The Face of War

Johnny'S First Kill; The Wounding of Shelley

Johnny was sitting quietly, staring at his drink and listening abstractedly to Titan's voice as it ran on. He hardly knew who it was that spoke; actually, he didn't hear beyond the first sentence. All he heard was, "Like ducks in a shooting gallery," and the phrase leaped up and slapped him in the face. His mind cleaved onto it and was gone.... He is walking down the hill. Other men are walking down the hill. They are scattered haphazardly like propaganda leaflets dropped from a plane. There is no formation to their moving. Some are close together, some too widely scattered, some far ahead, some far behind. They are simply men with rifles and they are walking down the hill.

There is lots of noise, so much noise that most of it is undistinguishable. The ears cannot encompass this great amount of noise. Now and then, an individual sound rises above the mass. Perhaps the soft sh-sh-sh-sh-sh of a mortar shell coming down nearby; sometimes long, four or five seconds; sometimes short, a second and a half. And then its explosion. If it sounds like it will hit near, perhaps some who hear it will collapse quickly to the ground. Then again, perhaps they will not. It is too confused, everything is too confused, to be able to know whether it will land close or not. Perhaps a bullet will bzzl fiercely by, too quickly come and gone to cause a reaction until it is long way past. Then the hearer will duck, will half crouch, will jerk, will do nothing, according to how far the numbness has advanced inside him. The strain is much too great. It is already beginning to show in some. The blank faces and staring eyes. These faces are contrasted with the screwed-up faces and drawn half-open mouths of the others, whose fear has not yet grown strong enough to turn to numbness.

They are men with rifles and they keep walking down the hill. Farther down the hill. None of them has fired a shot. The Japanese are in the jungle that grows part way up the hill; that is why they are walking down the hill with their rifles in their hands. There is nothing to shoot at. The tension is immense, and it seems they walk in complete silence, though the noise around them is a bedlam. Then, as they get closer to the jungle, a man over on the left yells, "There's one! I see one!" His voice is shrill with excitement and disbelief. Half a dozen men fire a clip apiece in the direction of the excitedly pointing finger. It is a great discovery, greater to them than the discovery of radium or the sulfa drugs or of America. For a while walking down the hill, they doubted whether there was anybody at all. They believed the Japanese had left their machine guns, rifles and mortars firing full blast and had gone away. Maybe back to Japan.

Then he sees it. He will never know why his eyes fastened upon it, for when he first looks, it seems nothing more than a dark blob of wood on the side of the tree. The tree is on the edge of the jungle, maybe 15 yards away. Somehow, his eyes have fastened themselves upon the innocent-looking blob of wood and recognized it for a helmet. He is astounded; he does not believe it is a helmet. If it is, it is the first time he has ever seen a live Japanese. He leans forward and peers. Yes, by Christ, it is a helmet! He becomes excited and starts to shout, but a sly cunning creeps into his mind. If he shouts, the helmet might hear him and withdraw itself behind its tree more thoroughly. Suddenly, he is afraid of this helmet, terribly afraid. If he does not shoot it now, it will certainly shoot him in a little while. The whole battle, the whole war becomes understandable, becomes centered on this helmet, the top quarter of which is just visible behind the tree. This is the whole war; he and this helmet. If he gets the helmet first, he will be safe. It all comes down to killing the helmet first. And he has it by surprise now. If he can only kill it, he will be safe forever. A rifle bullet shot direct will pass through a helmet easily. He sinks down to a kneeling position to be more sure his muzzle will not waver. Get him, or he'll get you. He aims very carefully. The two men on his left stop to watch him, trying unsuccessfully to see what he is aiming at. He takes up the slack and starts to squeeze the shot off. Just as he starts the squeeze, the helmet moves. Carefully and slowly, it raises itself, and a face appears below it. He is astonished. This is a Jap. He squeezes the shot off and in squeezing is more astonished to see how closely the dirty, unshaved face beneath the helmet resembles the faces of the men around him in the tension and agony expressed upon it. The recoil slams his shoulder, already sore from continued firing. He keeps his eyes open as he was taught, and he sees the face open redly like a thrown tomato. He sees a piece of bridgework pop out of the mouth that the impact of the bullet jarred open. He pushes on the safety and jumps up shouting, "I got him! I got him!" He starts to run the 15 yards to the tree. Just then, a mortar shell lands close by him. His body slams itself into the dirt harshly, independently, without his bidding. He lies there, slightly stunned by the concussion of the explosion. It brings the war back to him. He remembers that there are, no doubt, other Japanese. For a few seconds, the war was small, understandable and individual, like a prize fight. Now it is back as before. He is afraid again. Not individually but largely, multiply, of things he cannot see or foresee. He suddenly realizes that the fact that he has killed a Japanese means little or nothing. He gets back up and begins to walk toward the jungle as before, not noticing that his chin is bleeding from a deep cut where it hit the ground. Such things are unimportant.... He and Captain Rosen are standing side by side looking down at the dead Japanese. He looks at the dead Japanese and thinks without comprehending that this is the first man he has ever killed. It is like a prize fight. Get him or he'll get you. But he, the victor, looking down at the vanquished, feels none of the feeling he used to feel back home when, after winning a tough fight, he stood looking down at his unconscious opponent. He does not feel excited or powerful or happy or heroic or thrilled. He feels only sad and a little foolish. He feels an understanding for this dead Japanese, whose frightened face had looked so much like the faces of the men near him. He feels that this Japanese is like himself, a dogface fighting a war and afraid beyond all reasoning. He feels sad, terribly sad, and unhappy, and sorry for this dead Japanese. This was not right. It was too utterly final.

