating Captains and their troops going through theirs. Only this time he himself, he Jim Stein, was one of them, one of the committed ones. The committed ones going through their exaggerated pretenses of invoking the cool calm logic and laws of the science of tactics. And tomorrow it would be someone else. It was a horrifying vision: all of them doing the same identical thing, all of them powerless to stop it, all of them devoutly and proudly believing themselves to be free individuals. It expanded to include the scores of nations, the millions of men, doing the same on thousands of hilltops across the world. And it didn't stop there. It went on. It was the concept -- concept? the fact; the reality -- of the modern State in action. It was so horrible a picture that Stein could not support or accept it. He put it away from him, and blinked his bulging eyes. What he had to do right now was get his Company HQ over behind the third fold with Keck and the 2nd Platoon.

From the top of the third fold there was really very little to see. Stein and his sergeants lay behind the crest and looked as they talked. In front of them perhaps a hundred yards away the waiting grassy ridge rose, apparently devoid of life. Behind it at some distance the upper reaches of the Elephant's Head, their real objective, rose still higher. The stony open ground, thinly grassed, fell gently in a rolling motion for 50 yards, then leveled out.

Tactically Lt Whyte (whose body still lay just beyond the crest) had served no good purpose at all with his charge, Stein saw immediately. Whyte's platoon, situated further to the left where the white eyeballs and sweating faces of 2d Platoon now lay watching Stein, had rolled forward in a long wave not directed at either ridge but with its ends lapping against both, while the main strength bulged out into the open center which served only to funnel the fire from both ridges and the Hill itself. It couldn't have been handled worse.

But that was that. This was this. Stein's problem now as he saw it, his first problem anyway, was the getting of his men from the comparative safety of here down that f--ing outrageous bareass slope to the comparative safety of the foot of the ridge, where they would be defiladed from the MGs and protected from the mortars by their closeness to the Japanese. Once they were there--But getting them there--

Stein had already decided to use only two squads of his 2d Platoon, augmented by the men already hiding down there. He was not sure this was enough, and he had not got to discuss it with Col Tall, but he did not want to commit more men until he had some idea of what was against him. He had also decided how to choose the two squads. In fact, he had given more thought to this than to the other. He was obsessed by a feeling of moral culpability about choosing which men to send in. Some of them would surely die, and he did not want to choose which ones. Rather than do that he decided simply to take arbitrarily the first two squads on the right of the line (they were the closest), and thus let Luck or Chance or Fate or whatever agency ran the lives of men do the choosing. That way no agent of retribution could hold him responsible. Lying on the slope, he told Keck which ones he wanted. Keck, who certainly would know, who always knew just where his men were, nodded and said that that would be McCron's and Beck's squads, the 2d and the 3d. Stein nodded back, feeling sorry for them. McCron the motherhen, and Milly Beck the martinet. John Bell was in McCron's squad.

But before he could do anything with his two squads he must, Stein felt, know more about the men already down there. They were already there, and wouldn't have to run the gauntlet, but what sort of shape were they in? Were any of them wounded? Did they have a noncom with them? Was their morale unbroken? Stein felt he had to know, and the only way to find out was to send somebody. He sent Charlie Dale.

It was an extraordinary performance. The little man licked his lips in their mean, dull grin, hitched up his rifle and Thompsongun, and nodded his head. He was ready to go. Stein, who had never liked him, and didn't like him now, watched him go with a growing admiration which only increased his dislike. He went dogtrotting and unblinking (the thick set of his back made you know he was not blinking) in a straight line down the open slope toward the grassy ridge. He ran bent over at the waist in that peculiar fashion everybody instinctively adopted, but he did not zig or zag. Nothing touched him. Arriving, he dived into the thicker grass and disappeared. Three minutes later he reappeared, and came dogtrotting and unblinking back. Stein could not help wondering what he thought about, but would not ask.

Charlie Dale would have been pleased to have been asked. But he really did not think much of anything. He had been told that all Japs had bad eyes and wore glasses and were poor marksmen, anyway. He knew nothing could hit him. Going down, he concentrated his eyes and all his attention on the foot of the ridge. Coming back, he concentrated on a spot at the crest of the fold. The only thing he really thought about or felt was a querulous irritation that Storm and the other cooks had been sent off to the 3d Platoon and so weren't here to see him. This, and the fact that after he had completed one or two more of these things, he ought to be able to move into a rifle platoon as at least a corporal or perhaps even as a sergeant, and in this way get out of the kitchen without having to become a private. This had been his secret plan from the beginning. And he had noted that casualties among the noncoms were already pretty heavy.

Dale arrived back at the third fold a hero. In its way it was quite a feat, what he had done. Even from the crest of the fold it was possible to see the amount of MG and riflefire which had been hitting the ground all around him. Everybody who had not wanted to go, and would not have gone, was pleased with him; and Dale was pleased with himself. Everyone within reach slapped him on the back as he made his way to Stein to make his report, which was that they were all okay down there, that their morale was unimpaired, but that they did not have a noncom with them. They were all privates.

"All right," Stein said, still lying beside Keck on the reverse slope. "Now, listen. They haven't got a noncom with them, and I can't send anybody here away from his own squad. If you want to go back down there with the others when they go, I'll make you an acting sergeant right now, and you'll be in command of that extra squad. Do you want to do that?"

"Sure," Dale said at once. He made his mean grin and licked his lips. "Sure, sir." He bobbed his head on his perpetually hunched shoulders, and his expression changed to one of patently false humility. "If you think I'm capable, sir. If you think I can do it."

Stein looked at him with distaste, not very well concealed. But it was concealed enough for Charlie Dale's acumen. --Or was it? "Okay," he said. "I make you acting sergeant. You'll go down with the others."

"Aye, sir," Dale said. "But dont you have to say hereby?"

"What?"

"I said: Dont you have to say hereby? You know, to make it official." In some slow-stirring, labyrinthine depth of his animal's mind Dale seemed to be suspicious of Stein's honesty.

"No. I dont have to say hereby. Hereby what? I dont have to say anything but what I've said. You're an acting sergeant. You'll go down with the others."

"Aye, sir," Dale said and crawled away.

Stein and Keck exchanged a glance. "I think I better go down, too, Cap'n," Keck said. "Somebody should be in charge down there."

Stein nodded, slowly. "I guess you're (continued on page 130) Thin Red Line (continued from page 118) right. But take care of yourself. I need you."

"I'll take care of myself as good as anybody can around here," was Keck's humorless answer.

Around them the tension over the attack was beginning to mount and be felt. It showed plainly on the faces of 2d Platoon, white-eyed and sweating, and all turned toward the little group of leaders like a row of sunflowers turned toward the sun. On the left the first elements of the 3d Platoon had reappeared in the low between the second and third folds and were making their way toward Stein running bent over at the waist, the others following strung out behind them. Over the top of the second fold behind him another, lone figure came hurrying toward Stein, also running bent over at the waist. It was Witt returning, this time with his rifle and some extra bandoliers. Everything seemed to be concentrating. The moment of truth, Stein thought and looked at his watch, which said 12:02. Moment of truth, s-- -- --. My God, could it have been that long? It seemed like only seconds. And yet it seemed like years, too. It was at this moment that Pfc Doll -- or his fate for him -- chose to return from his hazardous mission to 1st Platoon.

