The Thin Red Line

In previous installments, the men of C Company, until then innocent of battle, had stormed the Japanese redoubt on Hill 210 in Guadalcanal. They lay there now, cowering in bloodlined craters, waiting for the enemy to move. On the field telephone, Stein, their Captain—pursuing his private war with Colonel Tall by refusing regimental orders to lead his men into further slaughter—hears with disbelief the command to attack again.

"Tall's voice was cool, and sharp as a razorblade .... 'Get those men up on the ridge out and moving. I'll be there in' he paused '10 or 15 minutes ...'"

Stein listened unbelieving, mentally stunned, feeling scared. To Stein's knowledge, which he knew was not universal but nevertheless, no Battalion Commander had come forward with his fighting troops since this battle started and the division entered combat. Tall's inordinate ambition was a Regimental joke, and he certainly had every bigshot on the island here today to perform for, but Stein still had not anticipated this. What had he expected, then? He had expected, if he made his protest strong enough, to be allowed to make his patrol in force and test the right before having to face a necessity of this frontal attack—even though he knew it was a little late in the day now for that kind of an operation. And now he was really scared. It was almost funny, how even lying here terrified and half-expecting to be dead at any moment, his bureaucratic fear of reprimand, of public embarrassment was stronger than his physical fear of dying. Well, at least as strong.

Well, he had two things to do, while he waited for Tall. He must see about that man who was wounded a moment ago. And he must get the other two squads of 2d Platoon up there on the ridge to Beck and Dale.

The wounded man proved to be little Pfc. Bead from Iowa, Fife's assistant clerk, and he was dying. The mortar round had exploded five yards away from him on his left, sending a piece probably no bigger than a silver dime into his left side after tearing its way through the triceps muscle of his upper left arm.

(continued on page 162) Thin Red Line (continued from page 121)

The chunk out of his arm would never have killed him though it might have crippled him a bit, but blood was pouring from the hole in his side into the compresses somebody had stuck on it, and from the soaked gauze dripping down to stain the ground. When Stein arrived, trailed by the wide-eyed Fife with the telephone, Bead's eyes were blank and he spoke just barely above a whisper.

"I'm dying, Captain!" he croaked, rolling his eyes toward Stein. "I'm dying! Me! Me! I'm dying! I'm so scared!" He closed his eyes for a moment and swallowed. "I was just laying there. And it hit me right in the side. Like somebody punched me. Didn't hurt much. Doesn't hurt much now. Oh, Captain!"

"Just take it easy, son. Just take it easy," Stein said in a kind of fruitless, bootless anguish.

"Where's Fife?" Bead creaked, rolling his eyes. "Where's Fife?"

"He's right here, son. Right here," Stein said. "Fife!" He himself turned away, feeling like an old, old, useless man. Grandfather Stein.

Fife had stopped behind the Captain, but now he crawled closer. There were two or three others clustered around Bead. He had not wanted to look; at the same time he could not convince himself of the reality of it. Bead hit and dying. Someone like Tella, or Pvt Jockey Jacques, was different. But Bead, with whom he had worked so many days in the office, in the orderly room. Bead, with whom he had ... His mind balked away from that. "I'm here," he said.

"I'm dying, Fife!" Bead told him.

Fife could not think of anything to say, either. "I know. Just take it easy. Just take it easy, Eddie," he said, repeating Stein. He felt impelled to use Bead's first name, something he had never done before.

"Will you write my folks?" Bead said.

"I'll write them."

"Tell them it didn't hurt me much. Tell them the truth."

"I'll tell them."

"Hold my hand, Fife," Bead croaked then. "I'm scared."

For a moment, a second, Fife hesitated. Homosexuality. Fagotism. Fairies. He didn't even think them. The act of hesitation was far below the level of conscious thought. Then, realizing with horror what he had done, was doing, he gripped Bead's hand. Crawling closer, he slid his other arm under his shoulders, cradling him. He had begun to cry, more because he suddenly realized that he was the only man in the whole company whom Bead could call friend, than because Bead was dying.

"I've got it," he said.

"Squeeze," Bead croaked. "Squeeze."

"I'm squeezing."

"Oh, Fife!" Bead cried. "Oh, Captain!"

His eyes did not go shut but they ceased to see.

After a moment Fife put him down and crawled away by himself, weeping in terror, weeping in fear, weeping in sadness, hating himself.

It was only five minutes after that that Fife himself was hit.

Stein had followed him when he crawled away. He obviously did not fully understand Fife's weeping. "Lie down somewhere for a little bit, son," he said, and briefly patted his back. He had already taken the soundpower phone from Fife when he sent him up to Bead, and now he said, "I'll keep the phone for a few minutes myself. There won't be any calls coming in for a while anyway, now," he said with a bitter smile. Fife, who had listened to the last call to Tall, had in fact been one of Stein's two witnesses, knew what he meant, but he was in no condition or mood to make any answer. Dead. Dead. All dead. All dying. None left. Nothing left. He had come unstrung, and his unnerving was the worse because he was helpless, could do nothing, could say nothing. He must stay here.

The mortar rounds had continued to drop at random points along the fold with strict regularity, all during the time it had taken Bead to die, all during the time after. It was amazing how few men they actually wounded oÈ killed. But everyone's face wore that same vagueeyed, terrorized, in-drawn look. Fife had seen an abandoned, yellowdirt hole a few yards off to his right and he crawled to this. It was hardly even a hole, really. Someone had scooped out with his hands, bayonet or entrenching tool a shallow little trough perhaps only two inches below the surface. Fife crouched flat in this and put his cheek to the mud. Slowly he stopped weeping and his eyes cleared, but as the other emotions, the sorrow, the shame, the self-hatred seeped out of him under the pressure of self-preservation, the fourth component, terror, seeped in to replace them until he was only a vessel completely filled with cowardice, fear and gutlessness. And that was the way he lay. This was war? There was no superior test of strength here, no superb swordmanship, no bellowing Viking heroism, no expert marksmanship. This was only numbers. He was being killed for numbers. Why oh why had he not found and taken to himself that clerkish deskjob far in the rear which he could have had?

He heard the soft "shu-u-u" of the mortar shell for perhaps half a second. There was not even time to connect it with himself and frighten him, before there was a huge sunburst roaring of an explosion almost on top of him, then black blank darkness. He had a vague impression that someone screamed but did not know it was himself. As if seeing some dark film shown with insufficient illumination, he had a misty picture of someone other than himself half-scrambling, half-blown to his feet and then dropping, hands to face in a stumbling, rolling fall down the slope. Then nothing. Dead? Are we, that other one, is I? am he?

Fife's body came to rest rolling in the lap of a 3d Platoon man, who happened to be sitting up, his rifle in his lap. Tearing itself loose, it scrambled away on elbows and knees, hands still to the face. Then Fife returned to it and opened its eyes and saw that everything had become a red flowing haze. Through this swirling red he could see the comic, frightened face of the 3d Platoon man whose name was Train. Never was there a less likely, less soldierly looking soldier. Long fragile nose, chinless jaw, pipsqueak mouth, huge myopic eyes staring forth in fright from behind thick glasses.

"Am I hit? Am I hit?"

"Y-yes," Train mumbled. "Y-you are." He also stuttered. "In the head."

"Bad? Is it bad?"

"I c-can't tell," Train said. "Y-you're b-bleeding from your h-head."

"Am I?" Fife looked at his hands and found them completely covered with the wet red. He understood now that peculiar red haze. It was blood which flowing down through his eyebrows had gotten in his eyes. God, but it was red! Then terror blossomed all through him like some ballooning great fungus, making his heart kick and his eyes go faint. Maybe he was dying, right now, right here. Gingerly he probed at his skull and found nothing. His fingers came away glistening red. He had no helmet and his glasses were gone.

"I-it's in the b-back," Train offered.

Fife probed again and found the tornup spot. It was in the center of his head, almost at the peak.

"H-how d-do you f-feel?" Train said fearfully.

"I dont know. It dont hurt. Except when I touch it." Still on hands and knees Fife had bent his head, so that the blood flowing into his eyebrows now dripped to the ground instead of into his eyes. He peered up at Train through this red rain.

"C-can you w-walk?" Train said.

"I-I dont know," Fife said, and then suddenly realized that he was free. He did not have to stay here any more. He was released. He could simply get up and walk away—provided he was able—with honor, without anyone being able to say he was a coward or courtmarshaling him or putting him to jail. His relief was so great he suddenly felt joyous despite the wound.

"I think I better go back," he said. "Dont you?"

"Y-yes," Train said, a little wistfully.

"Well ——" Fife tried to think oÈ something final and important to say upon such a momentous occasion, but he failed. "Good luck, Train," he managed finally.

"Th-thanks," Train said.

Tentatively Fife stood up. His knees were shaky, but the prospect of getting out of here gave him a strength he might not otherwise have had. At first slowly, then more swiftly, he began to walk rearward with his head bent and his hands to his forehead to keep the still-flowing blood from getting in his eyes. With each step he took his sense of joyous release increased, but keeping pace with it his sense of fear increased also. What if they got him now? What if they hit him with something else now just when he was free to leave? As much as he could, he hurried. He passed a number of 3d Platoon men lying prone with those terror-haunted, inward-looking faces, but they did not speak and neither did he. He did not take the longer route back the way they had come, over the second and first folds, but took the direct one, walking straight along the hollow between the folds to the forward slope of Hill 209. Only when he was halfway up the steep slope of Hill 209 did he think of the rest of the company, and pausing he turned and looked back to where they lay. He wanted to yell something to them, encouragement or something, but he knew that from here they could never hear him. When several sniper bullets kicked up dirt around him, he turned and pressed on to come over the crest and down into the crowded Battalion aid station on the other side. Just before he breasted the crest, he met a party of men coming down from it and recognized Colonel Tall. "Hold on, son," the Colonel smiled at him. "Dont let it get you down. You'll be back with us soon." At the aid station he remembered his one nearly full canteen and began to drink greedily, his hands still shaking. He was reasonably sure now that he would not die.

When Fife got hit, Bugger Stein had just crawled away from him. Fife had crawled one way and Stein the other, to instruct the two remaining squads of 2d Platoon to advance and reinforce Beck and Dale on the grassy ridge. He might just as easily have crawled along with Fife and so have been there when the mortar shell landed. The element of chance in it was appalling. It frightened Stein. Anyway he was dead-beat tired and depressed, and scared. He had watched Fife stagger bloodily to the rear, but there was nothing he himself could do because he was already in the midst of instructing the two squads from 2d platoon about what they were to do when they got to the ridge, and what they were to tell Beck—which was, mainly, that he was to get his ass out and moving and try to knock out some of those machineguns.

None of them in the two squads looked very happy about their assignment, including the two sergeants, but they did not say anything and merely nodded tensely. Stein looked back at them earnestly, wishing there was something else, something important or serious, he could tell them. There wasn't. He told them good luck and to go.