He wonders what this Japanese would have felt if the situation were reversed and the Japanese were looking down at his own dead body.

He looks at Captain Rosen, who is Jewish and a lawyer and from Boston. His own feelings are mirrored in Rosen's face. For the first time since he has known the captain, he feels friendly toward him and not antagonistic. The captain does not have his privileges here. He is like the men in his company now. He is no longer an officer to be respected by order; he is a man to be liked by instinct.

The dead Japanese lies on his back sprawled out in the unnatural scarecrow fashion of death. The bullet entered his face just below the nose. It went slightly upward and split the upper lip and smashed the teeth that now stick out oddly, splintered and broken. The nose is pushed way over to one side. Thick, gluelike blood ran into the mouth until, overflowing sullenly, it runs out thickly at both corners to hang in strings down to the ground.

He thinks suddenly that it is an undignified way for any man to die.

The captain sticks out his foot repugnantly and pushes the head. It lolls over to the side and then rolls back. The foot leaves a smudge of mud in the chin that is darker than the crusted dirt on the rest of the face.

"He's dead, all right," Rosen says. "He's one Jap that won't make a booby trap out of himself." He pauses and runs his hand over his week-old beard. "Well," he says slowly, "I guess you can cut a notch on your rifle, hunh?"

He does not answer the captain but leans over and picks up the piece of bridgework that popped out of the mouth when the bullet hit. He sticks it between the brim of his steel helmet and the leather chin strap of the liner that runs up over it. He had seen Marines with glass jars full of teeth with gold inlays in them. There is a wallet in one of the pockets of the shirt; he takes it, too. The wallet has a picture of a woman holding a baby and there is Japanese writing on the back of the picture. He sticks the wallet in his pocket. The rifle fire is getting heavy. He turns and walks away between the trees on down the hill toward the sound of firing with his rifle in his hands....

Somewhere in here, he sees Shelley hit. A mortar shell explodes on the left, and shell fragments buzz unheard in the sound of the explosion. Shelley does not make a sound. He just stops walking and slowly, deliberately sets his rifle butt on the ground. Leaning on it, he slowly lowers himself to a sitting position. The acrid smell of burnt powder is strong; it coats lips and tongues; it burns eyes. Shelley drops his rifle and puts his hands between his legs. He sees bright blood running between his fingers to the ground. Shelley leans forward to watch the blood running from between his legs. It puzzles him for a moment; then he straightens up and stares straight ahead with no expression or movement on his face. Shelley begins to whimper like a frightened puppy, only louder, because he can hear Shelley's crying above the noise. He stands looking for a moment, until a bullet, like an angry Superman bee, buzzes by and reminds him. Then he turns away to walk on down the hill through the jungle with his rifle in his hands. Shelley begins to curse and scream in the treble of a child. Looking back, he sees Shelley start to puke, and, puking over the front of his grimy uniform and crying at the same time, Shelley sounds like a grimly bubbling satire of Shep Field's Rippling Rhythm.

A freak piece of shell fragment has entered Shelley's belly just below the navel and come out at his crotch, taking his organs with it. When the corpsmen get there, they do not bother to take Shelley back on a stretcher. They look at him and shake their heads and go on to the next man down the hill, leaving Shelley looking after them with a mute question in his eyes. The chaplain goes over to Shelley. Everybody likes the chaplain, who is a good man, even if he is a chaplain. He has come up with the company of his own volition. The chaplain kneels down by Shelley, but Shelley curses him and tries to spit in his face.