Doll came running up the slight slope at about the middle of the 2d Platoon, dove over the crest and fell, then scrambled along the reverse slope to where Stein was, to report. He had found Sgt Culn. But arriving at the knot of leaders he collapsed, sobbing for breath for almost a minute. There was no giggling this time, and no arch display of insouciance. His face was drawn and strained, the lines beside his open mouth deeply etched. He had run along the uneven line of holes calling for Skinny Culn, with fire being put down all around him. Men had looked up at him from their holes with startled disbelief on their faces. His body, abetted by his imagination, had quickly reached the point where it was threatening to disobey him. Finally three holes in front of him a hand and arm had shot into the air, the hand describing the old circular hand-and-arm signal for 'Gather here.' Doll had pulled up to find Culn lying placidly on his side and grinning up at him ruefully, his rifle hugged against his chest. "Come right in," Culn said; but Doll had already dived. The hole wasn't big enough for two men. They had huddled together in it while Doll brought Culn up to date on the casualties, told him Stein's plan, told him 1st Platoon's part in it. Culn had scratched his reddish stubble. "So I got the platoon. Well, well. Okay, tell him I'll try. But you tell Bugger we're sort of de-morale-ized down here, as it says in the field manuals. But I'll do the best I can." Seconds later Doll had been back behind the third fold in what seemed to him to be enormous safety, and then reporting to Stein. He made his report proudly.

Doll did not know what kind of reception he had expected from them, but it was not the one that he got. Charlie Dale had already returned before him, and from a tougher mission, and with much less display of nerves. 3d Platoon was in the act of arriving, and had to be taken care of by Stein. And the mounting tension of the coming attack made everybody rather preoccupied, anyway. Bugger listened to his report and nodded, gave him a pat on the arm as one might toss a fish to a trained seal after its act, him and dismissed him. Doll had no choice but to crawl away, his bravery and heroism ignored and unappreciated. Wondering that he was still alive, he ached to tell somebody how narrowly he had escaped death. And then, as he sat down and looked up, there adding salt to his wounds was Charlie Dale, sitting nearby and grinning a rapaciously superior grin at him. While he sat and started back at him, Doll was forced to listen to little Private Bead, lying beside him, recount the tale of Dale's exploit.

Nor was Dale all. Witt, the mad volunteer, the crazy sentimental Kentuckian who wanted to come back to a rifle company under fire, had been crouching behind Doll all during Doll's report, waiting his own turn at Stein. Now he reported too and when Stein briefly explained the impending attack to him, he immediately asked permission to go along. Stein, unable to hide his stunned disbelief entirely, nodded his agreement and sent Witt over to Milly Beck's squad. It was this final straw, this blow in the face by Fate, added to the knowledge that Charlie Dale was going -- and as an acting sergeant yet, which made Doll open his mouth and speak up. As much a reflex as the yell of a man pricked with a knife, Doll heard his voice. With horror he listened to himself asking, in a clear, bell-like, resolute, confident tone, if he could not go along himself. When Stein said yes and sent him to McCron's squad, he crawled away biting the inside of his lip so hard that it brought tears to his eyes. He was wishing he could do worse: bang his head up and down on a rock; bite a whole chunk out of his arm. Why did he do things like this to himself? Why did he?

There was nothing to keep them now. Everything was arranged. They could get on with it any time. Stein and Keck lay side by side behind the little crest, with 1st Sgt Welsh lying beside them in a flatfaced, uncommunicative silence, and looked it over one more time. Stein had placed 3d Platoon about 30 yards behind and below them on the slope, in two echelons of two squads each; they were to be ready to attack and exploit any advantage which arose. He had sent word back to his mortar section to raise their fire further up the ridge. He had his one remaining machinegun placed behind the crest of the third fold. Off to the left on the lefthand grassy ridge a lot of fire was being put forth but Stein did not see any of B-for-Baker moving. As he watched, two Japanese mortar rounds landed and went up, there. It was impossible to tell if they hurt anyone.

"I think we better send them down in bunches of three or four, at irregular intervals," he said turning his head to Keck. "When they're all there, space them out. Advance them by rushes, or in a line. Use your own judgment. -- I guess you might as well go."

"I'll take the first bunch down myself," Keck said huskily, staring down the slope. "Listen, Cap'n," he said, looking at Stein, and at Brass Band who had just come up, "there's something I wanted to tell you. That guy Bell is a good man. He's pretty steady. He helped me get going and get the platoon out of that hole we were in after that charge." He paused. "I just wanted to tell you."

"Okay. I'll remember." Stein felt an unnamable, nigh-unbearable anguish that he could not do anything about. It forced him to look away down the slope. Beside him Keck started to crawl off.

"Give them hell, Sergeant!" George Band said cheerily. "Give them hell!"

Keck paused in his crawl long enough to look back. "Yeh," he said.

The two squads, with their three extramen, had more or less separated themselves from the other half of the platoon. The most of them, in their bodily attitudes and in their faces, resembled sheep about to be led to the slaughter pens in Chicago. They waited. Keck had only to crawl to them and instruct them. "Okay, you guys. This is it. We're goin down in groups of four. No point in goin by rushes, only make a better target stopped. So run all the way. We aim got any choice. We're picked, and so we got to go. I'll take the first bunch myself to show you how easy it is. I want Charlie Dale with me. Dale? So you can organize them guys that's down there. Let's move out."

He started the crawl to the jumpoff point just beyond the knot of officers and CP men, and it was here that the first case of overt cowardice occurred in C-for-Charlie. A big, beautifully muscled man named Sico, an Italian draftee from Philly with some five months' service, suddenly sat down in his tracks and began to hold his stomach and groan. It blocked the line behind him and when (Continued on Page 166) Thin Red Line (continued from page 130) somebody called, the ones in front stopped also. Keck crawled back to him. His squad sergeant. Beck the martinet, crawled over to him too. Beck was very young for a martinet, but he was a very good one. The rifles of his squad had been the most perfect at inspections since he came into the company with six years' service and immediately got promoted. Withal, he still was not really mean, only stern. He was not very bright at anything else or even interested, but soldiering was his code. Right now he appeared deeply ashamed that anything like this could happen to any man in his squad, and because of this, furious.

"Get up, God damn you, Sico," he said in his stern, command voice. "Or I'll kick you so hard in that stomach you'll really be sick."

"I can't, Sergeant," Sico said. His face was drawn up grotesquely. And his eyes were puddles of terror, bottomless, anguished, and a little guilty. "I would if I could. You know I would. I'm sick."

"Sick, my foot," said Beck, who never swore much, and for whom the phrase God damn you was inordinately strong.

"Hold it, Beck," Keck said. "What is it, Sico?"

"I don't know, Sergeant. It's my stomach. Pains. And cramps. I can't straighten up. I'm sick," he said, looking at Keck appealingly out of the dark, tortured holes of his eyes. "I'm sick," he said again, and as if to prove it suddenly vomited. He did not even try to bend over and the vomit burped up out of him and ran down over his fatigue shirt onto his hands which held his belly. He looked at Keck hopefully, but appeared ready to do it again if necessary.

Keck studied him a moment. "Leave him," he said to Beck. "Come on. -- The medics will take care of you, Sico," he said to Sico.

"Thank you, Sergeant," Sico said.

"But --" Beck began.

"Dont argue with me," Keck said, already crawling away.

"Right," Beck said, and followed.

Sico continued to sit and watched the others pass. The medics did indeed take care of him. One of them, the junior, though he looked much like his shy-faced, bespectacled senior, came and led him back to the rear, Sico walking bent over in pain with his hands holding his stomach. He groaned audibly from time to time and now and then he gagged, but apparently did not feel it necessary to vomit more. His face was haunted-looking and his eyes tormented. But clearly nobody would ever convince him he had not been sick. Whenever he looked at the C-for-Charlie men he passed, it was appealingly, a certain unspoken request for understanding, for belief. As for the others, they looked back noncommittally. None of their faces held contempt. Instead, under the white-eyed sweating pucker of fear, there was a hint of sheepish envy, as if they would have liked to do the same but were afraid they could not bring it off. Sico, who could undoubtedly read this look, apparently got no comfort from it. He tottered on, helped by the junior medic, and the last that C-for-Charlie ever saw of him was when he hobbled out of sight beyond the second fold.

In the meantime Keck's men had begun their gauntlet-running. Keck led off with Dale and two other men. Each squad sergeant, first Milly Beck then McCron, supervised the jumpoff of his men in groups of four. All of them made it down safely except two. Of these one, a Mississippi farmer 'boy' of nearly 40 named Catt, about whom nobody in the company knew anything for the simple reason that he never talked, was killed outright. But with the other something really bad happened for the first time in the day.