This time, as he had the last, Bugger watched their run down through his glasses. He was astonished to see that this time not one man was hit. He was even more astonished, when he watched through the glasses as they worked their way up through the grass to the little waist-high ledge, to see that here no one was shot down, either. Only then did his ears inform him of something they ought to have noticed earlier: the volume of the Japanese fire had diminished considerably since Sergeant Welsh's run down to aid the mutilated Private Tella. When he raised his glasses to the ledge itself, as he did immediately, even before the first of the newcomers began to arrive, Stein was able to see why. Only about half of Beck's little two-squad force was visible there. The rest were gone. On his own hook, without orders, Beck obviously had sent part of his group off raiding and, apparently, with some success. Lowering his glasses, Stein turned to look at George Band, who by now had appropriated glasses of his own Èomewhere (Stein remembered Bill Whyte's father had presented him with a fine pair as a parting gift), and who now was looking back at Stein with the same astonished look on his face that Stein knew he himself wore. For a long moment they simply looked at each other. Then, just as Stein was turning to the newly arrived replacement medics to tell them he thought they might cross over to pick up the wounded with some degree of safety now, a cool, calm voice behind him said, "Now, Stein!" and he looked up to see Colonel Tall his Battalion Commander walking leisurely toward him carrying beneath his arm the unadorned little bamboo baton he had carried there ever since Stein had known him.

What Bugger Stein and Brass Band could not know was that Sergeant Beck the martinet had, on his own initiative, knocked out five Japanese machinegun emplacements in the last 15 or 20 minutes, all at the cost of only one man killed and none wounded. Phlegmatic, sullen, dull and universally disliked, an unimaginative, do-it-like-the-book-says, dedicated professional of two previous enlistments, Milly Beck came to the fore here as perhaps no one else including his dead superior, Keck, could have done. Seeing that no reinforcements were immediately forthcoming, framing his dispositions exactly as he had been taught in the small units tactics course he had once taken at Fort Benning, he took advantage of the terrain to send six men around to the right of the ledge and six to the left under his two acting sergeants, Dale and Bell. The rest he kept with himself in the center readied to fire at whatever targets of opportunity turned up. Everything worked. Even the men he kept with himself were able to knock down two Japanese who were fleeing from the grenades of his patrols. Dale and his men on the left accounted for four emplacements and returned untouched. Finding the little ledge totally unguarded, they were able to crawl into the midst of the Japanese position and drop grenades from the ledge down into the rear doors of two covered, camouflaged emplacements they spotted below them; the other two emplacements, on the uphill side, were more difficult but by bypassing them and crawling up alongside they were able to pitch grenades into the apertures. Not a single one of them was even fired at. They returned led by the grinning Dale licking his lips and smacking his chops over his success. The importance of their accomplishment was to cut down by at least 50 percent the firepower which could be directed from the left of the ridge down upon the 1st Platoon or into the flat which their reinforcements later crossed in safety.

Bell on the right was not so lucky, but he discovered something of great importance. On the right the ledge slowly graded upwards, and after bypassing and grenading one small emplacement below them Bell and his group came upon the main Japanese strongpoint of the whole position. Here the ledge ended in a 20-foot rockwall which further on became a real cliff and was impassable. Just above this rockwall, beautifully dug in and with apertures in three directions, was the Japanese strongpoint. When the lead man climbed out above the ledge to detour around the rockwall, he was riddled fatally by at least three machineguns. Both Witt the volunteer Kentuckian and Pfc Doll were in Bell's party, but neither of them happened to be the lead man. This distinction was reserved for a man named Catch, Lemuel C Catch, an oldtime regular and drunkard and a former boxing friend of Witt's. He died immediately and without a sound. They pulled his body down and retreated with it, while all hell broke loose firing just above their heads, but not before—further back along the ledge—Acting Sergeant Bell got a good look at the strongpoint so he could describe it.

Why he did it even Bell himself never knew. Most probably it was sheer bitterness and fatigue and a desire to get this goddamned battle over with. Bell at least knew that at the very least an accurate, eyewitness description of it might prove valuÈble later on. Whatever the reasons, it was a crazy thing to do. Halting his men 35 to 40 yards back from the rockwall where Catch had died, Bell told them to wait and indulged himself in his crazy desire to look too. Leaving his rifle, holding a grenade in one hand, he climbed up the little ledge and poked up his head. The Japanese firing all had stopped now, and there was a little scrub on the lip of the ledge here, which was why he chose it. Slowly he climbed up, led on by whatever insane, mad motive, until he was out in the open, lying in a tiny little deflated place. All he could see was the unending grass, rising slowly along a hillock which stuck up out of the ridge. Pulling the pin, he heaved the grenade with all his strength and ducked down. The grenade fell and exploded just in front of the hillock, and in the cyclone of MG fire which followed Bell was able to count five guns in five spitting apertures which he could not see before. When the firing ceased, he crawled back down to his men, obscurely satisfied. Whatever it was that made him do it, and he still didn't know, it made every man in his little group look at him admiringly. Motioning them on, he led them back down and around the ledge until the company's main position at the third fold hove into view. From there on it was easy to get back. Like Dale's group, they did not see or hear a single Japanese anywhere near the ledge. Why the ledge, which was the real key to the whole position on the ridge, had been left totally unguarded by riflemen or MGs, no one ever found out. It was lucky for both groups, as well as for Beck's minuscule little attack plan, that it was unguarded. As it was, they had cleaned out all the Japanese below the ledge and established a real line, and had changed the situation. That they changed the entire situation. That they changed the entire situtation almost exactly at the precise moment Colonel Tall walked on the field was one of those happenstancical ironies which occur, which are entirely unpredictable, and which seem to be destined to dog the steps of certain men named Stein.

"What are you doing lying down there where you can't see anything?" was the next thing Tall said. He himself was standing upright but, because he was 10 or 12 yards away, only his head and the tips of his shoulders, if anything of him at all, showed above the crest. Stein noticed he apparently had no inclination to come closer.

Stein debated whether to tell him that the situation had changed. Almost in the last few seconds before his arrival. But he decided not to. Not just yet. It would look too much like an excuse, and a lame one. So instead he answered, "Observing, sir. I just sent the other two squads of my 2d Platoon forward to the ridge."

"I saw them leaving as we were coming along," Tall nodded. The rest of his party, Stein noted, which included three privates as runners, his personal sergeant and a young Captain named Gaff, his Battalion Exec, had decided that it might be just as well to be lying down flat on the ground. "How many of them were hit this time?" Right to the point, it was.

"None, sir."

Tall raised his eyebrows under the helmet which sat so low on his small, fine head. "None? Not one?" A mortar round mushroomed exploding dirt without hurting anybody somewhere along the rearward slope of the third fold, and Tall coming forward to where Stein lay permitted himself to squat on his haunches.

"No, sir."

"That doesn't sound much like the situation you described to me over the soundpower." Tall squinted at him, his face reserved.

"It's not, sir. The situation's changed." Stein felt he could honorably tell it now. "In just the last four or five minutes," he added, and detested himself.

"And to what do you attribute the change?"

"Sergeant Beck, sir. When I last looked, half of his men had disappeared. I think he sent them off to try and knock out some emplacements, and they seem to have succeeded."

From somewhere far off a machinegun began to rattle and È long line of bullets struck up dirt 25 yards below them on the forward slope. Tall did not change his squatting position or alter his voice. "Then you got my message to him."

"No, sir. I mean, yes, sir, I did. It went forward with the two new squads. But Beck had already sent his men off before they got there. Some time before."

"I see." Tall turned his head and squinted his blue eyes off at the grassy ridge in silence. The long line of MG bullets came sweeping back from Stein's left, this time only 15 yards below them. Tall did not move.

"They've seen you, sir," Stein said.

"Stein, we're going over there," Tall said, ignoring his remark, "all of us, and we're taking everybody with us. Do you have any more formal complaints or demurrers?"

"No, sir," Stein said lamely. "Not now. But I reiterate my request to take a patrol down into the jungle on the right. I'm convinced it's open down there. There hasn't been a shot fired from there all day. A Jap patrol could have infiladed the hell out of us from there with very little trouble. I was anticipating it." He pointed away down the hollow between the folds to where the treetops of the jungle were just barely visible, while Tall followed his gaze.

"In any case," Tall said, "it's now too late in the day to send a patrol down there."

"A patrol in force? A platoon? With an MG? They could make a perimeter defense if they didn't get back before dark."

"Do you want to lose a platoon? Anyway, you're emptying your center. We dont have A-for-Able in reserve, Stein. They're off on your right rear fighting their own fight. B-for-Baker is our reserve, and they're committed on your left."

"I know that, sir."

"No, we'll do it my way. We'll take everybody over to the ledge. We may be able to take that ridge before nightfall."

"I think that ridge is quite a way from being reduced, sir," Stein said earnestly, and adjusted his glasses, the four fingers on the frame above, the thumb below.

"I dont think so. In any case, we can always make a perimeter defense for the night there. Rather than withdraw like yesterday." The conference was over. Leisurely Tall stood up to his full height. Again the MG in the distance rattled, and a swishing line of bullets struck the ground a few feet from him as Stein ducked, the bullets seeming, at least to Stein, to go whining off all about Tall's feet and between his legs. Tall gave the ridge one contemptuous amused look and started walking down the rearward slope still talking to Stein. "But first I want you to get a man down there to your 1st Platoon and move them by the flank over to the ridge. They are to take up position behind the ledge and extend the left flank from Beck's left. As soon as a man reaches your 1st Platoon safely, I'll soundpower Baker to move out, and then we'll move."

"Yes, sir," Stein said. He was unable to keep his teeth from grinding, but his voice was level. Slowly, very slowly, because he was reluctant, he too stood up to his full height also, then followed Tall down the slope. But before he could give an order young Captain Gaff, who had been lying prone not far away, had already crawled up to them.

"I'll go, sir," he said to Tall. "I'd like to. Very much."

Tall gazed at him fondly. "All right, John. Go ahead." With strong fatherly pride he watched the young captain move away. "Good man, my young Exec," he said to Stein.

There was really no need for the glasses this time. 1st Platoon wasn't all that far away. Standing upright, their heads just showing above the crest, Tall and Stein watched Gaff zigzag his way professionally down into the shellhole area on the main flat to the left of the grassy ridge. Stein had told him roughly where to find Skinny Culn, now platoon commander by attrition. In a few moments men began moving to the right in rushes, by twos and threes.

"All right," Tall said. "Give me the soundpower." He spoke into it at length. "Okay," he said. "Now we'll go."

AroundÈthem, as if sensing something or other was in the wind, the men began to stir.

Whatever else Stein could find to say about him, and Stein could find plenty, he nevertheless had to admit that with Tall's arrival on the battlefield a change for the better had come over everything and everybody. Partly of course the change was due to Beck's feat, whatever that was exactly. But it could not all be that, and Stein had to admit it. Tall had brought with him some quality that had not been here before, and it showed in the faces of the men. They were less indrawn looking. Perhaps it was only the feeling that after all in the end not everybody would die. Some would live through it. And from there it was only a step to the normal reaction of ego: I will live through this. Others may get it, my friends right and left may die, but I will make it. Even Stein felt better, himself. Tall had arrived and taken control, and had taken it firmly and surely and with confidence. Those who lived would owe it to Tall, and those who died would say nothing. It was too bad about those ones; everybody would feel that; but after all once they were dead they did not really count anymore, did they? This was the simple truth, and Tall had brought it with him to them.

The whole thing was evident in the way Tall handled the move forward. Striding up and down in front of the prone 3d Platoon, his little bamboo baton in his right hand, tapping it lightly against his shoulder as he frowned in concentration, he explained to them briefly what he planned to do, and why, and what their part in it must be. He did not exhort them. His attitude said quite plainly that he considered any exhortation to be cheating and trickery and he would not indulge in it; they deserved better than that; they must do what they must do, and do it without any chauvinistic pleading from him; there would be no jingoism. When the move was completed and both 1st and 3d Platoons were installed behind the ledge to the left and right of the 2d, only two men had been wounded and these lightly, and everybody knew they owed this to Colonel Tall. Even Stein felt the same way.