"Fuck you!" Shelley says. "Fuck you and God and the United States! Get the fuck away from me!" The chaplain goes on to the next man. Shelley sits and watches his blood run from him as life turns away to go on down the hill with its rifle in its hands....

Attu

George was glad when the orders came through to hold up the advance for the night. It was an unheard-of thing and because of its strangeness implied that a still stranger thing was coming: the end. He was very glad, as glad as he could be beneath the gray insulation of weariness that enveloped him. The front line, only a few hundred yards ahead, had been halted until tomorrow, because tomorrow would be the last day; tomorrow, they would go into Chichagof for the cleanup. He squatted in the half-frozen mud gratefully, his rifle between his legs to keep his behind off the wet muck, holding it like a kid on a broomstick. He had checked the guys to see they were all here, so he could relax, as much as was possible in this Godforsaken place.

Smitty was sitting beside him, his head drooped forward and his shoulders hanging dispiritedly. Smitty's face, the parts of it that showed through his beard, hung in gray folds of weariness. His eyes were dull and his lips slack. Smitty was the sparkplug of the platoon, a pfc. with six years' Regular Army service, the man who never tired and couldn't get killed. If Smitty looked like that, how in the name of God must the rest of them look? George wondered. It seemed impossible that a few days over two could make such a scarecrow-pitiful change in a man. He'd like to take the squad into a bar back home right now, just like they were. They probably wouldn't even be allowed to buy a beer.

They squatted like that, without speaking, waiting indifferently for the staff; he had gone back to the command post a couple of hundred yards to the rear. He would have the orders when he came back. Until then, they just sat. In the last few days, the periods of talking had grown shorter and shorter, and the long spaces of silence in between had grown longer and, if possible, more silent. It seemed that the eternal grayness that surrounded them had found a beach and had slipped in through it to fill their bodies and worm its way into their minds.

Eighteen days. It seemed there had never been anything before the 18 days that had passed since they first hit the beach, there would be nothing else after, except the eternal grayness. It was a good thing none of them had known what Attu or combat was like before they got here. In that 18 days, none of them had had what you could call (continued on page 130) Face of War (continued from page 112) sleep, unless you could call squirming around and shivering in a wet, cold slit trench, or lying stiffly on the wet tundra and feeling the wet slowly soak through your clothes, sleep. The Soldier's Handbook would call that sleep. George knew now why men wrote military textbooks. It was so they could stay out of combat.

After the first two days of confusion, of supposedly fighting the gray shadows that nobody saw, the company had been put on an ammunition-carrying detail. They had made an uncountable number of trips up with boxes and bandoleers of 30-caliber stuff, trips from Massacre Bay up the steep valley to the ever-farther front. The men were trigger happy, anyway, and they fired at every shadow, even saw shadows where there were no shadows and fired at them, too. It took a lot of ammo to supply them, and as the line fought its way inland, each trip up the steep, slippery valley was longer than the last, and each trip back was longer than the trip up. Men falling with the heavy boxes, sliding back down; after the first fall, they were never dry again, and there were a lot of broken bones and raw bruises. A long line of men moving like automatons in the dim gray light. Back and forth. Back and forth.

The squad leader had been hit in the head the first day. The Japs always tried to get the men who were directing movements. And George, as second, had inherited the squad. After one day of carrying the ammo, he had given up trying to keep them together. His mind would no longer work. But somehow or other, like sheep, the squad seemed to huddle together in the vast welter of men on the trail and at the beach, and then later the advance supply dump. How the outfit had finally found them God only knew.

For 12 days, they had made the ever-lengthening trips with the ammo boxes, the round tricircular containers of mortar ammo. Finally, it got to the point where they no longer had to think. They moved along the trail like wraiths without thought or feeling. Twelve days was almost two weeks, and in that time, there had been no sleep except what they could snatch on their feet, moving the ammo along the eerie trail, mist-covered to the knees; or in some hole without even a shelter half, a raw grave into which the mists flowed and filled. They would walk back until somebody stopped them and put a box of ammo in their arms; then they would walk up toward the line until somebody else stopped them and relieved them of the burden. His mind could not grasp the truth of it, because there was nothing in the outside world to compare it to. People just didn't walk for 12 days without sleep. It was impossible.

The sleeping bags they had been issued so generously were supposed to come ashore later with shelter halves and blankets, etc. Whether they had come or not no-body knew, because nobody could find them in the vast welter of confusion at the beach. Once, George and his squad were commandeered by some frantic officer to unload a barge. They worked until the barge was almost unloaded of its boxes before some man broke one open, thinking it might be food. The boxes contained condoms, case after case, box after box, of condoms. They quit working and sat down in the wet and laughed themselves silly; it was a bitter, hungry laughter. The frantic officer cursed and stormed and had the rest of the barge's cargo dumped over the side.