At first they thought the second one was dead too. Hit running, he had fallen, bounced hard, and lain still like the Mississippian. So that was that. When a man was hit and killed outright, there was nothing anyone could do. The man had ceased to exist. The living went right on living, without him. On the other hand, the wounded were evacuated. They would live or die someplace else. So they too ceased to exist to the men they left behind, and could be forgotten also. Without a strong belief in a Valhalla, it was as good a way to handle the problem as any, and made everybody feel better. But this was not to be the case with Pvt Alfredo Tella of Cambridge, Massachusetts, who, as he liked jokingly to say, 'had not gone to Harvard, but he had dug many a cesspool underneath its ivy-covered walls.'

Actually, Tella did not begin to yell, at least not loud enough to be heard by Bugger Stein's CP, until after Keck had framed and then carried out most of his attack. And by that time lots of other things were happening.

For the moment, there was still nothing much to be seen from the top of the fold. Two new bodies lay on the slope, and that was all. Keck and his running men had dived headfirst into the taller grass and apparently disappeared from the face of the earth. The yammering of the cortex of Japanese fire had ceased. Quiet -- at least, a comparative quiet, if one disregarded the racketing and banging which still hung and jounced everywhere high in the air -- reigned over the grassy ridge. On the third fold they lay and waited, watching.

Unfortunately, the Japanese heavy mortars, still firmly seated on the heights of the Elephant's Head, had seen the forward movement of American troops, too. A mortar round exploded in the low between the folds. That one hurt nobody, but more followed. Mortar shells began exploding their fountains of terror, dirt and fragments along the rearward slope every minute or so, as the Japanese gunners fingered the area searching American flesh. It was not a barrage, but it was very nerve racking, and it wounded some men. Because of it, only a very few, Stein, Band and Welsh among them, actually saw Keck's attack. Most were as flat to the ground as they could get.

Stein felt it was his duty to watch, to observe. Anyway, there was very little choice as to cover. There were no holes here, and one flat place was as good as another. So he lay, only his eyes and helmet above the crest of the fold, and waited and watched. He could not escape a distinct premonition that quite soon a mortar shell was going to land squarely in the center of his back. He did not know why Band had decided to watch too, but suspected that it was in the hope of seeing some new wounded, though he knew this was unfair. And as for Welsh, Stein could not even imagine why this flatfaced, expressionless man should want to expose himself to watch, especially since he had not said a single word to anyone since offering his Thompsongun to Keck. The three of them lay there while a mortar shell blew up somewhere behind them, then a minute later another, then almost a minute later still another. There were no screams with any of them.

When they finally did see men, it was about a third of the way up the ridge. Keck had crawled his men that far unseen. Now they rose in a line, which bellied downhill somewhat in the center like a rope bellying of its own weight, and began to scamper uphill firing as they went. Almost immediately the Japanese fire began to hammer, and at once men began to fall.

If Pvt Alfredo Tella of Cambridge, Mass., had begun to yell before this, no one had heard him. And in the intensity of the action and of watching, no one was to hear him until it was over.

In fact, it did not last long. But while it did, many things happened. Arriving in the defiladed area, Keck had first turned his attention to organizing the disorganized group of privates already there, and sent Dale to do that. Then he himself lay in the grass directing the others off to the right as they arrived. When the line was formed, he gave the order to crawl. The grass which was about chest high here had a matted, tangled underlayer of old stems. It choked them with dust, tied up their arms and feet, made it impossible to see. They crawled for what seemed an eternity. It required tremendous exertion. Most of them had long since used up all of their water, and it was this as much as anything in Keck's mind when he passed the word to halt. He judged they were about halfway up the slope, and he didn't want them to start passing out on him. For a moment as Keck lay gathering his will power he thought about their faces as they arrived and dived into the grass down below: whites of the eyes showing, mouths open and drawn, skin around the eyes pinched and tight. They had all arrived terrified. They had all arrived reluctant. Keck felt no sympathy for them, any more than he felt sympathy for himself. He was terrified too. Taking a deep breath he stood straight up in the grass yelling at them: "Up! Up! Up! Up and GO!"

From the top of the fold they could take the operation in at a glance, and follow its progress. This was not so easy on the ridge itself. But John Bell standing rifle in hand and trying to shoot and run in the thick grass was able to see several important things. He was, for instance, the only man who saw Sgt McCron cover his face with his hands and sit down weeping. When they had first stood up, the fury of the Japanese fire had struck them like a wind-tormented hailstorm. The Japanese had been smart and had waited, conserving their fire till they had targets. Four men of McCron's squad went down at once. On the right a young draftee named Wynn was shot in the throat and screamed, "Oh, my God!" in a voice of terror and disbelief as a geyser of blood spurted from his neck. Ridiculously like a rag doll he fell and disappeared in the grass. Next to him Pfc Earl, a little shorter, was caught in the face, perhaps from the same burst. He went down without a sound, looking as if he'd been hit in the face with a tomato. To Bell's left two other men tumbled, yelling with fear that they were killed. All this was apparently too much for McCron, who had clucked over and mothered this squad of his for so many months, and he simply dropped his rifle and sat down crying. Bell himself was astonished that he himself was not already struck down dead. He only knew, could only think one thing. That was to keep going. He had to keep going. If he ever wanted to get back home again to his wife Marty, if he ever wanted to see her again, kiss her, put himself between her breasts, between her legs, fondle, caress, and touch her, he had to keep going. And that meant he had to keep the others going with him, because it was useless to keep going by himself. It had to stop. There had to be a point in time where it ended. In a cracked bellow he began to harangue the remainder of McCron's 2d Squad. In back of and a little below him off in the center as he looked behind, he saw Milly Beck leading his men in a fury of snarling hatred which shocked Bell numbly: Beck who was always so controlled and almost never raised his voice. Still below him yet came Keck, roaring and firing Welsh's Thompsongun uphill. A silly phrase came in Bell's mind and he began to yell at the other men senselessly. "Home for Christmas! Home for Christmas!"

Keep going. Keep going. It was a ridiculous thought, a stupid idea in any case and he would wonder later why he had it. Obviously, if he wanted to stay alive to get home, the best thing to do would have been to lie down in the grass and hide.

It was Charlie Dale on the far left who saw the first emplacement, the first live one any of them had ever actually seen. Far enough left to be beyond their flank, it was a one-gun job, a simple hole dug in the ground and covered over with sticks and kunai grass. From the dark hole he could see the muzzle spitting fire at him. Actually, Dale was probably the calmest of the lot. Imaginationless, he had organized his makeshift squad, and found them eager to accept his authority if he would simply tell them what to do. Now he urged them on, but not bellowing or roaring like Keck and Bell. Dale thought it looked much better, was far more seemly, if a noncom did not yell like that. So far he had not fired a shot. What was the point, when there were no targets? When he saw the emplacement, he carefully released his safety and fired a long burst with his Thompsongun, straight into the hole 20 yards away. Before he could release the trigger the gun jammed, solidly. But his burst was enough to stop the machinegun, at least momentarily, and Dale ran toward it pulling a grenade from his shirt. From 10 yards away he threw the grenade like a baseball, wrenching hell out of his shoulder. The grenade disappeared through the hole, then blew up scattering sticks and grass and three rag dolls and upending the machinegun. Dale turned back to his squad, licking his lips and grinning with beady pride. "Come on, you guys," he said. "Let's keep it moving."

They were almost done with it. Off to the right of center Pfc Doll and another man discovered a second small emplacement simultaneously. They fired a clip apiece into its hole and Doll grenaded it, keeping up his unspoken competition with Charlie Dale, even if he wasn't an acting sergeant. Wait'll he hears about that, he thought happily, because he didn't know that Dale had got one too. But the happiness was shortlived, for Doll and everybody else, as they ran on. Knocking out two one-gun emplacements made no appreciable difference in the volume of the Japanese fire. MGs still hammered at them from seemingly every quarter of the globe. Men were still going down. They still had not located any main strongpoints. Directly in front of them 30 yards away a rock outcropping formed a four-foot ledge which extended clear across their front. Instinctively everyone began to run for that, while behind them Keck, gasping, bellowed the useless order: "That ledge! Head for that ledge!"