But having got them that far, it was evident that even Tall was not going to get them very much further. It was now after 3:30. They had been out here since dawn, and most of them had not had any water since midmorning. Several men had collapsed. Nerves frayed by being almost constantly under fire and without water, many more were hysterically close to collapse. Tall could see all this himself. But after taking the reports of Beck, Dale and Bell, he wanted to have, before dark, one more go at reducing the strongpoint on the right.

The little assemblage of officers and noncoms around the Colonel now included those of B-for-Baker. When Charlie Co was making its move to the ledge, Baker on Tall's telephoned orders had made its third attack of the day. Like the others it too had failed, and in the confusion half of Baker had over-lapped Charlie's 1st Platoon on the left and hung there. In returning the rest had tumbled in and stayed there also, so Tall had sent for their leaders, too.

"That strongpoint is obviously the key to the ridge," he now said to the whole of them. "Se—uh —Sergeant Bell here is quite right." He gave Bell a sharp look and went on, "From their knob there our little brown brothers can cover the whole of the flat rising ground in front of our ledge from our right clear over to Baker on the left. Why they left the ledge unguarded I have no idea. But we must exploit it before they see their error. If we can reduce that big bunker, I see no reason why we can't take the whole ridge before nightfall. I'm asking for volunteers to go back there and knock it out."

Stein, hearing for the first time this news about a further attack, was so horrified he could hardly believe his ears. Surely Tall must know how depleted and worn out they all were. But Stein's impetus to argue with Tall had worn out, especially in front of over half thÈ Battalion officers.

To John Bell, squatting with the others, it was all once again like some scene from a movie, a very bad, cliché, third rate war movie. It could hardly have anything to do with death. The Colonel still remained fully upright, still paced back and forth with his bamboo baton as he talked, but Bell noted that he carefully remained far enough back down the slope so that his head did not show above the ledge. Bell had also noted the hesitation and then italicized pronunciation when Tall applied the title Sergeant to himself. This was the first time Bell had ever met his Colonel, but there was no reason to assume Tall did not also know his story. Everybody else knew it. Perhaps it was this, more than anything else, which made him say what he said.

"Sir, I'll be glad to go back again and lead the way for a party." Was he mad? He was angry, he knew that, but was he insane as well? Ah, Marty!

Immediately, off to Bell's right, another voice piped up. Hunchshouldered, grapplehanded, crackfaced, Acting Sergeant Dale was making his bid for future fame, future sinecures, future security from army kitchens. For whatever it was that drove him. Bell did not know.

"I'll go, Colonel, sir! I want to volunteer!" Charlie Dale stood up, made three formal paces forward, then squatted again. It was as if Dale, the liberated cook, did not believe his offer legal without the prescribed three paces forward. From his squat he glanced all around, his beady little eyes bright with something. To Bell the effect was distastefully ludicrous, laughable.

Almost before Dale had squatted, two other voices were added. Behind Bell, from among the privates and within the remnant of his own little patrol group, Pfc Doll and Private Witt came forward. Both sat down, much closer to Bell than to Dale who still squatted by himself. Bell felt impelled to wink at them.

Pfc Doll, who was still outraged over the success of Charlie Dale's patrol as against their own, was startled by Bell's wink. Why the f--- would anybody want to wink? From the moment he spoke and started to move forward Doll had felt his heart in his throat again, making his eyes swim dizzily. Moving his tongue in his mouth was like rubbing two damp pieces of blotting paper together. He had had no water for over four hours, and thirst had become so much a part of him that he could not remember ever having been without it. But this other was extra, this blotting paper in his mouth was the thirst of fear, and Doll recognized it. Was Bell ridiculing him? He essayed a small cold guarded smile at Bell.

Witt on the other hand, sitting relaxed to the left of Doll and a little nearer to Bell, grinned and winked back. Witt was at ease. He had made up his mind, when he first volunteered himself back into the old company this morning, to go through with it all the way. And that was what he intended to do. When Witt made up his mind, it was made up, and that was that. As far as he was concerned this volunteer mission was only another little chore to be got through and done by a few men of talent like himself. He had enough confidence in himself as a soldier to be pretty sure he could take care of himself in any situation requiring skill; and as for accidents or bad luck, if one of those caught him, well, it caught him, and that was that. But he didn't believe one would, and in the meantime he was sure he could help out, perhaps save a lot of his old buddies—some of whom, like that punk kid Fife, had not even wanted him to come back in the outfit. But Witt wanted to help, or save as many of them as he could, even Fife if it had happened like that.

Then, besides all of this, Witt had acquired considerable respect and admiration for Bell earlier, on the patrol when Bell pulled his stunt of exposing himself like he had. Witt, who had been a corporal three times and a sergeant twice during his career, could appreciate intelligence and courage in a man. And, despite the fact that he was chary of his personal endorsements, he now liked Bell. Witt felt that, like himself, Bell had the qualities of real leadership. Together they might do a lot, help, or save, a lot of guys. He liked Bell ex-officer or not. So he grinned and winked back his feeling of kinship, before turning his attention back to Tall, whom Colonel or not he did not like.

The Colonel had had no chance to speak, his volunteers had been coming so thick and fast. He now had four. And before he could say anything to the four, he acquired three more in rapid succession. A rather elderly, Calvinistic-looking 2d Lieutenant, who might well have been a Chaplain but was not, presented himself from amongst the B Company officers. A B Company sergeant followed him. Then Tall's own Exec, young Captain Gaff, put in his two cents and offered his services.

"I'd like to lead the party, Colonel," he said.

Tall held up his hand. "That's enough, that's enough. Seven is plenty. In the terrain you'll be working more men would only hinder you, I think. I know many more of you would like to go, but you'll have to wait for another opportunity."

Captain Stein, hearing this, peered at his Commander closely through his glasses, and was amazed to see that Tall was in deadly earnest and not joking at all. He was not even being ironic.

Turning to Gaff, Tall said, "All right, John. It's your baby. You'll be in command. Now ..."

Professionally, he laid out their operation for them. Succinctly, efficiently, missing no smallest detail or advantage, he planned their tactics. It was impossible not to admire both his ability and his command of it. Stein for one, and he was sure he was not alone, was forced to admit that here in Tall was a talent and an authority which he himself just simply did not possess.

"Almost certainly you will find the bunker guarded by smaller MG posts around it. But I think it is better to ignore these and go for the strongpoint itself if you possibly can. The little posts will fall of themselves if the big one is taken; remember that.

"That's all, gentlemen," Tall said with a sudden smile. "Noncoms return to your positions, but I want the officers to remain. Synchronize watches with me, John. Give Dog Co—oh—12 minutes before you radio your first call. It should take you that long to get there."

As the little assault party crawled off to the right along the ledge, Colonel Tall was already on the soundpower phone to contact Battalion. Captain Stein, squatting with the officers who had been told to stay and looking over at his own waterless exhausted men behind the ledge, could not help wondering just how far uphill they would be able to attack, even if the strongpoint fell? Thirty yards maybe? before they collapsed? The assault party disappeared around the corner of the hillside. Stein turned his attention back to Tall and the little group of company officers, of whom only six remained now out of 10. And as the assault party approached the spot where Bell earlier had exposed himself, Colonel Tall was already explaining to his officers his auxiliary plan, should the assault on the bunker fail. If that happened, Tall wanted to effect a surprise night attack. Of course that would mean setting up a perimeter defense first, so they should be prepared. Because Tall had no intention of withdrawing tonight as 2d Battalion had done yesterday. He himself would stay with the Battalion. In the meantime of course there was always the chance, the off chance, that the assault party would succeed.

John Bell, crawling along in the lead of the little seven-man assault group, did not concern himself with whether the attack could succeed. He kept thinking only that he had volunteered to lead a party back. He had not volunteered to be a fighting part of it. But no one except himself had paid the slightest attention to this nicety of phrasing. Now here he was, not only leading them as point, but expected to fight with them, and unable to back out without looking cowardly, schmucky. Pride! Pride! WhÈt stupid foolish things it forced us to do in its goddam name! He kept his eyes glued on that changing point where the ledge disappeared around the curve of the hillside. It would be just his goddamned luck to find the Japanese had suddenly decided to correct their fault and put some men down here to cover this ledge. He as the point would be the first big fat target. Irritably, he glanced back to motion the others to come on and in doing so discovered something strange. He no longer cared very much. He no longer cared at all. Exhaustion, hunger, thirst, dirt, the fatigue of perpetual fear, weakness from lack of water, bruises, danger had all taken their toll of him until somewhere within the last few minutes—Bell did not know exactly when—he had ceased to feel human. So much of so many different emotions had been drained from him that his emotional reservoir was empty. He still felt fear, but even that was so dulled by emotional apathy (as distinct from physical apathy) that it was hardly more than vaguely unpleasant. He just no longer cared much about anything. And instead of impairing his ability to function, it enhanced it, this sense of no longer feeling human. When the others came up, he crawled on whistling over to himself a song called I Am An Automaton to the tune of God Bless America.

They thought they were men. They all thought they were real people. They really did. How funny. They thought they made decisions and ran their own lives, and proudly called themselves free individual human beings. The truth was they were here, and they were gonna stay here, until the state through some other automaton told them to go someplace else, and then they'd go. But they'd go freely, of their own free choice and will, because they were free individual human beings. Well, well.

When he reached the spot where he had crawled out above the ledge he stopped and sending Witt ahead to guard, pointed the place out to Captain Gaff.

Witt, when he crawled out to take the point—or post rather, it was, since they were no longer moving—did think he was a man, and did believe he was a real person. As a matter of fact, the question had never entered his head. He had made his decision to volunteer himself back into the old outfit, and he had made his decision to volunteer for this thing, and he was a free individual human being as far as he was concerned. He was free, white and 21 and had never taken no s——— off nobody and never would, and as the prospect of action got closer and closer he could feel himself tightening all up inside with excitement, exactly like he used to do in the coal strikes back in Bloody Breathitt. The chance to help, the chance to save all his friends that he could, the chance to kill some more goddam Japanese, he would show that f———ing Bugger Stein who had had him transferred out as a malcontent. Standing on his knees out away from the ledge, he held his rifle ready with the safety off. He had not shot squirrel all his life for nothing, he had not made High Expert on the range for the past six years for nothing, either. His only fear was that something might open up back there where Captain Gaff was trying to make up his mind, while he was out here on point —on post, rather—and could not get into it. Well, they would know soon enough.

And Witt was right. They did know soon enough. After he had been shown the spot, young Captain Gaff, who if he was nervous at all hid it to perfection, decided to crawl out for a look himself and after he returned, decided that this was as good a spot to observe the fire as any. The only trouble was that the tiny low place with its thin short brush cover was too low to allow him to drag the walkie-talkie up there above the ledge. "Any of you guys know how to operate this thing?" he asked. Bell was the only one who did. "Okay, you stay below the ledge and I'll call down the data to you from up above," Gaff saiÈ. First though he would call them and set up the coordinates himself. Then he explained his plan. Once the 81s had plastered the place as much as they were able, he and his trusty band would crawl out along the low place until they formed a line, then they would try to crawl as close as they could through the grass before throwing their grenades. "Okay?" Bell's automatons all nodded their heads. "Okay. Then here we go."