Once, he had walked into a ration dump for a box of rations. There was nobody there. The stuff had just been dumped and left there; he was just lucky to stumble onto it. He had his rifle in his hands, the rifle that was always with him. Whether he carried a box of ammo, a can of water or a box of rations on one shoulder, the rifle was always slung over the other. After a while, the awkwardness of carrying it was gone and forgotten. It was like another, a heavier, more awkward arm. He stepped around a stack of C-ration boxes and came face to face with a Jap. It was the first one he had seen close enough to distinguish his features. Always, they were at a distance, like gray phantoms in the gray world.

The Jap was tearing open a C-ration box. He had it part way open and was just getting out a can of meat and beans. George saw the label on the can, and for some reason, it impressed itself upon his dulled, stupid mind; it was the most vivid memory of the whole encounter. The Jap jumped up, as surprised as George. George looked at him for several seconds, not knowing what to do. The Soldier's Handbook said nothing about the procedure when meeting a Jap in a U.S. ration dump. The Jap raised his rifle with a slow movement like a sleepwalker, and George just watched him stupidly. Without thinking about it, he stepped in and hit the Jap on the mouth with his right fist. He was as big as three of the Jap, and the punch lifted the scrawny Jap clear off his feet; he dropped his rifle and lit on the back of his neck.

The Jap lay still for a moment, partially stunned, and George remembered he still held his own rifle in his left hand. He pointed it down at the Jap and fired it. He couldn't have missed.

The bullet hit the Jap someplace in the chest. It made no evident difference: no visible hole or blood. The Jap clutched his fingers in the tundra and made a wry face. He made no sound. His lips writhed back over his teeth as he looked at George. For the first time in the encounter, a thought entered George's head. He hated the Jap. Here was this Jap stuffing his gut in a U.S. ration dump, while George himself and the guys in the squad hadn't had food for God knows how long. No food, no sleep, no rest. And here was this Jap having himself a picnic.

George raised his rifle again and emptied the seven other rounds of the clip into the Jap's body. Then he jumped on the Jap's chest. He felt the ribs give suddenly under his nice, expensive leather boots that weren't worth a goddamn. He took his rifle by the warm muzzle and rammed the butt down into the Jap's face several times. After that, he sat down and dropped his rifle into the muck. He was very weak and gagged and gagged, but he had not had enough food to puke up anything.

He sat there a long time before he could regain the strength to pick up his rifle and a box of C rations. By that time, he had forgotten the Jap, and he walked stupidly, ploddingly back to the beach. He didn't even tell his buddy Smitty about the Jap. It didn't seem to matter much. Once in a while, his mind would dwell on it for a second and he would remember the label on the can of meat and beans and he would get scared. The Jap could just as easily have killed him.

He and Smitty didn't say anything as they squatted. For a second, he wondered what Smitty was thinking, but then the question faded and his mind went back to its confused series of meaningless pictures. They sat that way, cold as hell, till the staff came back from the command post. Smitty used to be the company comic; his cracks would keep them going when nothing (continued on page 174) Face of War (continued from page 130) else could. On the transport, Smitty had been chipper, and he used to imitate a clubwoman giving a report to her local cultural society in which she described the island of Attu, "where our boys are now fighting," as being rich in history and how the Aleuts had named Massacre Bay for a big killing that had taken place there. Once, Smitty had said the Bible was wrong about hell: Hell was a cold place, not a hot one.

George wondered if Attu was really the hell of the Bible, and if the swirling shadows of mist that surrounded everything were not maybe the lost souls.

The staff sergeant came back, plodding wearily through the deep mud that sucked hungrily at his boots, icy cold and soft. Once, as he walked toward them through the gray daylight that still lingered at ten P.M., he crossed a patch of snow. He was above them on the steep hill, on the windward side. At each step, the wind caught a puff of the icy, weightless crystals and swirled them around his figure like a full-length halo. He plodded down to them in the lee, carrying his stolen Thompson gun slung with the butt up. The staff was very paternal about the Thompson gun. When he squatted by George, the muzzle dug into the mucky tundra. The staff looked at it dully, cursed and fired it into the air to clean the compensator. It was always a constant fight against rust, and the monotonous operation of cleaning arms grew to be almost a penance for some obscure sin committed in civilian life.

"Battalion's set up back there," the staff said to George and Smitty. "They say tomorrow's the cleanup. We got them all pocketed in a cul-de-sac. This here's the only way out of Chichagof. So we rest tonight." The staff snorted bitter laughter. "And tomorrow, we clean it up, for good. We move in behind the line ahead as reserve.