They dived in behind its protection pellmell, all of them sobbing audibly with exhaustion. The exertion and the heat had been too much. Several men vomited. One man made it to the ledge, gurgled once senselessly, then -- his eyes rolling back in his head -- fainted from heat prostration. There was nothing with which to cover him for shade. Beck the martinet loosened his belt and clothes. Then they lay against the ledge in the midday sun and smelled the hot, summer-smelling dust. Insects hummed around them. The fire had stopped.

"Well, what're we gonna do now, Keck?" someone asked finally.

"We're gonna stay right here. Maybe they'll get some reinforcements up to us."

"Ha! To do what?"

"To capture these goddam f--ing positions around here!" Keck cried fretfully. "What you think?"

"You mean you really want to go on with it?"

"I dont know. No. Not no uphill charge. But they get us some reinforcements, we can scout around and maybe locate where all these goddam f--ing MGs are. Anyway, it's better than going back down through that. You want to go back down?"

Nobody answered this, and Keck did not feel it necessary to elaborate. By counting heads they found that they had left 12 men behind them on the slope killed or wounded. This was almost a full squad, almost a full third of their number. It included McCron. When Bell told him about McCron, Keck appointed Bell acting sergeant in his place; Bell couldn't have cared less. "He'll have to look out for himself, like the rest of the wounded," Keck said. They continued to lie in the hot sun. Ants crawled on the ground at the foot of the ledge.

"What if the Japs come down here in force and throw us off of here?" somebody asked.

"I dont think they will," Keck said. "They're worse off than we are. But we better have a sentry. Doll."

Bell lay with his face against the rock facing Witt. Witt lay looking back. Quietly in the insect-humming heat they lay and looked at each other. Bell was thinking that Witt had come through it all all right. Like himself. What power was it which decided one man should be hit, be killed, instead of another man? So Bugger's little feeling attack was over. If this were a movie, this would be the end of the show and something would be decided. In a movie or a novel they would dramatize and build to the climax of the attack. When the attack came in the film or novel, it would be satisfying. It would decide something. It would have a semblance of meaning and a semblance of an emotion. And immediately after, it would be over. The audience could go home and think about the semblance of the meaning and feel the semblance of the emotion. Even if the hero got killed, it would still make sense. Art, Bell decided, creative art -- was s--.

Beside him Witt, who was apparently not bothered by any of these problems, raised himself to his knees and cautiously stuck his head up over the ledge. Bell went on with his thinking.

Here there was no semblance of meaning. And the emotions were so many and so mixed up that they were indecipherable, could not be untangled. Nothing had been decided, nobody had learned anything. But most important of all, nothing had ended. Even if they had captured this whole ridge, nothing would have ended. Because tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that, they would be called upon to do the same thing again -- maybe under even worse circumstances. The concept was so overpowering, so numbing, that it shook Bell. Island after island, hill after hill, beachhead after beachhead, year after year. It staggered him.

It would certainly end sometime, sure, and almost certainly -- because of industrial production -- end in victory. But that point in time had no connection with any individual man engaged now. Some men would survive, but no one individual man could survive. It was a discrepancy in methods of counting. The whole thing was too vast, too complicated, too technological for any one individual man to count in it. Only collections of men counted, only communities of men, only numbers of men.

The weight of such a proposition was deadening, almost too heavy to be borne, and Bell wanted to turn his mind away from it. Free individuals? Ha! Somewhere between the time the first Marines had landed here and this battle now today, American warfare had changed from individualist warfare to collectivist warfare--or perhaps that was only his illusion, perhaps it only seemed like that to him because he himself was now engaged. But free individuals? What a f--ing myth! Numbers of free individuals, maybe; collectives of free individuals. And so the point of Bell's serious thinking finally emerged.

At some unspecified moment between this time yesterday and this time today the unsought realization had come to Bell that statistically, mathematically, arithmetically, any way you wanted to count it, he John Bell could not possibly live through this war. He could not possibly go home to his wife Marty Bell. So it did not really make any difference what Marty did, whether she stepped out on him or not, because he would not be there to accuse her.

The emotion which this revelation created in Bell was not one of sacrifice, resignation, acceptance, and peace. Instead, it was an irritating, chaffing emotion of helpless frustration which made him want to crawl around rubbing his flanks and back against rocks to ease the itch. He still had not moved his face from the rock.

Beside him Witt, still kneeling and peering out, yelled suddenly. Simultaneously Doll yelled too from down at the other end.

"Something's comin!"

"Something's comin! Somebody's comin at us!"

As one man the line behind the ledge swept up and forward, rifles ready. Forty yards away seven potheaded, bandy-legged, starved-looking Japanese men were running down at them across an ungrassed area carrying handgrenades in their right hands and bayoneted rifles in their left. Keck's Thompson, after his firing of almost all its ammo on the way up, had finally jammed, too. Neither gun could be unstuck. But the massed riflefire from the ledge disposed of the seven Japanese men quickly. Only one was able even to throw; and his grenade, a dud, landed short. At the same moment the dud grenade should have exploded, there was a loud, ringing, half-muffled explosion behind them. In the excitement of the attack and defense they continued to fire into the seven bodies up the slope. When they ceased, only two bodies continued to move. Aiming deliberately in the sudden quiet, Witt the Kentuckian put a killing round into each of them. "You never can tell about them tricky suicidal bastards," he said. "Even when they're hit."

It was Bell who first remembered the explosion behind them and turned around to see what had caused it. What he saw was Sgt Keck lying on his back with his eyes closed, in a strangely grotesque position, still holding the ring and safety pin of a handgrenade in his right hand. Bell called out, and rushing to him, they rolled him over gently and saw that there was nothing they could do for him. His entire right buttock and part of his back had been blown away. Some of his internal organs were visible, pulsing busily away, apparently going about their business as if nothing had happened. Steadily, blood welled in the cavity. Gently they laid him back.

It was obvious what had happened. In the attack, perhaps because his Thompsongun was jammed, but at any rate not firing his rifle, Keck had reached in his hip pocket to pull out a grenade. And in the excitement he had gotten it by the pin. Bell, for one, experienced a dizzying, near-fainting terror momentarily, at the thought of Keck standing and looking at that pin in his hand. Keck had leaped back from the line and sat down against a little dirt hummock to protect the others. Then the grenade had gone off.

Keck made no protest when they moved him. He was conscious, but apparently did not want to talk and preferred to keep his eyes closed. Two of them sat with him and tried to talk to him and reassure him while the others went back to the line, but Keck did not answer and kept his eyes shut. The little muscles at the corners of his mouth twitched jerkily. He spoke only once. Without opening his eyes he said clearly, "What a f--ing recruit trick to pull."Five minutes later he stopped breathing. The men went back. Milly Beck, as the senior noncom present, was now in command.

Stein had watched the silly little Japanese counterattack from the top of the third fold. The seven Japanese men had come out from behind a huge outcrop, already running and already too close to the Americans for Stein to dare tell his one MG to fire. The counterattack was doomed to failure anyway. What made them do it? Why, if they wanted to throw Stein's platoon off the ridge, did they not come in force? Why just seven men? And why come across the open ground? They could have slipped down through the grass until they were on top of Keck and thrown the grenades from there. Were those seven men doing all that on their own, without orders? Or were they some kind of crazy religious volunteers who wanted into Nirvana, or whatever it was they called it? Stein did not understand them, and had never understood them. Their incredibly delicate, ritual tea service; their exquisitely sensitive painting and poetry; their unbelievably cruel, sadistic beheadings and torture. He was a peaceful man. They frightened him. When the riflefire from the platoon took care of the seven so easily, he awaited a second, larger attack, but knowing somehow intuitively that one would not come, and he was right.