Gaff crawled out into the low place before the first shells arrived. They could hear their soft shu-shu-shu coming almost straight down before they hit, then the hillside exploded into smoke and flame and noise. Only about 50 yards from the bunker, they were showered with a rain of dirt, chips of rock and small pieces of hot metal. Someone had motioned Witt in against the wall of the ledge, and they all clung to it with their faces pressed against the sharp rock and their eyes closed, cursing with hatred the goddamned mortarmen because they might drop a short round, though they didn't. After 15 minutes of this, during which Gaff constantly yelled down changes of range, Gaff finally yelled down, "Okay! Tell them to stop!" Bell did. "I think that's enough!" Gaff yelled down. "Whatever damage they can do, they've done by now." Then, as the command was executed back there far away, the mortars stopped falling in a silence that was almost as devastating as the noise had been.

"Okay," Gaff called much more softly, "let's go!"

If they were under any hopeful illusion that the mortar barrage had smashed and flattened every Japanese in the strongpoint, they were straightened out on this point right away. As the elderly, morose, Calvinistic-looking 2d Lieutenant from B-for-Baker climbed out first, he foolishly climbed straight up exposing himself to the waist, whereupon a Japanese machinegunner immediately shot him three times through the chest. He fell down flat on his face in the little trough, as he should have been in the first place, and hung there, his legs dangling straight down against the ledge in the faces of those behind him. Gingerly, and as gently as they could, they pulled him back down behind the ledge. Stretched out on his back with his eyes shut and breathing shallowly, he looked more morose than ever. He did not open his eyes and put both hands up over his damaged chest and went on breathing shallowly, sour-visaged, Calvinistic, his blue jowls shining darkly in the late afternoon sun.

"Well, whadda we do now?" Charlie Dale snarled. "We can't take him with us."

"We'll have to leave him," Witt said. He had just come up.

"You can't leave him here," the Baker Company sergeant protested.

"Okay," Dale snarled. "He's from your company. You stay with him."

"Nah," the Baker Company sergeant said. "I didn't volunteer for this thing just to sit with him."

"I should have been a Chaplain," the dying man said in a faint voice without opening his eyes. "I could have, you know. I'm an ordained minister. I never should have fooled around with Infantry. My wife told me."

"We can leave him and pick him up on the way back," Bell said. "If he's still alive."

"You boys want to pray with me?" the Lieutenant said, his eyes still closed. "Our Father Who art in Heaven, Hallowéd be Thy Name."

"We can't, Sir," Dale interrupted politely. "We got to get going. The Captain's waitin on us."

"All right," the Lieutenant said, still without opening his eyes. "I'll do it myself. You boys go ahead. Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily..."

As they climbed out one by one on their faces and bellies so as not to make the same mistake he made, the faint voice droned feebly on. Dale went first, Witt immediately behind him.

"The son of a bitch," Witt whispered when they were both in the trough behind the thin fragile screen of leaves. "I wish he had of been a Chaplain. They've seen us now. They know we're here. It's going to be hell."

"Yeh, f——— his goddam prayin," Dale said, but he did not say it with much force. He was too busy looking all around everywhere, eyes wide with tension.

Bell was the last to go, but he stopped at the ledge feeling he ought to say something, some word of encouragement, except what did you say to a man dying? "Well, good luck, sir," he managed finally.

"Thanks, son," the Baker Company Lieutenant said without opening his eyes. "Which one are you? I dont want to open my eyes if I can help it."

"I'm Bell, sir."

"Oh, yes," the Lieutenant said. "Well, if you get the chance, maybe you can say some little prayer for my soul. I dont want to embarrass you. But it certainly can't do my soul no harm, can it?"

"Okay, sir," Bell said. "Goodby."

As he climbed out, pressing his face and chest as hard into the dirt of the trough as he could, the faint voice went droning feebly on, repeating some other kind of prayer now which Bell had never heard and didn't know. Automatons. Religious automatons, irreligious automatons. The Business and Professional Automatons Club, Chaplain Gray will give the benediction. Yes, siree. The dirt tasted very dusty in his mouth that was pressed to it.

Captain Gaff, the Battalion Exec, had crawled completely to the end of the trough and out beyond the tiny little brush screen, a matter of 20 or 30 yards.

"Is he dead?" he asked when the others reached him. They were now strung out single file one behind the other in the trough.

"Not yet," Dale whispered from immediately behind him.

Out here beyond the little screen of brush they were more in the open, though the trough still hid them, but here the grass was much thicker than back near the ledge, and it was here that Gaff had decided to make his move. They were to turn their little line by its right flank, he informed Dale and Witt behind him, and told them to pass it back, and on his signal begin to crawl, out of the trough and through the grass, toward the bunker. They were not to fire or throw their grenades until he gave the signal. He wanted to get as close to the bunker as possible without being seen.

"Actually," he pointed out to Dale behind him, "we could go straight on here. You see? After that little open space we would be behind that little rise, and I think we could maybe crawl all the way around behind them."

"Yes, sir," Dale said.

"But I dont think there's that much time."

"Yes, sir," Dale said.

"That would take at least another hour of crawling," Gaff said earnestly. "And I'm afraid it's too near dark."

"Yes, sir," Dale said.

"What do you think?" Gaff said.

"I agree with you, sir," Dale said. No goddam officer was goin to get Charlie Dale to take no responsibility for what the officer done.

"Has everybody behind been informed?" Gaff whispered.

"Yes, sir."

Gaff sighed. "Okay. Let's do it."

Slowly Gaff snaked his belly over the lip of the trough and off into the grass, dragging his rifle by the muzzle rather than cradling it, so as not to disturb the grass more than absolutely necessary. One by one the others followed.

For John Bell it was like some insane, mad nightmare which he could remember having had before. His elbows and feet fell through holes in the mat of old dead stems, catching and holding him. Dust and seeds filled his nose and choked him. Stems whipped his face. Then he remembered: it was that crawl up through the grass to the ledge with Keck. It really had happened to him after all. And Keck was dead now.

None of them ever knew what set them off. One moment they were crawling along in utter silence, each man totally alone and separate and out of contact with the others, and in the next machinegun fire was whipping and slashing over and around and all about them. No one had fired, no one had thrown a grenade, no one had shown himself. Perhaps one nervous enemy had seen some grass move and had fired, thus setting them all off. WhatevÈr it was, they now lay in a storm of fire, separated and cut off from contact with each other, unable to take concerted action. Each man put his head down and huddled to the ground, praying to gods or godlessnesses that he might keep on living. Contact was lost and with it all command and control. Nobody could move. And it was in this static situation of potential total loss that Pfc Don Doll came forward as hero.

Sweating, lying pressed flat in an ecstasy of panic, terror, fear and cowardice, Doll simply could not stand it any longer. He had had too much this day. Wailing over and over in a high falsetto the one word "Mother! Mother!," which fortunately nobody at all could hear, least of all himself, he leaped to his feet and began to run straight at the Japanese emplacement, firing his rifle from his hip at the one embrasure he could see. As if startled beyond reasonable expectation, most of the Japanese fire stopped suddenly. At the same moment Captain Gaff, released from his own temporary panic, leaped up waving his arm and bawling "Back!" With him in the lead the rest of the assault force ran for the trough and their lives. Meanwhile Doll charged on, wailing his incantation:

"Mother! Mother!"

When his rifle was empty, he threw it at the embrasure, drew his pistol and began firing that. With his left hand he tore a grenade from his belt, stopped firing the pistol long enough to pull the pin with one finger, and lobbed the grenade over onto the camouflaged roof of the emplacement, which he could now see clearly since it was only about 20 yards away, and where the grenade exploded uselessly and without effect. Then, continuing to fire the pistol, he charged on. Only when the pistol ceased to fire for want of ammunition did he come to his senses and realize where he was. Then he turned and ran. Luckily for him, he did not turn back toward the others but simply ran blindly off to the right—though he would deny this later. In that direction the curving ledge was only 10 yards away, and he reached it before the mass of the Japanese fire, which by now as if getting over its start had commenced again, could find him and cut him down.

From behind him as he ran the 10 yards a dark round fizzing object arched over his head and fell a few feet in front of him. Automatically Doll kicked at it with his foot as if placekicking a football and ran on. It bounced away a few yards and exploded in a cloud of black smoke which knocked him down. But when he fell he found that there was nothing under him; he had fallen over the ledge. His foot stinging painfully, he bounced to the foot of the ledge at almost the exact spot where Private Catch had been killed, landed with a bonejarring thud, then rolled another 12 yards further down the hillside before he could get himself stopped. For a while he just lay in the grass, breathing in groans, bruised, sore, the wind knocked out of him, halfblinded, thinking dully of almost nothing. This one had not been like his other experiences: the zigzag run back from 1st Platoon, then the return to find Skinny Culn, not like the charge up the ridge with Keck. This one had been horrible, totally and completely horrible, without any relieving qualities or graces. He devoutly hoped he would never have even to think of it again. When he looked at his shoe, he found a neat little slit a 16th of an inch long just above the ankle bone. Where the f--- was he, anyway? He knew where he was, but was he alone? What had happened to the others? Where were they? At the moment all he could think about was that he wanted to be with people, so he could put his arms around somebody and they could put their arms around him. With this in mind he got up, climbed to the ledge and ran gasping back along it till he came to the trough, where he almost ran headon into the others, all sitting against the rock and gasping breathlessly. Only one of them, the Sergeant from Baker Company, had been hurt, and he had had his shoulder smashed by an MG bullet.

"Doll," Captain Gaff gaspedÈ before Doll could apologize, make excuses or explain away what he had done, "I'm personally recommending you to Colonel Tall for the Distinguished Service Cross. You saved all our lives, and I never saw such bravery. I shall write the recommendation myself, and I shall pursue it. I promise you."

Doll could hardly believe his own ears. "Well, sir, it wasn't nothin," he gasped modestly. "I was scared." He could see Charlie Dale looking at him with a kind of hate-filled envy from where he leaned gasping against the ledge. Ha, you f---er! Doll thought with a sudden explosion of pleasure.

"But to have the presence of mind to remember that the ledge was 10 yards off there to the right," Gaff gasped, "that was wonderful."

"Well, sir, you know, I was with the first patrol," Doll said and smiled at Dale.

"So were some of these others," young Captain Gaff said. He was still breathing heavily but beginning to get his breath back. "Are you okay? You're not hurt?"

"Well, sir, I dont know," Doll smiled, and proceeded to show them the tiny slit in his boot.

"What's that from?"

"A Jap handgrenade. I kicked it away." He bent to unlace the shoe. "I better look." Inside he found the little piece of metal, which had slipped to the bottom of his shoe like a pebble, but in actual truth he had not even felt it during the run back along the ledge. "Hunh!" he lied, laughing. "I thought I had a rock in my shoe." It had struck his anklebone just above its peak and cut it slightly; it had bled a little into his sweat-wet sock.

"By God!" Gaff exclaimed. "It's only a scratch, but by God I'm recommending you for the Purple Heart, too. You might as well have it. But you're all right except for that?"

"I lost my rifle," Doll said.

"Take Lieutenant Gray's," Gaff said. He looked around at the others. "We better be getting back. And tell them we couldn't take the objective. Can a couple of you drag Lieutenant Gray?" Gaff turned to the Baker Company sergeant. "You all right? Think you can make it?"

"I'm all right," the Baker Co sergeant said with a grin that was more a pained grimace. "It only hurts when I laugh. But I want to thank you!" he said, turning to Doll.