"We bivouac here tonight," the staff said, as if remembering what he had gone for.

Smitty cursed.

"What's the matter, Smitty?" the staff said.

"We be better off to go on in tonight," Smitty said.

"I don't like it. Whose orders, Staff?"

"Come down from division, I guess."

"I still don't like it. What about security?"

"Battalions takin' care of it."

"Balls," said Smitty. "When this war's over, I'm gonna re-enlist into the Foreign Legion and git stationed in the middle of the Sahara Desert."

The staff went away to see about the platoon.

"I'm gonna see what I can scrounge up," Smitty said to George. Due to his six years' previous service, Smitty was the best thief in the regiment.

When Smitty came back, he had a bottle. "Officers," he said. He handed it to George, who drank the fiery liquor deeply. Then he handed it around to the rest of the squad who squatted near.

"I found a pile of sleeping bags," Smitty whispered to George. "And there are a couple of tents pitched right over there."

"How many bags?"

"Five or six," Smitty said.

"Go tell the staff," George said. "I'll tell the cook."

A company cook, since there was no cooking to do, had volunteered to help. He had joined the staff's platoon. Everybody appreciated his gesture.

These were the first sleeping bags any of them had seen since the day they hit the beach. When they slept at all, they scrounged up a shelter half if they could. Usually, they couldn't. So they were very pleased to see them. George and Smitty hunted around near the pile of bags until they found enough for the whole squad. There were only nine left of the original 15. Within an hour, they had spread themselves out in one of the abandoned tents Smitty had found. Smitty was a great guy. It was the first time they had really slept in 18 days.

George felt himself sinking through layer after layer of black nothingness. It was as if he were sinking into layers of feather beds, which opened to let him pass through and then closed again over the top of him. The world receded beyond the layers of blackness.

For the first time that day, he thought of Riley. In the bag, he began to get warm and he could see in half sleep, half wakefulness Riley's wide smile, her competent hands that always knew everything. He felt awed by her glowing power that she was willing to use in ministering to him. He thought again that Riley was safe from war, and that fact seemed to justify his presence here a little more. As he fell deeper into sleep, the memory crystallized into dream, and he was in the house he had planned. But the house was strange. In the bathroom, the bathtub and commode were filled with snow, the hard, icy snow of the North that never melts. He turned on the faucets, but only snow came out, and he was forced to bathe in the freezingness of the snow. When he flushed the toilet, white snow swirled around the bowl of the commode. When he turned on the water in the washbasin to wet his toothbrush, snow came out of the faucet. His jaws and eyes ached with the iciness of it as he brushed his teeth. He hurried out of the bathroom into the living room, but in the living room, the furniture was dusted with sifted snow. Young Jimmy was standing there in the center of the room, fully dressed and shivering, with blue face and hands. His very blood seemed blue. George thought at once to help him, and then discovered that he had left the bathroom stark naked. He was terribly embarrassed and worried about not having anything at all with which to help Jimmy because of being naked. Then Riley entered the room, and his embarrassment changed to shame. He tried to cover himself with his rifle, but it was too small to provide cover. Riley paid no attention to Jimmy and she came to George. She touched his face and rubbed his shoulders with her warm hands, and George found himself fully clothed and warm. He was immensely grateful to Riley, because she was not mad at him, but he could not speak; he was ashamed of his uniform, trailing muck into the living room of his nice house. He found a can of canned heat in his pocket and he gave it to Jimmy to warm himself. Then he gave Jimmy the rifle to show Riley his gratitude. Immediately, he wished he had it back.

He awoke to the sound of a thousand screaming banshees. He unzipped the bag quickly and grabbed his rifle. When he got outside the tent, he saw about a million Japs. They were everywhere, and all of them were screaming and yelling. The noise was terrifying. He dropped down to one knee and began firing. They were firing rifles and light machine guns, and every now and then, a grenade would boom out. Jesus Christ, he thought inarticulately, Jesus Christ. A spray of bullets hit the canvas tent with the sound of a zipper being whizzed open. His own terror made him frantic at the thought of being all alone. He screamed at the men in the tent, and the staff came roaring out, firing his stolen Thompson gun like a wild Indian. Smitty crawled out and lay beside George. The rest of the men in the tent tumbled out haphazardly. Between clips, George found out that the cook had never left his sack. He had sat up just as the spray of bullets hit the tent, and he had been caught in the throat with one or several. The blood spurted all over the sack. "Oh, God, help me," was all the cook could choke out.