Stein had not thought anyone was wounded in the little attack, so he was surprised when the men all clustered around one figure on the ground. On the ridge they were slightly above his own height here, now, and at this distance -- more than 200 yards -- it was impossible to tell who it was. Hoping desperately that it was not Keck, he called to Band to give him back his glasses, focused them, and saw that it was. Almost immediately a rifle bullet whooshed past him only inches from his head. Startled wide-eyed, he jerked down and rolled over twice to his left. He had forgotten to shield the lenses, and they had glinted. This time he cupped them with his hands, verified that it was Keck dead, then saw that Sgt Beck was looking at him -- or anyway toward him -- and making the Old Army hand-and-arm signal for "Converge on me." He wanted reinforcements?! Thirty-five yards behind Stein another mortar shell exploded and somebody yelled. Again he ducked.

Exertion, nervous exhaustion, and fear were wearing Stein down. When he looked at his watch, he could not believe it was after one. Suddenly he was ravenous. Putting down the glasses, he got out a bar of D Ration and tried to munch it but could not get it down because his mouth was so dry from lack of water. He spat most of it out. When he looked again with the glasses, Beck was again making his hand-and-arm signal. As he watched, Beck stopped and turned back to the ledge. Stein cursed. His little three-squad attack had failed, bogged down. They had not been nearly enough men. Stein very seriously doubted if he even had that many men. He had just watched two full platoons of B-for-Baker on the lefthand ridge come running back from a failed attack up the Bowling Alley in an attempt to outllank the righthand grassy ridge. And Beck wanted reinforcements!

That whole f--ing outrageous ridge was one giant honeycomb of emplacements. It was a regular fortress. He himself was last nearing the limbo of total mental exhaustion. It was hard to try and act fearless for your men when you were actually full of fear. And Beck wanted reinforcements!

Stein had lain and watched Keck lead his three pitiful little squads up that goddamned ridge with tears in his eyes. Beside him George Band had lain and watched eagerly through the glasses, smiling toughly. But Stein had choked up, cried enough moisture so that everything blurred and he had to wipe his eyes out quickly. He had personally counted every one of the 12 to go down. They were his men, and he had failed in his responsibility to each one who fell. And now he was being asked to send more after them.

Well, he could give Beck the two remaining squads of 2d Platoon. Pull them back out and put the reserve 3d Platoon up on the crest to fire cover. That would work all right. But before he did it, he intended to talk to Col Tall and get Tall's opinion and assent. Stein simply did not want that responsibility, not all alone. Rolling over, he motioned to Corporal Fife to bring him the telephone. God, but he was bushed. It was just then that Stein first heard from down in the little valley the first thin, piping yells.

They sounded insane. What they lacked in volume, and they lacked a great deal, they more than made up in their penetrating qualities, and in their length. They came in a series, each lasting five full seconds, the whole lasting 30 seconds. Then there was silence under the high-hanging, jouncing racket of noise.

"Jesus!" Stein said fervently. He looked over at Band, whom he found looking back at him with squinted, dilated eyes.

"Christ!" Band said.

From below, high and shrill, the series of yells came again. They were not screams.

Stein was able to pick him out easily with the glasses, which brought him up very close, too close for comfort. He had fallen almost at the bottom of the slope, 75 or 80 yards, not far from the other one, the Mississippian Catt, who -- seen through the glasses -- was clearly dead. Now he was trying to crawl back. He had been hit squarely in the groin with a burst of heavy MG fire which had torn his whole belly open. Lying on his back, his head uphill, both hands pressed to his belly to hold his intestines in, he was inching his way back up the slope with his legs. Through the glasses Stein could see blue-veined loops of intestine bulging between the bloodstained fingers. Inching was hardly the word, since Stein estimated he was making less than half an inch per try. He had lost his helmet, and his head thrown back on his neck, his mouth and his eyes wide open, he was staring directly up at Stein as if he were looking into a Promised Land. As Stein watched, he stopped, laid his head flat, and closing his eyes he made his series of yells again. They came to Stein's ears faintly, exactly in the same sequence as they had before. Then, resting a second and swallowing, he yelled something else.

"Help me! Help me!" Stein heard. Feeling sick and dizzy in the area of his diaphragm, he lowered the glasses and handed them to Band.

"Tella," he said.

Band looked a long time. Then he too lowered the glasses. There was a flat, scared look in his eyes when he looked back at Stein. "What're we gonna do?" Band said.

Trying to think of some answer to this, Stein felt something touch him on the leg. He yelped and jumped, fear running all through his body like quicksilver. Whirling around, he found himself staring downslope into the fear-ridden eyes of Corporal Fife, who was holding out to him the telephone. Too upset even to be sheepish or angry, Stein waved him away impatiently. "Not now. Not now." He began to call for a medic, one of whom was already on his way. From below the insane series of yells came again, identical, unchanging.

Stein and Band were not the only ones to have heard them. The entire remainder of the 2d Platoon lying along the crest of the fold had heard them. So had the medic who was now running bentover along the slope to Stein. So had Fife.

When his commander waved him away with the telephone, Fife had collapsed exactly where he was and flattened himself as low to the ground as he could get. The mortar shells were still falling at roughly one-minute intervals; sometimes you could hear their fluttery shu-ing sound for two seconds before they hit; and Fife was completely terrorized by them. He has lost the power to think reasonably, and had become a piece of inert protoplasm which could be made to move, but only when the proper stimuli were applied. Since making up his mind that he would do exactly what he was told, but exactly that and no more, he had lain exactly where he had been until Stein called him for the telephone. Now he lay exactly where he had dropped and waited to be told to do something else. This gave him little comfort, but he had no desire to see or do more. If his body would not work well, his mind could, and Fife realized that by far the great majority of the company were reacting like himself. But there were still those others who, for one reason or another of their own, got up and walked about and offered to do things without being told first. Fife knew it, because he had seen them -- otherwise he wouldn't have believed it. His reaction to these was one of intense, awed hero worship composed of about two-thirds grinding hate, and shame. But when he tried to force his body to stand up and walk around, he simply could not make it do it. He was glad that he was a clerk whose job was to take care of the telephone and not a squad noncom up there with Keck, Beck, McCron and the others, but he would have preferred to be a clerk at Battalion HQ back on Hill 209, and more than that a clerk at Regiment back down in the coconut groves, but most of all a clerk at Army HQ in Australia, or in the United States. Just above him up the slope he could hear Bugger Stein talking with the medic, and he caught the phrase "his belly blown open." Then he caught the word "Tella." So it was Tella who was yelling down there like that. It was the first concrete news Fife had had of anyone since the two dead lieutenants and Grove. He pressed his face to the dirt sickly, while Bugger and the medic moved off a few feet for another look. Tella had used to be a buddy of his, for a while at least. Built like a Greek god, never very bright, he was the most amiable of men, despite his career in life as a honeydipper in Cambridge, Mass. And now Tella was suffering in actual reality the fate which Fife all morning had been imagining would be his own. Fife felt sick. It was so different from the books he'd read, so much more final. Slowly, in trepidation at even raising it that far, he lifted his head a fraction off the dirt to peer with pain-haunted, fear-punctured eyes at the two men with the binoculars.

They were still talking.

"Can you tell?" Stein asked, anxiously.

"Yes, sir. Enough," the medic said. He was the senior one, the more studious-looking. He handed the glasses to Stein and put back on his spectacles. "There's nothing anybody can do that'll help him. He'll be dead before they can ever get him back to a surgeon. And he's got dirt all over his bowels. Even sulfa won't fix that. In these jungles?"

There was a pause before Stein spoke again. "How long?"

"Two hours? Four, maybe? Maybe only one, or less."

"But. God damn it, man!" Stein exploded. "We can't any of us stand it that long!" He paused. "Not counting him! And I can't ask you to go down there."