"Dont thank me," Doll said, and laughed shyly, brilliant-eyed, with a new magnanimity born of his sudden recognition. He had forgotten all about wanting to put his arms around somebody, or have them put their arms around him. "But what about you? Are you going to be all right?" He looked down at the bloody hand from which blood dripped slowly as the arm hung useless against the sergeant's side, and suddenly he was scared again.

"Sure, sure," the sergeant said happily. "I'm out of it now. I'll be going back. I hope I'm crippled a little."

"Come on, you guys," Captain Gaff said. "Let's move. You can talk it over later. Dale, you and Witt drag Lieutenant Gray. Bell, you help the sergeant. I'll take the walkie-talkie. Doll, you rearguard us. Them little brown brothers, as the Colonel likes to call them, are liable to send some people down here after us, you know."

And thus arranged the little party made its way back. The Japanese sent no one after them. Gaff with the radio, Bell and the B-for-Baker sergeant behind him, then Dale and Witt dragging the dead lieutenant's body by its two feet, with Doll bringing up the rear, they did not make a very prepossessing sight as they came crawling around the corner into view of the Battalion. But Gaff had been talking to them on the way back.

"If we do get another chance at it tomorrow, I think we can take it," he said, "and I for one am going to volunteer for the assignment. If we crawl on across that open space and get behind the little rise, we can come around in behind them and come down on them from above. That's what we should have done today. From above like that we can put the grenades to them easier than hell. And that's what I'm going to tell the Colonel."

And strangely enough, there was not one of them but Èho wanted to go back with him—excepting of course the Baker Company sergeant who of course could not go. Even John Bell wanted to go, just like all the others. Automatons all. What was it? Why? Bell did not know. What was this peculiar masochistic, self-destructive quality in himself which made him want to get out in the open and expose himself to danger and gunfire as he had that first time at the trough? Once as a child—(once? many times, and in many different ways, but this one particular time when he was 15, and the memory assailed him now so strongly that it was as if he were actually there, living it again)—once he had gone for a tramp in one of the Ohio woods outside his town. This particular woods had a cliff and a cave, if you could call a hole four feet deep in the rock a cave, and up above the cliff there was more woods for about 50 yards which ended at a graveled country road. Across the gravel road farmers were working in their fields. Hearing their voices and the snorts and jingles of their horses and harness, he had a strange sweet secretive excitement. Peeking through the screen of leaves that marked the end of the wood, he could see them, four men in overalls and rubber boots standing beside the fence, but they could not see him. A lot of cars used this graveled country road, too. One of the cars, with a man and three women in it, stopped to talk to the four men, and Bell suddenly knew what he was going to do. In a sweet, hot rush of visceral excitement he retreated through the trees almost all the way back to the clifftop and began to take off his clothes. Naked as the day he was born in the warm, rich June air, he crept like an Indian back to the screen of leaves, the twigs and old leaves crunching noiselessly under his bare feet, leaving his clothes and his sandwiches back there behind him because that was all part of it: his clothes must be far enough away so that he could never reach them in time if he were caught or seen, otherwise it was cheating; and standing just behind the leaf screen, where he could see them and the expressions on all their faces, trembling violently in his excitement and excitation, he masturbated. Crawling along behind Caption Gaff beneath a ledge on Guadalcanal, helping along the wounded sergeant beside him, John Bell stopped and started, transfixed by a revelation. And the revelation, brought on by his old memory, and which he was forced to face, was that his volunteering, his climb out into the trough that first time, even his participation in the failed assault, all were—in some way he could not fully understand—sexual, and as sexual, and in much the same way, as his childhood incident of the graveled road.

"Ouch!" said the sergeant beside him. "God damn it!"

"Oh! I'm sorry!" Bell said.

He had not thought of that episode in a long time. When he had told that one to his wife Marty, it had excited her too, and they had gone rushing off to bed together to make love. Ahhhhh, Marty! The silent cry was like an explosion wrung involuntarily from his bowels.

Covertly Bell with his new knowledge looked around at the others. Were their reactions sexual too, then? How to know? He couldn't tell. But he knew that he himself, as had all the others said too, would be volunteering to go back again tomorrow if the chance arose. Partly it was an esprit de corps and a closeness of comradeship coming from having shared something a bit tougher than the rest. Partly it was Captain Gaff whom he liked and respected more and more all the time. And partly, for him at least, it was that other thing, which he could hardly name, that thing of sexuality. Could it be that with the others? Could it be that all war was basically sexual? Not just in psych theory, but in fact, actually and emotionally? A sort of sexual perversion? Or a complex of sexual perversions? That would make a funny thesis and God help the race.

But whether or not Bell could discover in his comrades anything about thÈir sexual involvement, and he couldn't, he could read something else in their faces. That spiritual numbness and sense of no longer feeling human which he had become aware of in himself on the way up, was growing apace on all their faces. Even Gaff who had only been up here with them for a couple of hours was showing a bit of it now. So Bell was not alone. And when they crawled, limping and licking their wounds, back into the midst of the Battalion, which was already beginning to take on the look of a permanent, organized position, which indeed it was, or was soon to become, he was able to note the same ahumanness in many other faces, some more than others, all of them almost precisely measurable in direct ratio to what the owner of the face had been through since dawn today. Next to his own little assault group, those who had made the first crossing with Keck showed it the most.

It was getting very close to dark. In their absence, they found most of Charlie had on Colonel Tall's orders already dug themselves in a few yards back from the ledge. As it turned out, their little battle had been heard and interpreted correctly as a failure, and because of this B-for-Baker had been ordered to pass below and to the rear of Charlie, curving their flanks uphill to join and thus completing the defensive circle, and were now busily at work digging their holes for the night. There was to be no withdrawal. Holes for themselves, the little assault force, were already being dug for them, also on Colonel Tall's orders.

And as it also turned out, as they found out almost immediately, they were going to get a chance at the bunker again tomorrow. Colonel Tall made this plain to them as soon as he took Captain Gaff's report. Colonel Tall's plan for a night attack, about which they knew nothing and of which they heard with astonishment, had been vetoed by the Division Commander. But at least, Colonel Tall said, he had made the offer. Anyway, he agreed with Captain Gaff's tactical interpretation completely. He shook hands with Doll first because of his recommendation for the DSC, then with each of the others, excepting of course Lieutenant Gray, who was already on his way back to Hill 209 on a stretcher. Then, tucking his bamboo baton under his arm, he dismissed the enlisted men and turned to a dispositions discussion about tomorrow with the officers.

Colonel Tall's plan, which he had devised after receiving the news of the rejection of his proposed night attack, was one calculated to take account of every contingency, and it utilized—as Bugger Stein was quick to note—Stein's suggestion of today to explore the right for the possibility of a flanking maneuver. Before dawn Stein was to take his C-for-Charlie Company (less the men with Gaff) back across the third fold and move down the hollow to the right into the jungle which had been so quiet today. Unless he encountered very heavy resistance, he was to push on to the top of the Elephant's Head from the rear. "That Elephant's Trunk is one hell of a fine escape route for our brown brothers," smiled Colonel Tall. If Stein could get astride of it higher up where the slopes were steeper, perhaps they could bottle up the whole force. Meantime, Baker would be moved by Captain Task up to the ledge, where he would wait the reduction of the strongpoint by Captain Gaff's assault force to begin his uphill frontal attack. "I'm giving you the roundabout flanking movement, Stein, because it was your idea in the first place," said Colonel Tall. Perhaps, but only perhaps, and then even only to Stein, there was a veiled double meaning in the slightly thin way Tall said it.

"That Bell," Colonel Tall said after the discussion of his plan was over. He looked off to where he had thoughtfully placed the assault force near to Gaff's hole and his own. "He's a good man." This time the unspoken meaning was clear to every officer present, since they all knew, and they knew Tall knew, about Bell's past as an officer.

"He sure is!" young Captain GafÈ put in with boyish enthusiasm, and without reservation.

"In my company I have always found him an excellent soldier," Stein said when Tall glanced at him.

Tall said no more, and so neither did Stein. He was willing enough to let well enough alone. Stein had increasingly found himself put by Tall into the position of a guilty schoolboy who had failed his exam, although the Colonel had never said anything to him openly or directly. Slowly the talk among the officers drifted back to the outlook for tomorrow as they squatted in the center of the position. It was almost quiet now; the high racketing which had hung in the air all day had ceased some time ago, and only sporadic riflefire was heard now in the distance. Both sides lay waiting and breathing.

And as the twilight deepened, that was the way they remained: the little knot of officers in the center discussing the prospects and possibilities of tomorrow, the men in the holes around the circle checking and cleaning their weapons: the Battalion at the end of its first real day of real combat: neither successful nor unsuccessful, nothing decided, exhausted, growing numb-er. Just before full dark the officers parted and went to their own holes to lie down and wait with the men for the expected Japanese night attack. Perhaps the worst thing was that now one could no longer smoke. That, and the shortage of water. A few more men had collapsed during the late afternoon and been carted away like the wounded, and many more remained on the verge of collapse. Fear was a problem too, more in some, less in others, according to how far the ahuman numbness had advanced in each. John Bell was not afraid at all now, he found. Wait until the shooting started, to get scared.

They were paired off of course, two in each hole, one man to guard, one to sleep; but nobody slept very much. Quite a few men, spending their first night outside their own lines, fired at shadows, fired at everything, fired at nothing, revealing their positions; but the expected Japanese night attack did not develop, though they did manage to cut both companies' soundpower phone lines. Probably they were too weak and too sick to attack. And so the Battalion lay and waited for the dawn. Along about two o'clock John Bell suffered another malarial attack of chills and fever like the one he had had two days before on the road, except that this one was much worse. At its worst he was shaking so uncontrollably that he would have been of no use to anybody if the Japanese had attacked. And he was not alone. First Sergeant Welsh, clutching his precious musette bag containing the leather-bound Morning Report book in which for tomorrow he had already recorded in the dusk all of the personnel changes of today: "KIA; WIA; Sick";—suffered his first malarial attack, which was worse than Bell's second one, though neither knew it about the other. And there were others.

One man who had to defecate did his business in the corner of his hole cursing hysterically, and spent the rest of the night trying to keep his feet out of it. To have gotten out of your hole was worth your life with this bunch.

• • •

Billions of hard, bright stars shone with relentless glitter all across the tropic night sky. Underneath this brilliant canopy of the universe, the men lay wide awake and waited. From time to time the same great cumuli of the day, black blobs now, sailed their same stately route across the bright expanse blotting out portions of it, but no rain fell on the thirsting men. For the first time since they had been up in these hills it did not rain at all during the night. The night had to be endured, and it had to be endured dry, beneath its own magnificent beauty. Perhaps of them all only Colonel Tall enjoyed it.

Finally, though it was still black night, cautionary stirrings and whispers sibilated along the line from hole to hole as the word to move out was passed. In the inhuman, unreal unlight of false dawn the grubby, dirtyfaced remnants of CÈfor-Charlie sifted from their holes and coagulated stiffly into their squads and platoons to begin their flanking move. There was not one of them who did not carry his cuts, bruises or abrasions from having flung himself violently to the ground the day before. Thick fat rolls of dirt pressed beneath the mudcaked fingernails of their hands, greasy from cleaning weapons. They had lost 48 men or just over one-fourth of their number yesterday in killed, wounded or sick; nobody doubted they would lose more today. The only question remaining was: Which ones of us? Who exactly?