Smitty looked at George through the silvery light of the darkness. "I told you I didn't like this," Smitty said.

The stall stuck a new clip into his Thompson gun. He was lying on the other side of Smitty. "Banzai," the staff muttered. "Banzai, you cocksuckers." A bullet hit him just below his helmet brim, and he dropped his head forward. Smitty cursed and took his Thompson gun.

After that, it became a nightmare. The screaming mob of Japs swept through like a wave, screaming, shooting, bayoneting, blowing grenades. In the shambles, George lost Smitty. He must have moved off or back, because he could no longer see the tents. Twice, he took ammo off dead bodies. He could see no live men around him; they must have all got away and run, the live ones. Once three Japs rushed him and he shot one, kicked the second in the balls and bayoneted the third. He shot the second one as he writhed on the ground, after he finally got his bayonet loose.

He was terrified at being all alone, and his only thought was to find the tents and Smitty. In the swirling mist, he thought he caught a glimpse of them off to the right. There was not a live soul near him, and he started toward where he thought he saw the tents. It was then that the concussion grenade hit his leg. It bounced from his thigh to the mucky tundra, and he saw it, red and black. By the time he focused his eyes, it exploded, blinding him, deafening him, shocking his nervous system into disintegration.

"Oh, Christ," he sobbed. "Oh, Jesus Christ. The dirty bastards blew my leg off. Oh, Christ. Oh, Jesus, Jesus Christ."

He lay where he had fallen for a long time. Once, for a little while, he blacked out. Finally, because he could think of nothing else and because he was terrified at being alone in the deathlike silence with the noise of screaming and explosions in the distance, he started crawling toward the tent. Smitty could help him. He crawled on his left side, dragging his right leg. It made him sick to look at the mangled mess. There was no feeling in it, and the foot was turned around backward, his own foot. The shin bones stuck out through the flesh and the remnants of his pants leg that hadn't been blown off him. There was dirt and mud ground into the bone and flesh. It looked like a piece of raw beef, and it hung by one little strip of flesh.

They'll cut off my leg. They'll cut off my leg. He kept thinking it until it became a song accompanied by the rhythm of his crawling body. He should take his sulfa, but his belt was gone and his first-aid packet with it. He couldn't remember what had happened to it.

To hell with it. He was going to die, anyway. He'd bleed to death, bleed to death alone, alone out here by himself, where there was nobody at all. He wanted to die. He wished the Japs would come and kill him off and get it over with. They'd cut off his leg, anyway. George, you're going to die. George Schwartz is going to die. Even now the sentence had no meaning; he didn't know what it would be to be dead. But he didn't want to die.

He made it to the tent in the awesome silence. The wave of Japs had swept on, carrying the noise with it, and leaving a vast silence that was fearful by comparison. Smitty was still out in front of the tent. His leg was broken by a bullet, and he was sitting propped up on his hands. George called and Smitty turned to look at him slowly and without expression.

"I'm hit, George," Smitty said. "Where is everybody? They're all dead but us."

"The sons of bitches blew my leg off, Smitty," George said.

Smitty, sitting amidst the debris of carnage, gazed back at him. "Nobody's here," he said. "We're all alone." He shook his head slowly.

"They're going to have to cut my leg off, Smitty," George said.

After that, George passed out, and once more, he seemed to be sinking through layers of black felt that separated him from the world. They cushioned him against the half-frozen mud on which he lay. This was dying, then.

How long he lay out in front of the tent in the silence he did not know. Time lost its meaning. It had no meaning, anyway. In the Army, nothing had any meaning. You weren't supposed to think, only do what you were told. What did the Soldier's Handbook say about dying with your leg blown off? That possibility existed, but he could remember nothing in the Soldier's Handbook that dealt with it.

Between periods of sinking into the folds of blackness, he thought about Riley. Each time he sank through another fold of the black felt, a huge gear seemed to grind somberly, slowing speed, relaxing him. It rubbed, like metal against stone. He reminded himself to write to Riley. He would write it all down in his notebook for her to read. A telegram from the War Department wasn't enough. It explained nothing, just like the Soldier's Handbook. Besides, the telegram would go to his mother. Riley wouldn't get a telegram. She would have to go and see his mother, but then, how would she know? Maybe his mother would write to her. But then, maybe she wouldn't. If Riley was his wife, she would get the telegram. But she wasn't. The sons of bitches. He was in the goddamn Army a whole year and he couldn't even get a weekend pass to get home to marry Riley. Now she wouldn't get the telegram. Goddamn them. Maybe....

George's mind ran on, arguing with itself hazily over the destination of the War Department telegram informing the world of his demise.