"The medic studied the terrain. He blinked several times behind his glasses. "Maybe it's worth a try."

"But you said yourself nobody could do anything to help him."

"At least I could get a syrette of morphine into him."

"Would one be enough?" Stein asked. "I mean, you know, would it keep him quiet?"

The medic shook his head. "Not for long." He paused. "But I could give him two. And I could leave him three or four for himself."

"But maybe he wouldn't take them. He's delirious. Couldn't you just, sort of, give them all to him at once?" Stein said.

The medic turned to look at him. "That would kill him, sir."

"Oh," Stein said.

"I couldn't do that," the medic said. "I really couldn't."

"Okay," Stein said grimly. "Well, do you want to try it?"

From below the set, unchanging series of yells, the strangely mechanical cries of the man they were talking about, rose up to them, precise, inflexible, mad, a little quavery toward the end, this time.

"God, I hope he don't begin to cry," Stein said. "God damn it!" he yelled, balling a fist. "My company won't have any fighting spirit left at all if we dont do something about him!"

"I'll go, sir," the medic said solemnly, answering the question of before. "After all, it's my job. And after all, it's worth a try, isn't it, sir?" he said, nodding significantly toward the spot where the series of yells had now ceased. "To stop the yells."

"God," Stein said, "I dont know."

"I'm volunteering. I've been down there before, you know. They won't hit me, sir."

"But you were on the left. It's not as bad there."

"I'm volunteering," the medic said, blinking at his Captain owlishly.

Stein waited several seconds before he spoke. "When do you want to go?"

"Any time," the medic said. "Right now." He started to get up.

Stein put out a restraining arm. "No, wait. At least I can give you some covering fire."

"I'd rather go now, sir. And get it over with."

They had been lying side by side, their helmets almost touching as they talked, and now Stein turned to look at the boy. He could not help wondering whether he had talked this boy into volunteering. Perhaps he had. He sighed. "Okay. Go ahead."

The medic nodded, looking straight ahead this time, then sprang up into a crouch, and was gone over the crest of the fold.

It was all over almost before it got started. Running like some fleeting forest animal, his medic's web equipment flopping, he reached the damaged Tella, swung round to face him up the hill, then dropped to his knees, his hands already groping at the pouch which held his syrettes. Before he could get the protective cap off the needle, one MG, one single MG, opened up from the ridge stitching across the area. Through the glasses Stein watched him jerk straight up, eyes and mouth wide, face slack, not so much with disbelief or mental shock as with sheer simple physiological surprise. One of the objects which had struck him, not meeting bone, was seen to burst forth through the front of him puffing out the green cloth, taking a button with it and opening his blouse a notch. Stein through the glasses saw him jab the now-bared needle, whether deliberately by design or from sheer reflex, into his own forearm below the rolled up sleeve. Then he fell forward on his face crushing both the syrette and his hands beneath him. He did not move again.

Stein, still holding the glasses on him, waited. He could not escape a feeling that something more important, more earthshaking should happen. Seconds ago he was alive and Stein was talking to him; now he was dead. Just like that. But Stein's attention was pulled away before he could think more, pulled away by two things. One was Tella, who now began to scream in a high quavery babbling falsetto of hysteria totally different from his former yells. Looking at him now through the glasses -- he had almost forgotten him entirely in watching the medic -- Stein saw that he had flopped himself over on his side, face pressing the dirt. Obviously he had been hit again, and while one bloodstained hand tried to hold in his intestines, the other groped at the new wound in his chest. Stein wished that at least they had killed him, if they were going to shoot him up again. This screaming, which he ceased only long enough to draw sobbing breath, was infinitely more bad than the yells for everyone concerned, both in its penetration and in its longevity. But they were not firing more now. And as if to prove it deliberate a faint faraway voice called several times in an Oriental accent, "Cly, Yank, cly! Yerl, Yank, yerl!"

The other thing which caught Stein's attention was something which caught the corner of his eye in the glasses as he lay looking at Tella and wondering what to do. A figure emerged from the grass on the righthand ridge plodding rearward across the flat and began to mount the forward slope of the fold. Turning the glasses on him, Stein saw that it was his Sergeant McCron, that he was wringing his hands, and that he was weeping. On his dirty face two great white streaks of clean skin ran from eye to chin accentuating the eyes as if he were wearing the haunting makeup of a tragic actor in some Greek drama. And on he came, while behind him Japanese MGs and smallarms opened up all across the ridge, making dirt puffs all around him. Still he came on, shoulders hunched, face twisted, wringing his hands, looking more like an old woman at a wake than an infantry combat soldier, neither quickening his pace nor dodging. In a kind of incredulous fury Stein watched him, frozen to the glasses. Nothing touched him. When he reached the top of the fold, he sat down beside his Captain still wringing his hands and weeping.

"Dead," he said. "All dead, Cap'n. Every one. I'm the only one. All 12. Twelve young men. I looked after them. Taught them everything I knew. Helped them. It didn't mean a thing. Dead."

Obviously, he was talking only of his own 12-man squad, all of whom Stein knew could not be dead.

From below, because he was still sitting up in the open beside his prone Captain, someone seized him by the ankle and hauled him bodily below the crest. To Corporal Fife, who had seen the vomiting Sico go and who now lay looking up at McCron with his own fearstarting eyes, there was some look not exactly sly about his face but which appeared to say that while what he was telling was the truth, it was not all the truth, and which made Fife believe that like Sico McCron had found his own reasonable excuse. It did not make Fife angry. On the contrary, it made him envious and he yearned to find some such mechanism which he might use with success himself.

Stein apparently felt somewhat the same thing himself. With only one further look at the handwringing, still weeping, but now safe McCron, Stein turned his head and called for the medic.

"Here, sir," the junior medic said from immediatley below him. He had come up on his own.

"Take him back. Stay with him. And when you get back there, tell them we need another medic now. At least one."

"Yes, sir," the boy said solemnly. "Come on, Mac. That's it. Come on, boy. It'll be all right. It'll all be all right."

"You dont understand that they're all dead," McCron said earnestly. "How can it be all right?" But he allowed himself to be led off by the arm. The last C-for-Charlie saw of him was when he and the medic dropped behind the second fold, now 75 to a hundred yards behind them. Some of them were to see his haunted face in the Division's hospital later, but the company as a whole saw him no more.

Stein sighed. With this last, new crisis out of the way and taken care of, he could turn his attention back to Tella. The Italian was still screaming his piercing wailing scream and did not seem to show any indication that he was ever going to run down. It it kept on, it was going to unnerve them all. For a fleet second Stein had a lurid romantic vision of taking up his carbine and shooting the dying man through the head. You saw that in movies and read it in books. But the vision died sickly away, unfulfilled. He wasn't the type and he knew it. Behind him his reserve platoon, cheeks pressed to earth, stared at him from their tense, blank, dirty faces in a long line of white, nerve-racked eyes. The screaming seemed to splinter the air, a huge circular saw splitting giant oak slabs, shivering spinal columns to fragments. But Stein did not know what to do. He could not send another man down there. He had to give up. A hot unbelieving outraged fury seized him at the thought of McCron plodding leisurely back through all that fire totally unscathed. He motioned furiously to Fife to hand him the phone, to take back up the call to Colonel Tall Which Tella's first screams had interrupted. Then, just as he was puckering to whistle, a large green object of nature on his right, a green boulder topped by a small metallic-colored rock, rose up flapping and bellowing. Taking earthly matters into its own hands, it bounded over the crest of the fold growling guttural obscenities before Stein could even yell the one word, "Welsh!" The First Sergeant was already careering at full gallop down into the hollow.