Still looking dapper although he was now almost as dirty as themselves, Colonel Tall with his little bamboo baton in his armpit and his hand resting on his rakishly lowslung holster, strode among them to tell them good luck. He shook hands with Bugger Stein and Brass Band. Then they trudged away in the ghostly light, moving away eastward back down the ridge to face their new day while thirst gnawed at them. Before dawn lightened the area, they had crossed back over the third fold—where they had lain so long in terror yesterday, and where the familiar ground now looked strange—and had traversed the low between the folds to the edge of the jungle where they were hidden, where Col Tall would not let them go yesterday, and where not a single Japanese was in sight. Approaching it cautiously with scouts out, they found nobody at all. A hundred yards inside the jungle they discovered a highly passable, much used trail, its mud covered with prints of Japanese hobnailed boots, all pointing toward Hill 210. As they moved along it quietly and without trouble, they could hear the beginning of the fight on the ridge—where they had left the previously four, but now five volunteers with Captain Gaff.

Tall had not waited long. B-for-Baker now manned the line of holes behind the ledge. Tall sent them forward to the ledge itself, and as soon as it was light enough to see at all, sent the middle platoon forward in an attack whose objective was to wheel right in a line pivoted on the ledge so that they would be facing the strongpoint. This would place them in a position to aid Gaff.

But the middle platoon's move was not successful. MG fire from the strongpoint, and other hidden points nearby, hurt them too badly. Four men were killed and a number of others were wounded. They were forced to return. That was the noise of the fight C-for-Charlie heard; and its failure left everything up to Gaff and his now five volunteers. They would have to take the strongpoint alone. Tall walked over to them where they lay.

This fifth volunteer with Gaff was Pfc Cash, the icy-eyed taxi driver from Toledo with the mean face, known in C-for-Charlie as "Big Un." Earlier, before C-for-Charlie moved out, Big Un had come up to Tall in the dark and in a ponderous voice had asked to be allowed to stay behind and join Gaff's assault group. Tall, who was not used to being approached by strange privates anyway, could hardly believe his ears. He could not even remember ever having seen this man. "Why?" he asked sharply.

"Because of what the Japs done to them two guys from 2d Battalion three days ago on Hill 209," Big Un said. "I aint forgotten it, and I want to get myself a few of them personally before I get knocked off or shot up without getting a chance to kill some. I think Cap'n Gaff's operation'll be my best oppratunity."

For a moment Tall could not help believing he was being made the victim of some kind of elaborate and tasteless hoax, perpetrated by the wits of Charlie Company who had sent this great oaf up to him deliberately with this stupid request for personal, heroic vendetta. 1st Sgt Welsh, for one, had a mind capable of such subtle ridicule.

But when he looked up (as he was forced to do; and Tall was by no means a small man) at this huge, murderous face and icy, if not very intelligent eyes, he could see despite his flare of anger that the man was obviously sincere. Cash stood, his rifle slung Èot from one shoulder but across his back, and carrying in his hands one of those sawed-off shotguns and bandolier of buckshot shells which some fool of a staff lieutenant had had the bright idea of handing out for "close quarter work" the night before the attack—which meant that Cash had hung onto the damned thing all through the danger of yesterday. Tall thought they had all been thrown away. A sudden tiny thrill ran through Tall despite himself. The brute really was big! But his own reaction made him even more angry.

"Soldier, are you serious?" he snapped thinly. "There's a war on here. I'm busy. I've got a serious battle to fight."

"Yes," Big Un said, then remembering his manners added, "I mean: Yes, sir: I'm serious."

Tall pressed his lips together. If the man wanted to make such a request, he should know he was supposed to go through channels: through his Platoon Leader and his Company Commander to Gaff himself; not come bothering the Battalion Commander with it when the Battalion Commander had a battle to fight.

"Dont you know —— " he began in frustration, and then stopped himself. Tall prided himself on being a professional and such requests for personal vendetta offended and bored him. A professional should ignore such things and fight a battle, or a war, as it developed on the ground. Tall knew Marine officers who laughed about the jars of gold or goldfilled Japanese teeth some of their men had collected over the campaign, but he preferred to have nothing to do with that sort of thing. Also, though his protégé Gaff had lost two men yesterday evening, they had decided between them that the experience and the knowledge of the terrain gained by the survivors more than made up for the adding of two green replacements who would probably be more liability than help. Still ...

And anyway, here this great oaf still stood, waiting dumbly, as though his wishes were the only ones in the world, and blocking Tall's path with his huge frame so Tall could not see anything that was going on.

After biting the inside of his lip, he snapped out coldly, "If you want to go with Captain Gaff, you'll have to go talk to him about it and ask him. I'm busy. You can tell him that I dont object to your going. Now, God damn it, go away!" he yelled. He turned away. Big Un was left holding his shotgun.

"Yes, sir!" he called after the Colonel. "Thank you, sir!" And while Tall had continued with getting C-for-Charlie moving, Cash had gone in search of Gaff.

Big Un's cry of thanks after the Colonel had not been without his own little hint of sarcasm. He had not been a hackpusher all his life not to know when he was being deliberately snubbed by a social better, high intelligence or low. As far as intelligence went, Big Un was confident he could have been as intelligent as any—and more intelligent than most—if he had not always believed that school and history and arithmetic and writing and reading and learning words were only so much uninteresting crap which took up a man's time and kept him from getting laid or making an easy buck. He still believed it, for his own kids as well as for himself. He had never finished his first year of high school and he could read a paper as well as anybody. And as for intelligence, he was intelligent enough to know that the Colonel's statement about not objecting was tantamount to acceptance by Gaff. In fact, all the time he was talking there to the Colonel, Big Un had intended to tell Gaff that, anyway. Now he could tell him truthfully.

So, in the still dark predawn, Gaff and his four volunteers were treated to the awesome spectacle of Big Un looming up over them through the dark, still clutching his shotgun and bandolier of shells which he had clung to so dearly all through the terror of yesterday in his U.S. -made shellhole among the 1st Platoon. Stolidly and without excitement, Big Un made his report. As he had anticipated, he was immediately accepted—although Gaff, too, looked at his shotgun strangely. All he had left to do was find Bugger Stein and report the change, then come back and lie down with the others to wait until B Company's middle platoon made its attack and it was their own turn. Big Un did so with grim satisfaction.

There was little for them to do but talk. During the half hour it took the middle platoon of B Company to fail and come tumbling and sobbing back over the ledge with drawn faces and white eyes, the six of them lay a few yards back down the slope behind B's right platoon which in addition to holding the right of the line along the ledge was also acting as the reserve. It was amazing how the longer one lasted in this business, the less sympathy one felt for others who were getting shot up as long as oneself was in safety. Sometimes the difference was a matter of only a very few yards. But terror became increasingly limited to those moments when you yourself were in actual danger. So, while B's middle platoon shot and were shot, fought and sobbed 30 yards away beyond the ledge, Gaff's group talked. Cash the new addition more than made his presence felt.

Big Un himself did very little of the talking, after explaining his reason for wanting to come with them, but he made himself felt just the same. Unslinging his rifle, he arranged it and the shotgun carefully to keep their actions out of the dirt, and then simply lay, toying with the bandolier of shotgun shells and slipping them in and out of their cloth loops, his face a stolid, mean mask. The slingless shotgun was a brandnew, cheap-looking automatic with its barrel sawed off just behind the choke and a five-shell magazine; the shot shells themselves were not actually buckshot at all, but were loaded with a full load of BB shot capable of blowing a large, raw hole clear through a man at close range. It was a mean weapon, and Cash looked like the man to use it well. Nobody really knew very much about him in C-for-Charlie. He had come in as a draftee six months before and while he had made acquaintances, he had made no real friends. Everybody was a little afraid of him. He kept to himself, did most of his drinking alone, and while he never offered to challenge anybody to a fight, there was something about his grin which made it plain that any challenges he received would be cheerfully and gladly accepted. Nobody offered any. At six foot four and built accordingly, in an outfit where physical fighting prowess was considered the measure of a man's stature, nobody wanted to try him. Except for Big Queen (over whom he towered by five inches, though he did not weigh as much) he was the biggest man in the company. There were those who were not above trying slyly to promote this battle of the giants between Big Un and Big Queen, just to see who would win; and many bets might have been taken, except that nothing ever came of it. Curiously enough, the nearest Big Un ever came to having a real friend was Witt the Kentuckian who hardly came up to his waist, and who used to go on pass with him before Witt was forcibly transferred. This turned out to be because in Toledo Big Un had known and admired so many Kentuckians who had come up north to work in the factories, and had liked their strong, hardheaded sense of honor which showed itself in drunken brawls over women or fistfights over particular prize seats at some bar. But now, today, he did not even speak to Witt beyond a perfunctory grunt of greeting. The rest of them watched him and his shotgun curiously. Despite the fact that they were now seasoned veterans of this particular assault and could look down on Big Un from this height of snobbery, they were all some how a little reluctant to try it.

John Bell, for one, had forgotten all about the Japanese torture killing of the two George Company men three days before. It was too long ago and too much had happened to him since. When Big Un recalled it with such surprise to them all, Bell found it didn't really matter so much anymore. Guys got killed, one way or another way. Some goÈ tortured. Some got gutshot like Tella. Some got it quick through the head. Who knew how much those two guys suffered, really? Only themselves; and they no longer existed to tell it. And if they no longer existed, it didn't either and was no longer important. So what the hell? A wall existed between the living and the dead. And there was only one way to get over it. That was what was important. So what was all this fuss about? Bell found himself eyeing Big Un coolly and wondering what his real angle was, behind all this other crap. The others in the little group obviously felt the same way, Bell noted, from the peculiar looks on their faces; but nobody said anything. Thirty-five yards away beyond and above the little protective ledge the middle platoon of Baker still fired and fought and now and then yelled just a little bit. If Bell was any judge by the sound of it, what was left of them would be coming back pretty quickly. A rough fingernail of excitement picked at his solar plexus when he thought what this would mean soon for himself. Then, suddenly, like a bucket of cold water dashed in his face, his own supreme callousness smashed into his consciousness and shook him with a sense of horror at his own hardened brutality. How would Marty like being married to this husband, when he finally did get home? Ah, Marty! so much is changing; everywhere. Therefore, when the middle platoon of B did come rolling and tumbling and cursing and sobbing back over the ledge with their white eyeballs in their faces and their open mouths, Bell watched them with an anguish which was perhaps out of all proportion even to their own.

How the others in the assault group felt about the return of the platoon, Bell could not tell. From their faces they all, including Cash, seemed to feel the same cool, guarded callousness he himself had just been feeling, and now was so desperately wanting not to feel. The Baker Company men lay against the ledge staring at nothing and seeing nobody and breathing in long painful gasps through their parched throats. There was no water to give them and they needed water badly. Though the day was not yet really hot, they were all sweating profusely, thus losing even more precious moisture. Making a noise like a battery of frogs in a swamp two of them rolled up their eyeballs and passed out. Nobody bothered to help them. Their buddies couldn't. And the assault group only lay and watched them.