Then another bunch of Japs, a much smaller one now, came through the camp, and George's mind awoke into crystal-clear perception under the stimulus of fear. They came slowly down the line, prodding the bodies, bayoneting those who weren't yet dead. Some of them had bayonets fastened on the ends of slicks. They went into the abandoned tents, searching out every man who was not dead. George watched them come toward him slowly, jabbering excitedly in their women's voices. When they got to Smitty, Smitty just sat and watched them stupidly, like a businessman propped on the sand of a bathing beach on his holiday, watching the waves come in. They stopped in front of Smitty. Something about him seemed to make them mad, and they jabbered angrily. Smitty looked up at them expressionlessly, almost with curiosity. Then they stuck him. Pushed a bayonet into him slowly, deliberately, five times, until Smitty finally writhed on the ground, screamed once, "You yellow bastards!" and lay still. George clenched his hands helplessly. If he only had his rifle. He'd shoot them from where he lay. Why didn't he curse them for the bastards that they were? Why didn't he do anything but just lie there?

They stood in front of Smitty for a minute, small figures in the rising mist, strange and foreign in the messy uniforms and rolled puttees, their queer-shaped helmets and dirty too-wide faces. They jabbered angrily among themselves, partly in English. Then they started coming toward George.

George shut his eyes. O Christ, he prayed, O Jesus; let them stick me through the heart the first time. He kept his eyes shut and held his breath. They stood in front of him, still arguing angrily in their jabbery voices. One of them kicked him in the head and lights exploded in front of him, and their voices seemed to grow and fade, grow and fade. But he made no sound and tried to keep his muscles slack. They must have decided he was dead, because they went on and left him. He must look dead enough, all covered with blood and mud and his leg mangled, just hanging to him by a thin strip of flesh.

He heard someone behind him scream, and then he passed out again. When he came to, his head ached where the Jap had kicked him, though his leg didn't hurt at all. This seemed funny to him, and he felt like laughing, but nothing came. Far away and very faintly, he could hear bells above the wind. They were playing the Friendly Tavern Polka, and he wondered why anybody would want to bring a jukebox up here. The tones of the bells were clear and above the wind. One of the high notes seemed a little flat.

"Hey, Smitty," George said. "Hear the bells? They're playing flat." Smitty played the guitar; he would get a kick out of this.

He wished he could have a good bath. He wished they'd come and get him. It wasn't decent for a man not to have a bath. A man shouldn't have to die dirty. Covered with blood and mud and snow and his own urine. That was no way for a man to die.

Attu, they would say, oh, yes. That's one of the Aleutian Islands, isn't it? We've taken a new island. Attu. It's somewhere in the Aleutians. People don't take baths there.

George imagined that Riley kept shaking him by the shoulder and giving him hell because he was dirty and had pissed his pants. He wanted her to stop, but the voice kept on. There were many voices. It was the Japs come back. He couldn't stand it, he thought. Oh, Jesus Christ.... A man hadn't ought to ever have to stand this. Then he realized the voices were American.

"I want a bath, Riley," he kept saying to the medic. "Don't let me die dirty."

In a haze, he saw one medic look at his buddy and then turn his eyes away. The medic shook his head wearily, sadly.

Johnny'S Speech to the Draftees

After a moment, Bill Jacobs walked around the room over to the other side where the long table was. He sat down at his place near the head of the table. Johnny saw him leaning over and talking to various people who were seated at the table. He noticed that the men who had been at the bar were sitting at several different tables. Apparently, they were spreading the news. One of the men was sitting at a table near Johnny with two heavy older women; Johnny recognized one of them as a schoolteacher who had taught him in grade school. The man leaned over toward Johnny and said, "You tell them, son." Johnny grinned at him with bright-eyed intensity and nodded. All right, they would be told. All part of the game, the big game that was Endymion first, the rest of the United States second and the rest of the world last; never the reverse. He was suddenly tremendously angry at their stupidity. Not only did they insist on deluding themselves with their game but they insisted on dragging him, a bystander, into the farce. If they wanted a show, by God, that was what they would get.

He inspected the large group of men at the long table. They were of varying ages, but there was a common look of innocent cynicism on their faces. None of them looked very enthusiastic.

He sat at his table and ate apple pie with ice cream on it for dessert, but it did not taste as good as the rest of the meal had, because his single-minded forgetfulness had been destroyed by Bill Jacobs and his gang, who not only fought the war from the draft-board office but wanted the right to say what the war was being fought for.