Welsh saw everything before him with a singular, pristine, furiously crystal clarity: the rocky thin-grassed slope, mortar- and bullet-pocked, the hot bright sunshine and deep cerulean sky, the incredibly white clouds above the towering highup horseshoe of the Elephant's Head, the yellow serenity of the ridge before him. He did not know how he came to be doing this, nor why. He was simply furious, furious with a graven, black, bitter hatred of everything and everybody in the whole f--ing gripeassed world. He felt nothing. Mindlessly, he ran. He looked curiously and indifferently, without participation, at the puffs of dirt which had begun now to kick up around him. Furious, furious. There were three bodies on the slope, two dead, one alive and still screaming. Tella simply had to stop that screaming; it wasn't dignified. Puffs of dirt were popping up all around him now. The clatterbanging which had hung in the air at varying levels all through the day had descended almost to ground level, now, and was aimed personally and explicitly at him. Welsh ran on, suppressing a desire to giggle. A curious ecstasy had gripped him. He was the target, the sole target. At last it was all out in the open. The truth had at last come out. He had always known it. Bellowing "F-- you!" at the whole world over and over at the top of his lungs, Welsh charged on happily. Catch me if you can! Catch me if you can!

Zigzigging professionally, he made his run down. If a f--ing nut like McCron could simply walk right out, a really bright man like himself in the possession of his faculties could get down and back. But when he skidded to a stop on his belly beside the mutilated Italian boy, he realized he had made no plans about what to do when he got here. He was stumped, suddenly, and at a loss. And when he looked at Tella, an embarrassed kindliness came over him. Gently, still embarrassed, he touched the other on the shoulder. "How goes it, kid?" he yelled inanely.

In midscream Tella rolled his eyes around like a maddened horse until he could see who it was. He did not stop the scream.

"You got be quiet," Welsh yelled, staring at him grimly. "I came to help you."

It had no reality to Welsh. Tella was dying, maybe it was real to Tella, but to Welsh it wasn't real, the blue-veined intestines, and the flies, the bloody hands, the blood running slowly from the other, newer wound in his chest whenever he breathed, it had no more reality for Welsh than a movie. He was John Wayne and Tella was John Agar.

Finally the scream stopped of itself, from lack of breath, and Tella breathed, causing more blood to run from the hole in his chest. When he spoke, it was only a few decibels lower than the scream. "F-- you!" he piped. "I'm dying! I'm dying, Sarge! Look at me! I'm all apart! Get away from me! I'm dying!" Again he breathed, pushing fresh blood from his chest.

"Okay," Welsh yelled, "but goddam it, do it with less noise." He was beginning to blink now, and his back to crawl, whenever a bullet flipped up dirt.

"How you going to help me?"

"Take you back."

"You can't take me back! you want to f--ing help me, shoot me!" Tella screamed, his eyes wide and rolling.

"You're off your rocker," Welsh yelled in the noise. "You know I can't do that."

"Sure you can! You got your pistol there! Take it the f--out! You want to help me, shoot me and get it over with! I can't stand it! I'm scared!"

"Does it hurt much?" Welsh yelled.

"Sure it hurts, you dumb son of a bitch!" Tella screamed. Then he paused, to breathe, and bleed, and then he swallowed, his eyes closed. "You can't take me back."

"We'll see," Welsh yelled grimly. "You stick with old Welsh. Trust old Welsh. Did I ever give you a bum steer?" He was aware now -- he knew -- that he wouldn't be able to stay much longer. Already he was flinching and jerking and jumping uncontrollably under the fire. Crouching he ran around to Tella's head and got him under the armpits and heaved. In his own arms Welsh could feel the body stretch even before Tella screamed.

"Aaa-eeeee!" The scream was terrible. "You're killing me! You're pulling me apart! Put me down, goddam you! Put me down!"

Welsh dropped him quickly, by simple reflex. Too quickly. Tella landed heavily, sobbing. "You son of a bitch! You son of a bitch! Leave me alone! Leave me alone! Dont touch me!"

"Stop that yelling," Welsh yelled, feeling abysmally stupid, "it aint dignified." Blinking, his nerves already fluttering like fringe in a high wind now and threatening to forsake him, he scrambled grimly around to Tella's side. "All right, we'll do it this way, then." Slipping one arm under the Italian's knees and the other under his shoulders, he lifted. Tella was not a small man, but Welsh was bigger, and at the moment he was endowed with superhuman strength. But when he heaved him up to try and carry him like a child, the body jackknifed almost double like a closing pocketknife. Again there was that terrible scream.

"Aaa-eeeee! Put me down! Put me down! You're breaking me in two! Put me down!"

This time Welsh was able to let him down slowly.

Sobbing, Tella lay and vituperated him. "You son of a bitch! You f--er! You bastard! I told you leave me alone! I never ast you to come down here! Go away! Leave me alone! You s--eater! Stay away from me!" And turning his head away and closing his eyes, he began his desperate, wailing, piercing scream again.

Five yards above them on the slope a line of machinegun bullets slowly stitched itself across from left to right. Welsh happened to be looking straight at it and saw it. He did not even bother to think how all the gunner had to do was depress a degree. All he could think about now was getting out of here. And yet how could he? He had come all this way down here. And he had not saved Tella, and he had not shut him up. Nothing. Except to cause more pain. Pain. With sudden, desperate inspiration he leaped across the prostrate Tella and began rummaging in the dead medic's belt pouches.

"Here!" he bellowed. "Tella! Take these! Tella!"

Tella stopped screaming and opened his eyes. Welsh tossed him two morphine syrettes he had found and began to attack another pouch.

Tella picked one up. "More!" he cried when he saw what they were. "More! Gimme more! More!"

"Here," Welsh yelled, and tossed him a double handful he had found in the other pouch, and then turned to run.

But something stopped him. Crouched like a sprinter at the gun, he turned his head and looked at Tella one more time. Tella, already unscrewing the cap from one of the syrettes, was looking at him, his eyes wide and white. For a moment they stared at each other.

"Goodby," Tella cried. "Goodby, Welsh!"

"Goodby, kid," Welsh yelled. It was all he could think of to say. For that matter, it was all he had time to say, because he was already off and running. And he did not look back to see whether Tella took the syrettes. However, when they were able to get to him safely later in the afternoon, they found 10 empty morphine syrettes scattered all around him. The 11th remained stuck in his arm. He had taken them one after the other, and there was an at least partially relaxed look on his dead face.

Welsh ran with his head down and did not bother to zigzag. He was thinking that now they would get him. After all of that, that run down, all that time down there, now they would have to get him, on the way back. It was his fate, his luck. He knew that they would get him now. But they didn't. He ran and ran and then he fell headlong over the little crest and just lay there, half dead from exhaustion, Tella's wild face and bulging blue intestines visible behind his closed eyes. Why had he ever done it in the first place? Sobbing audibly for breath, he made himself a solemn unspoken promise never again to let his screwy wacked-up emotions get the better of his common sense.

But it was when Bugger Stein crawled over to him to pat him on the back and congratulate and thank him, that Welsh really blew his top.

"Sergeant, I saw the whole thing through the glasses," he heard, feeling the friendly hand on his shoulder. "I want you to know I'm mentioning you in Orders tomorrow. I'm recommending you for the Silver Star. I can only say that I --"

Welsh opened his eyes and found himself staring up into the anxious Jewish face of his Commander. The look in his eyes must have stopped Stein, because he did not finish.

"Captain," Welsh said deliberately, between ebbing sobs for breath, "if you say one word to thank me, I will punch you square in the nose. Right now, right here. And if you ever so much as mention me in your f--ing Orders, I will resign my rating two minutes after, and leave you to run this pore, busted-up outfit by yourself. If I go to jail. So f--ing help me."

He shut his eyes. Then as an after-thought he rolled over away from Bugger, who said nothing. As a second afterthought, he got to all fours and crawled away, off to the right, by himself. Shutting his eyes again, he lay in the sun-tinged dark, listening to the mortars that were still dropping every couple of minutes, groaning over and over to himself his one phrase of understanding: "Property! Property! All for f--ing property!" He was terribly dry, but both his canteens were bone empty. After a while he took out the third one and took one precious swallow of its precious gin without opening his eyes.