This lack of water was becoming a serious problem for everybody, and would be more of one as the glaring equatorial sun mounted, but whatever the reason—though there was plenty of it in the rear—no water could be got this far forward to them. Curiously enough, it was little Charlie Dale the insensitive, rather than Bell or Don Doll, who voiced it for all of them in the assault group. Imaginative or not he was animal enough to know what his belly told him and be directed by it. "If they dont get us some water up here soon," he said loud enough to be heard by everybody in the vicinity, "we aim none of us going to make it to the top of this hill." Abruptly, he rolled over to face the looming shape of Hill 209 in their rear and began to shake his fist at it. "Dirty F———ers! Dirty bastards! Pig bastards! You got all the goddam water in the world, and you drinking every goddam drop of it, too! You aint lettin any of it get past you up to us, are you! Well you better get some of it up here to your goddam fightin men, or you can take your goddam battle and shove it up your fat ass and lose it!" He had yelled this much of his protest, and it verberated off along the middle platoon of B, paid any attention to it. The rest of it tapered away into an intense, unintelligible mutter which, as Colonel Tall now sauntered toward them from his command hole baton in hand, became a respectful and attentive silence.

The Colonel whose walk was leisurely and erect—as straight up as he could get, in fact—condescended to squat while he talkedÈin a low serious voice to Gaff. Then they were off and crawling again along the by now so familiar ledge—familiar to the point of real friendliness almost, John Bell thought, which could be a bad trap if you believed it—as it curved away out of sight around the hill's curve, Gaff in the lead.

Bell crawled around Charlie Dale in the second spot and touched the Captain on the behind. "You better let me take the point, sir," he said respectfully.

Gaff turned his head to look at him with intense, crinkled eyes. For a long moment the two, officer and ex-officer, looked honestly into each other's eyes. Then with an abrupt gesture of both head and hand Gaff admitted his small error and signaled Bell to go on past him. and then fell into the third spot. When Bell reached the point where the trough began and Lieutenant Gray had died, he stopped and they all clustered up.

Gaff did not bother to give them any peptalk. He had already explained the operation to them thoroughly, back at the position. Now all he said was, "You all know the job we've got to do, fellows. There's no point in my going over it all again. I'm convinced the toughest part of the approach will be the open space between the end of the trough here and the shoulder of the knob. Once past that I think it won't be so bad. Remember that we may run into smaller emplacements along the way. I'd rather bypass them if we can, but we may have to knock some of them out if they block our route and hold us up. Okay, that's all." He stopped and smiled at them looking each man in the eyes in turn: an excited, boyish, happy, adventuresome smile. It was only slightly incongruous with the tensed, crinkled look in his eyes.

"When we get up to them," Gaff said, "We ought to have some fun."

There were several weak smiles, very similar to his own if not as strong. Only Witt's and Big Un's seemed to be really deep. But they were all grateful to him. Since yesterday all of them, excepting Big Un, had come to like him very much. All last evening, during the night, and again during the predawn movements, he had stayed with them except during his actual conferences with Colonel Tall, spending his time with them. He kidded, cajoled and boosted them, cracking jokes, telling them broad stories about his youth at the Point and after, and all the kooky type broads he had made—had in short treated them like equals. Even for Bell who had been one it was a little thrilling, quite flattering to be treated as an equal by an officer; for the others it was moreso. They would have followed Gaff anywhere. He had promised them the biggest drunk of their lives, everything on him, once they got through this mess and back down off the line. And they were grateful to him for that, too. He had not, when he promised, made any mention about 'survivors' or 'those who were left' having this drunk together, tacitly assuming that they would all be there to enjoy it. And they were grateful for that also. Now he looked around at them all once more with his boyish, young adventurer's eager smile below the tensed, crinkled eyes.

"I'll be leading from here on out," he said. "Because I want to pick the route myself. If anything should happen to me, Sergeant Bell will be in command, so I want him last. Sergeant Dale will be second in command. They both know what to do.

"Okay, let's go." It was much more of a sigh than a hearty bellow.

Then they were out and crawling along the narrow, peculiarly sensed dangerousness of the familiar trough, Gaff in the lead, each man being particularly careful of the spot where the trough opened out into the ledge and Lieutenant Gray the preacher had absentmindedly got himself killed. Big Un Cash, who was new to all this, was especially careful. John Bell, waiting for the others to climb out, caught Charlie Dale staring at him with a look of puzzled, but nonetheless hateful enmity. Dale had been appointed Acting Sergeant at least an hour before Bell, and therefore should have had the senioÈity over him. Bell winked at him, and Dale looked away. A moment later it was Dale's turn to go, and he climbed out into the trough without a backward look. Only one man, Witt, remained between them. Then it was Bell's own turn. For the—what was it? third? fourth? fifth time? Bell had lost track—he climbed out over the ledge and crawled past the thin screen of scrub brush. It was beginning to look pretty bedraggled now from all the MG fire which had whistled through it.

In the trough ahead with his head down Charlie Dale was thinking furiously that that was what you could always expect from all goddam officers. They hung together like a pack of horse thieves, busted out or not. He had broke his ass for them all day yesterday. He had been appointed Acting Sergeant by an officer, by Bugger Stein himself, not by no platoon sergeant like Keck. And about a hour before. And look who got command? You couldn't trust them no further than you could throw them by the ears, no more than you could trust the govermint itself to do something for you. Furiously, outraged, keeping his head well down, he stared at the motionless feet of Doll in front of him as if he wanted to bite them off.

Up ahead Gaff had waited, looking back, until they were all safely in the trough. Now there was no need to wait longer. Turning his head to the right he looked off toward the strongpoint, but without raising his head high enough to see anything above the grass. Were they waiting? Were they watching? Were they looking at this particular open spot? He could not know. But no need in spotting them a ball by exposing himself if they were. With one last look back directly behind him at Big Un Cash, who favored him with a hard, mean, gimlet-eyed grin that was not much help, he bounced up and took off with his rifle at high port, running agonizingly slowly and pulling his knees up high to clear the matted kunai grass like a football player running through stacks of old tires. It was ludicrous to say the least, not a dignified way to be shot, but not a shot was fired. He dived in behind the shoulder of the know and lay there. After waiting a full minute he motioned the next man, Big Un, to come on. Big Un, who had moved up, as the others had moved up behind him, took right off at once running in the same way, his rifle pounding against his back, the shotgun in his hands, his helmet straps flapping. Just before he reached the shoulder a single machinegun opened up, but he too dived to safety. The machinegun stopped.

The third man, Doll, fell. He was only about five yards out when several MGs opened up. They were watching this time. It was only 20 or 25 yards across, the open space, but it seemed much longer. He was already breathing in ripping gasps. Then his foot caught in a hole in the mat of old grass and he was down. Oh, no! Oh, no! his mind screamed at him in panic. Not me! Not after all the rest that's happened to me! Not after all I've lasted through! I won't even get my medal! Blindly, spitting grass seeds and dust, he clambered up and staggered on. He only had 10 yards more to go, and he made it. He fell in upon the other two and lay sobbing for breath and existence. The bright, washed sun had just come up over the hills in the east.

By now in the early morning sunshine and stark shadows all the MGs from the strongpoint were firing, hosing down the trough itself as well as the open space. Bullets tore over the heads of Charlie Dale, Witt and Bell in bunches which rattled and bruised the poor thin little bushes. It was now Dale's turn to go, and he was still furious at Bell. "Hey, wait!" Bell yelled from behind him. "Wait! Dont go yet! I got an idea!" Dale gave him one hate-filled contemptuous look and got to his feet. He departed without a word, chugging along solidly like a little engine, in the same way he had gone down and come back up the slope in front of the third fold yesterday. But now a sort of semi-path had been pushed through the grass, and this aided him some. He arrived behind the sÈoulder and sat down, apparently totally unmoved, but still secretly angry at Bell. Nothing had touched him.

"You must be out of your mind!" Captain Gaff shouted at him.

"Why?" Dale said. Maliciously, he settled himself to see what Bell would do now. Heh heh. Not that he wanted him to get hurt, or anything.

Bell demonstrated his idea immediately. When he and Witt had crawled to the end of the trough, the MGs still firing just over their heads, Bell pulled the pin on a grenade and lobbed it at the strongpoint. But he did not throw it straight across; he threw it into the angle formed by the ledge and the trough, so that it landed in front of the bunker but further back much closer to the ledge. When the MGs all swung that way, as they did immediately, he and Witt crossed in safety before they could swing back. Clearly the three of them could have done it just as easily, and when he threw himself down grinning in the safety behind the shoulder, Bell winked at Charlie Dale again. Dale glowered back. "Very bright," Gaff laughed. Bell winked at Dale a third time. Screw him. Who did he think he was? Then suddenly, after this third wink, like some kind of a sudden stop, Bell realized the fear he had felt this time had been much less, almost none at all, negligible. Even when those bullets were sizzing just over his head. Was he learning? Was that it? Or was he just becoming inured. More brutalized, like Dale. The thought lingered on in his head like an echoing gong while he sat staring at nothing, then slowly faded away. And so what? If answer is yes, or if question does not apply to you, pass on to next questionnaire. What the hell, he thought. F--- it. If he only had a drink of water, he could do anything. The MGs from the strongpoint were still hosing and belaboring the empty trough and its poor straggly bushes as the party moved away.

Gaff had told them that he thought the rest of the route would be easier once they were past the open space, and he was right. The terrain mounted steeply around the knob which jutted out of the ridge and up here the mat of grass was not quite so thick, but now they were forced to crawl. It was next to impossible to see the camouflaged emplacements until they opened up, and they could not take any chances. As they moved along in this snail's way, sweating and panting in the sun from the exertion, Bell's heart—as well as everybody else's—began to beat with a heavier pulse, a mingled excitement and fear which was by no means entirely unpleasant. They all knew from yesterday that beyond the knob was a shallow saddle between the knob and the rockwall where the ledge ended, and it was along this saddle they were to crawl to come down on the Japanese from above. They had all seen the saddle, but they had not seen behind the knob. Now they crawled along it, seeing it from within the Japanese territory. They were not fired upon, and they did not see any emplacements. Off to the left near the huge rock outcrop where the seven Japanese men had made their silly counterattack early yesterday, they could hear the tenor-voiced Japanese MGs firing at Baker Company at the ledge; but nothing opened up on them. When they reached the beginning of the saddle, sweating and half-dead from lack of water, Gaff motioned them to stop.

He had to swallow his dry spittle several times before he could speak. It had been arranged with Colonel Tall that the commander of Baker's right platoon would move his men along the ledge to the trough and be ready to charge from there at Gaff's whistle signal, and because of this he unhooked his whistle from his pocket. The saddle was about 20 or 25 yards across, and he spaced them out across it. Because of the way it fell the strongpoint below was still invisible from here. "Remember, I want to get as close to them as we can before we put the grenades to them." To Bell's mind, overheated and overwrought, the Captain's phraseology sounded strangely sexual; but Bell knew it could not be. Then Gaff crawled out in front of tÈem, and looked back.

"Well, fellows, this is where we separate the men from the boys," he told them, "the sheep from the goats. Let's crawl." He clamped his whistle in his teeth and cradling his rifle while holding a grenade in one hand, he commenced to do so.