Bill Jacobs made the introductory talk and call for attention. He introduced the Reverend Dr. Bryson. Reverend Bryson made a short talk to the effect that the young men at the table were going away to fight a war against oppression and greed for power and that God was behind them and championing their cause and that the fate of the church and the world was in their hands.

Tom Prentiss spoke, giving them the good will of the Rotary Club, and voiced the hope that they would fight hard and well to preserve the American way of life, which was the best life yet devised on earth, and concluded with the thought that if the rest, of the world had been taught more of the American way of life sooner, there would have been no war.

After that, Bill Jacobs made his speech, pointing out that this war was only a continuation of the last and that this time, America was going to do the job right and finish it, instead of leaving it half-done like they did the last time.

"And now," Bill said with an air of expectancy, "you fellows have a special treat tonight. We've got with us a boy"--Bill laughed--"a man, I should say, but I never can remember how fast you fellows grow up"--a few of the men at the long table laughed with him--"we've got with us a man who has been through Guadalcanal and who has played his part in this adventure, as the ribbons on his shirt will say more eloquently than I ever could. He's reluctant to talk about himself, but I finally persuaded him to say a few words to you fellows."

Johnny stood up and walked up onto the raised organ stand, where Bill Jacobs stood before the microphone. As he stood up, he felt his individuality slip curiously away from him. Bill put his arm around Johnny and grinned at the long table. "Most of you fellows probably have known Johnny Carter all your lives, so he won't need any further introduction. I'll sit down and let him talk." Bill stepped down off the platform, sat down in his chair and looked expectantly up at Johnny. The draftees at the long table watched him with bored attention. Johnny stood in front of the mike, and there was a bright spotlight on the side of the stand that illumined him. He stood with his legs widespread, his arms hanging down along his thighs, his fists closed. In his tailored uniform, he made a fine picture and the ribbons on his shirt glittered colorfully in the light.

When he spoke, his voice was coldly quiet and completely without emotion. "I'm not reluctant to talk," he began, "but there is very little I can tell you guys. As Mr. Jacobs said, most of you probably have known me all of my life. I'm not talking to you as Johnny Carter, whom you know. I'm talking to you as a soldier whom you don't know.

"These gentlemen have told you a number of things about this war. You have been told you are fighting for a number of things: democracy, freedom, to end oppression, and so on. There is one thing that you are fighting for that has not been mentioned. To me, it is the most important. You are fighting for your life. These other statements may be true or not. There is a possibility they are not. True or not, they are general ideas, and the Army is a particular life. When you are in the Army, you will find it very hard to reconcile these general statements with the life you'll live."

Johnny paused for a moment and looked around the room. Every face was turned toward him, and he could see the startled looks on a number of them. Bill Jacobs' mouth was hanging open, and the attention of the draftees was not bored. Johnny's eyes glittered savagely as he looked down at the long table.

"One other thing. Some of you may go overseas, and some of you may never get over. If you ever do, remember this. You must learn to hate. Brotherly love and mercy are all very fine back here. There, they are worth nothing. You cannot afford to think of mercy or sportsmanship or fair play. You will have to forget the code you've been taught. You are fighting to keep from being killed, and a dirty fighter kills a man just as dead and with less effort than a clean one. You can take no chances. When you are in combat, you are not fighting for freedom or anything else. You are fighting only to save your life. If you remember that, you will have every chance to get out alive you can have. You may need them. You have to learn to hate, because in hating without mercy, you can kill better. And that is what you are for, if you're a soldier."

Johnny stopped talking abruptly and stepped off the stand. As he stepped to his table, he saw the face of the grade school teacher, contorted with a look of revulsion. She turned her face away and would not meet his eyes.

There was a stillness in the room for several moments, and then people began to talk and move about, as if trying to refute the fact that there had been a lull. Johnny grinned to himself and sipped his drink. They wanted their war, but they wanted to select their own spices to kill its taste so it would fit into the game they played. They didn't want to know the true taste. The French and the Poles and the Greeks and the Russians had tasted it as it was. Their lives had been stripped of subterfuge and nonessential ideas. You couldn't select your own spices when you were starving.

A year after his medical discharge from the Army in 1944, James Jones completed the manuscript of a novel, which he titled They Shall Inherit the Laughter. It was shelved in favor of From Here to Eternity, and some of the material in it was "cannibalized" for use in later novels, among them The Thin Red Line. That book was first excerpted in Playboy in three parts in 1962. We thought it fitting to present the artwork from those excerpts to accompany these fragments, which contain some of Jones's most descriptive war writing.

"George jumped on the Jap's chest. He felt the ribs give suddenly under his expensive leather boots."

"They spread out in one of the abandoned tents. It was the first time they had really slept in 18 days."