The lack of water was getting to everyone. Stein was thirsty, too, and his canteens were as empty as Welsh's. And Stein had no gin. In addition, he still had his call to put through to Colonel Tall at Battalion CP. He was not looking forward to it, and Welsh's reaction just now in crawling away from him like that was not especially heartening or confidence inspiring. Slowly he crawled back to Fife and the sound-power phone. He understood that his crazy First Sergeant, mad or not, wanted to be alone. He must be terribly wrought up. After having just helped a mutilated man to kill himself? And not even counting the danger to himself, to Welsh. His reaction was quite normal. But in spite of that, just for a moment, when Welsh had opened his eyes with that look and had said what he did, Bugger Stein could not escape a fleeting impression that it was because he Stein was Jewish. He thought he had gotten over all that sort of stuff long ago. Years and years ago. He made a grim inward smile. Both because of what he had just thought, and because of what he thought next: It was that f--ing infuriating outrageous Anglo-Saxon Tall, with his cropped blond head and young-old boyish face, and his tall spare soldierly frame. West Point, class of '28. Whenever Stein was forced by the duties of his military life to have contact with that commanding gentleman, Stein always somehow came away from it made doubly aware of being of Jehovah's Own, a Jew. He motioned to Fife to give him the phone.

When Stein took the phone, he received the extraordinary impression that his arm, his whole body, was too tired, too weak, to lift the almost weightless little tin instrument to his ear. Astonished, he waited. Slowly the arm came up. Already worn out, the affair of Tella's death had taken more out of him than he realized. How long could he go on? How much longer could he watch his men being killed in agony like this without ceasing to function entirely? Suddenly, for the first time, he was terribly afraid that he might not be able to cut it. This fear, added to the already heavy burden of simple physical fear for himself, seemed almost too much of a load to bear, but it jerked a renewed energy up out of some deep in him. He whistled into the mouthpiece.

Scattered around him, as he whistled and waited, the mixed remnants of his CP force plus a smattering of 2d and 3d Platoon men lay huddled to earth, watching him with white eyes and those drawn in-turned faces, as if all were looking to him and hoping he could in some way get them out of this bind, this mess, so that they might go on living. Stein could grin, and did, at the looks on the faces of Storm and his cook force, which seemed to say clearly that they had had their fill of this volunteering for combat, that if they ever got out of this one they would most certainly never do it again. They were not alone in it, either. Supply Sergeant MacTae and his clerk wore the same look.

Stein did not have long to wait; almost before his whistle had ended the phone was answered on the other end, and it was Colonel Tall himself, not any communications clerk. It was not a long conversation, but in a way it was one of the most important conversations in Stein's life up to now. Yes, Tall had seen the little three-squad attack, and had thought it fine. They had made a good lodgment. But before Stein could say anything further, he demanded to know why Stein had not already followed it up and exploited it? What was the matter with him? Those men should be reinforced immediately. And what were they doing? Tall could see them through his glasses, just lying there behind that ledge. They should be already up and out and at work cleaning out those emplacements.

"I dont think you understand what's going on down here, sir," Stein said patiently. "We're taking a lot of fire down here. We've had heavy casualties. I was planning to reinforce them right away, but something bad happened. We had a man -- "he did not actually hesitate or gulp over the word, but he wanted to gulp -- "gutshot out on the slope, and he caused quite a bit of upset. But that's taken care of now, and I'm planning to reinforce now." Stein swallowed. "Over?"

"Fine," Colonel Tall's voice said crisply, without his former enthusiasm. "By the way, who was that man who ran out on the slope? Was that what he was doing? The Admiral -- Admiral Barr -- saw him through the glasses; the Admiral couldn't tell for sure but thought he had gone out to help someone. Was that it? The Admiral wants to recommend the man for something. Over."

Stein had listened wanting suddenly to laugh hysterically. Help him? Yes, he had helped him all right. Boosted him right on off the old cinder and out and away. "There were two men who went out, sir," he said. "One was our senior medic. He was killed. The other," he said, remembering what he now thought of as his conspiratorial promise to Welsh, "was one of the privates. I dont know which one yet, but I'll find out. Over." And f-- you. And the Admiral.

Fine. Fine, fine. And now, Tall wanted to know, what about those reinforcements? Stein went on to lay out, while the mortars continued to search unabated along and around the fold, his little plan of bringing his reserve platoon forward to this slope, while sending the remaining two squads of 2d Platoon up with the other three -- other two now, rather, after casualties -- up on the ridge. "I lost Keck, you know, too, Colonel. Up there. He was one of my best men," he said. "Over."

The answer he got was an unexpected outburst of official fury. Two squads! What the hell did he mean, two squads! When Tall said reinforcements, he meant reinforcements. Stein should throw every man he had in there, and should do it now. Should have done earlier, as soon as the lodgment was made. That meant commit the reserve platoon and all. And what about Stein's 1st Platoon? They were lying on their fat asses down there doing nothing. Stein should move them by the flank in to the ridge, should get a man down there to them right now with orders to attack -- attack around the left of the ridge. Send his reserve platoon to attack around the right. Leave the 2d Platoon there to hold and press the center. An envelopment. "Do I have to give you a 10-cent lesson in infantry tactics while your men are getting their ass shot off, Stein?" Tall howled. "Over!"

Stein swallowed his wrath. "I dont think you fully understand what's going on down here, Colonel," he said more quietly than he felt. "We've already lost two officers dead, and a lot of men. I dont think my company alone can take that position. They're too well dug in, and have too much firepower. I formally request, sir, and I have witnesses, to be given permission to make a patrol reconnaissance around to the right of Hill 210 through the jungle. I believe the entire position can be outflanked by a maneuver there in force." But did he? Did he really believe that? Or was he only grasping at straws? He had a hunch, that was the truth. He had a real hunch but that was all. There had been no fire from there all day. But was that enough? "Over," he said, trying to muster all his dignity -- then blinked and ducked down flat, as a mortar shell went up roaring 10 yards away along the little crest and somebody screamed.

"NO!" roared Tall, as if he had been waiting fuming, dancing a little dance of frustration at the other end, until he could push his button and speak his piece into this maddening one-way phone. "I tell you, no! I want a double envelopment! I order you, Stein, to attack, and attack now, with every available man at your disposal! I'm sending B-for-Baker in too on your left! Now, ATTACK, Stein! That's a direct order!" He paused for breath. "Over!"

Stein had heard himself talking of "formally request" and "have witnesses" with a sort of astonished, numb disbelief. He had not really meant to go that far. How could he be sure that he was right? And yet, he was sure. At least, reasonably sure. Why had there been no firing from down there, then? In any case, he had now either to put up or shut up. His heart suddenly up in his throat, he said formally, "Sir, I must tell you that I refuse to obey your order. I again request permission to make a patrol reconnaissance in force around to the right. The time, sir, is 1321 hours 25 seconds. I have two witnesses here listening to what I've said. I request, sir, that you inform witnesses there. Over."

"Stein!" he heard. Tall was raging. "Dont pull that guardhouse lawyer s-- with me, Stein! I know you're a goddamned lawyer! Now shut up and do like I said! I didnt hear what you just said! I repeat my order! Over!"

"Colonel, I refuse to take my men up there in a frontal attack. It's a suicide! I've lived with these men two and a half years. I won't order them all to their deaths. That's final. Over." Someone was blubbering now not far away along the crest, and Stein tried to see who it was and couldn't. Tall was stupid, ambitious, without imagination, and vicious as well. He was desperate to succeed before his superiors. Otherwise he could never have given such an order.

After the little pause, Tall's voice was cool, and sharp as a razorblade. "This is a very important decision you're making, Stein. If you feel that strongly, perhaps you have reason. I'm coming down. Understand: I'm not rescinding my order to you, but if I find there are extenuating circumstances when I get down there, I'll take that into account. I want you to hold on there until I get there. If possible, get those men up on the ridge out and moving. I'll be there in" he paused "10 or 15 minutes. Over and out."

This is the second part of James Jones' "The Thin Red Line." The conclusion will appear in October.