Crawling along behind him, and in spite of his promise of a big beerbust, everything paid for by him, Gaff's volunteers did not take too kindly to his big line. S---, I could have done better than that myself, Doll thought, spitting out yet another grass seed. Doll had already entirely forgotten his so near escape crossing the open space, and suddenly for no apparent reason he was transfixed by a rage which ranged all through him like some uncontrollable woods fire. Do not fire until you see the red of their asses, Gridley. You may s--- when ready, Gridley. Damn the torpedoes, full crawl ahead. Sighted Japs, grenaded same. There are no atheists in foxholes, Chaplain; s---on the enemy! He was—for no reason at all, except that he was afraid—so enraged at Gaff that he could have put a grenade to him himself right now, or shot him. On his left, his major competition Charlie Dale crawled along with narrowed eyes still hating all officers anyway and as far as he was concerned Gaff's final line only proved him right. Beyond Dale, Big Un Cash moved his big frame along contemptuously, his rifle still on his back, the fully loaded shotgun cradled in his arms; he had not come along on this thing to be given dumb slogans by no punk kid officers—sheeps and goats my ass, he thought and there was no doubt in his hard hack-pusher's mind about which side he would be on when the count came. Witt, beyond Big Un and himself the extreme left flank, had merely spat and settled his thin neck down into his shoulders and set his jaw. He was not here for any crapped up West Point heroics, he was here because he was a brave man and a very good soldier and because his old outfit C-for-Charlie needed him—whether they knew it or not; and Gaff could spare him the conversation. Slowly, as they crawled, the extreme left of the strongpoint came into view 50 yards away and about 20 yards below them.

On the extreme right of the little line John Bell was not thinking about young Captain Gaff at all. As soon as Gaff had made his bid for an immortal line Bell had dismissed it as stupid. Bell was thinking, instead, about cuckoldry. Why that subject should come into his mind at a time like this Bell didn't know, but it had and he couldn't get rid of it. Thinking about it seriously, Bell discovered that under serious analysis he could only find four basic situations: sad little husband attacking big strong lover, big strong lover attacking sad little husband, sad little husband attacking big strong wife, big strong wife attacking sad little husband. But always it was a sad little husband. Something about the emotional content of the word automatically shrunk all cuckolded husbands to sad little husbands. Undoubtedly many big strong husbands had been cuckolded in their time. Yes, undoubtedly. But you could never place them in direct connection with the emotional content of the word. This was because the emotional content of the word was essentially funny. Bell imagined himself in all four basic situations. It was very painful, in an exquisitely unpleasant, but very sexual way. And suddenly Bell knew—as well and as surely as he knew he was crawling down this grassy saddle on Guadalcanal—that he was cuckold; that Marty was stepping out, was sleeping with somebody. Given her character and his absence, there was no other possibility. It was as though it were a thought which had been hanging around the borders of his mind a long time, but which he would never allow in until now. But with one man? or with several? Which did one prefer, the one man which meant a serious love affair? or the several which meant that she was promiscuous? What would he do when he got home? beat her up? Èick her around? leave her? Put a goddamned grenade in her bed maybe. Ahead of him the entire strongpoint was visible by now, its nearer, right end only 25 yards away, and only a very few yards below their own height now.

And it was just then that they were discovered by the Japanese.

Five scrawny bedraggled Japanese men popped up out of the ground holding dark round objects which they lobbed up the hill at them. Fortunately only one of the five grenades exploded. It lit near Dale who rolled over twice away from it and then lay huddled as close to the ground as he could get, his face turned away. None of its fragments hit him, but it made his ears ring.

"Pull and throw! Pull and throw!" Gaff was yelling at them through the noise of the explosion, and almost as one man their six grenades arched at the strongpoint. The five Japanese men who had popped up out of the ground had by now popped back down into it. But as the grenades lit, two other, unlucky Japanese popped up to throw. One grenade lit between the feet of one of these and exploded up into him, blowing off one of his feet and putting him down. Fragments put the other one down. All of the American grenades exploded.

The Japanese with his foot off lay still a moment then struggled up to sit holding another grenade as the blood poured from his severed leg. Doll shot him. He fell back dropping the ignited grenade beside him. It did not go off.

"Once more! Once more!" Gaff was yelling at them, and again six grenades arched in the air. Again all of them exploded. Doll was a little late getting his away because of the shot, but he got it off just behind the others.

This time there were four Japanese standing when the grenades lit, one of them carrying a light MG. The exploding grenades put three of them down, including the man with the Nambu, and the fourth, thinking better of it, disappeared down a hole. There were now five Japanese down and out of action in the little hollow.

"Go in! Go in!" Gaff cried, and in a moment all of them were on their feet running. No longer did they have to fret and stew, or worry about being brave or being cowardly. Their systems pumped full of adrenaline to constrict the peripheral blood vessels, elevate the blood pressure, make the heart beat more rapidly, and aid coagulation, they were about as near to automatons without courage or cowardice as flesh and blood can get. Numbly, they did the necessary.

The Japanese had shrewdly taken advantage of the terrain to save themselves digging work. Behind the holes into the emplacements themselves was a natural little low area where they could come out and sit in cover when they were not actually being shelled, and it also served as a communication trench between the holes. Now in this hollow the scrawny, bedraggled Japanese rose with rifles, swords and pistols from their holes to meet Gaff and his crew. At least, some of them did. Others stayed in the holes. Three tried to run. Dale shot one and Bell shot another. The third was seen to disappear in a grand broadjump over the edge of the rockface where it fell clear, 60 or 80 feet to the jungle treetops below. He was never seen again and no one ever learned what happened to him. The others came on. And Gaff and his troops, the Captain blowing his whistle shrilly with each exhalation of breath, ran to meet them, in clear view of Baker Company at the ledge until they passed out of sight into the hollow.

Big Un killed five men almost at once. His shotgun blew the first nearly in two and tore enormous chunks out of the second and third. The fourth and fifth, because the gun was bucking itself higher each time he fired, had most of their heads taken off. Swinging the empty shotgun like a baseball bat, Big Un broke the face of a sixth Japanese man just emerging from a hole, then jerked a grenade from his belt, pulled the pin and tossed it down the hole after him into a medley of voices which ceased in the dull roaring boom of the constricted explosion. While he struggled to unslinÈ the rifle from his back, he was attacked by a screaming officer with a sword. Gaff shot the officer in the belly from the hip, shot him again in the face to be positive after he was down. Bell had killed two men. Charlie Dale had killed two. Doll, who had drawn his pistol, was charged by another screaming officer who shouted "Banzai!" over and over and who ran at him whirling his bright, gleaming sword around his head in the air. Doll shot him through the chest so that in a strange laughable way his legs kept right on running while the rest of him fell down behind them. Then the torso jerked the legs up too and the man hit the ground flat out with a tremendous whack. Doll shot him a second time in the head. Beyond him Witt had shot three men, one of them a huge fat sergeant wielding a black, prewar US Army cavalry saber. Taking the overhead saber cut on the stock of his rifle, cutting it almost to the barrel, Witt had buttstroked him in the jaw. Now he shot him where he lay. Suddenly there was an enormous quiet except for the wailing chatter of three Japanese standing in a row who had dropped their weapons. There had been, they all realized, a great deal of shouting and screaming, but now there was only the moans of the dying and the hurt. Slowly they looked around at each other and discovered the miraculous fact that none of them was killed, or even seriously damaged. Gaff had a knot on his jaw from firing without cheeking his stock. Bell's helmet had been shot from his head, the round passing through the metal and up and around inside the shell between metal and fiber liner and coming out the back. Bell had an enormous headache. Witt discovered he had splinters in his hand from his busted riflestock, and his arms ached. Dale had a small gash in his shin from the bayonet of a downed and dying Japanese man who had struck at him and whom he subsequently shot. Numbly, they stared at each other. Each had believed devoutly that he would be the only one left alive.

It was clear to everyone that it was Big Un and his shotgun which had won the day, had broken the back of the Japanese fight, and later when they discussed and discussed it, that would remain the consensus. And now in the strange, numb silence—still breathing hard from the fight, as they all were—Big Un, who still had not yet got his rifle unslung, advanced snarling on the three standing Japanese. Taking two by their scrawny necks which his big hands went almost clear around, he shook them back and forth gaggling helplessly until their helmets fell off, then grinning savagely began beating their heads together. The cracking sound their skulls made as they broke was loud in the new, palpable quiet. "F---ing murderers," he told them coldly. "F---ing yellow Jap bastards. Killing helpless prisoners.F---ing murderers. F---ing prisoner killers." When he dropped them as the others simply stood breathing hard and watching, there was no doubt that they were dead, or dying. Blood ran from their noses and their eyes were rolled back white. "That'll teach them to kill prisoners," Big Un announced, glaring at his own guys. He turned to the third, who simply looked at him uncomprehendingly. But Gaff jumped in between them. "We need him. We need him," he said, still gasping and panting. Big Un turned and walked away without a word.

It was then they heard the first shouts from the other side, and remembered they were not the only living. Going to the grassy bank they looked out over and saw the same field they themselves had tried to cross last evening. Coming across it at a run, the platoon from Baker was charging the strongpoint. Back beyond them, in full view from here, the other two platoons of B had left the ledge and were charging uphill, according to Colonel Tall's plan. And below Gaff and his men the first Baker platoon charged on, straight at them, yelling.

Whatever their reason, they were a little late. The fight was already over. Or so everyone thought. Gaff had been blowing his whistle steadily from the momentÈthey first had gone in right up to the end of the fight, and now here came the heroes. Preparing to wave and cheer ironically and hoot derision at their 'rescuers,' Gaff's men were prevented by the sound of a machinegun. Directly below them in one of the apertures, a single MG opened up and began to fire at the Baker Company platoon. As Gaff's men watched incredulously, two Baker Company men went down. Charlie Dale, who was standing nearest to the door of the embrasure which was firing, leaped over with a shocked look on his face and threw a grenade down the hole. The grenade immediately came flying right back out. With strangled yells everyone hit the dirt. Fortunately, the grenade had been thrown too hard and it exploded just as it fell over the lip of the rockface, where the broadjumping Japanese had also disappeared, hurting nobody. The MG below continued to fire.

"Look out, you jerk!" Witt cried at Dale, and scrambled to his feet. Pulling the pin on a grenade and holding it with the lever depressed, he grabbed his rifle and ran over to the hole. Leaning around the right side of it, holding his rifle like a pistol in his left hand with the stock pressed against his leg, he began to fire the semi-automatic Garand into the hole. There was a yell from below. Still firing, Witt popped the grenade down the hole and ducked back. He continued to fire to confuse the occupants. Then the grenade blew up with a dull staggering roar, cutting off both the scrabble of yells and the MG, which had never stopped firing.

Immediately, others of the little force, without any necessity of orders from Gaff, began bombing out the other four holes using Witt's technique. They bombed them all, whether there was anyone in them or not. Then they called to the Baker Company platoon to come on. Later, four Japanese corpses were found huddled up or stretched out, according to their temperaments, in the small space Witt had bombed. Death had come for them and they had met it, if not particularly bravely, at least with a sense of the inevitable.

So the fight for the strongpoint was over. And without exception something new had happened to all of them. It was apparent in the smiling faces of the Baker Company platoon as they climbed up over the emplacement leaving five of their guys behind them in the kunai grass. It was apparent in the grinning face of Colonel Tall as he came striding along behind them, bamboo baton in hand. It showed in the savage happiness with which Gaff's group bombed out the empty bunkers using Witt's safety technique: one man firing while another tossed the grenades. Nobody really cared whether there was anyone in them or not. But they hoped there were hundreds. There was a joyous feeling in the safety of killing. They slapped each other on the back and grinned at each other murderously. They had finally, as Colonel Tall was later to tell newsmen and correspondents when they interviewed him, been blooded. They had, as Colonel Tall was later to say, tasted victory. They had become fighting men. They had learned that the enemy, like themselves, was killable; was defeatable.