The Thin Red Line Page 12

  Dale did not at first know what was in it but he was struck by the fact that it was isolated. There was a bivouac perhaps thirty yards away in the cocopalms, deserted and lazy under the heat of the sun. The tent itself had all its flap ropes tied shut. But it wasn’t locked; how could you lock a tent? His curiosity aroused, Dale lifted a loop from one of the wall stakes and slipped inside. It was stifling hot in the tent and in that dim, peculiarly pleasant, lazy-making light of hot sun shining through tentage canvas, rack after wooden rack of guns filled the interior like rows of pews. Seven of these worshippers, all in their own row, were Thompson submachineguns. At the front the altar was a raised platform stacked with drums and clips of .45 ammunition and their canvas carriers. Both clips and carriers bore the Marine Corps stamp.

  The rest of the congregation were .30 cal Springfields, and a few of the new .30 cal carbines which had only gotten to C-for-Charlie recently. All mused at their devotions in the dim hot air while Dale stared at them. A closer inspection revealed that the working parts showed no signs of wear. They were all brand new. Yet they had the grease cleaned off them and stood ready for immediate use, freshly oiled. There they were. In the tent, as outside, the hot stillness of Sunday revival meeting reigned.

  Dale was overjoyed. Here was any old soldier’s dream of a perfect piece of thievery. It was too good to be true. And from the Marines, yet! One for himself, of course. But what about the other six? And those carbines? Greedily and with chagrin Dale realized he couldn’t possibly carry all of the Thompson guns even. Let alone enough .45 ammo to supply them. It was a shame to waste them.

  Then there was another thing. If he took just one—for himself—and some ammo, what would he do with it? The moment he showed it at the company he would be in danger of having it confiscated. And it was then that the idea of not taking any now, but instead coming back on a raid, struck him. With enough guys maybe they could even take some of those delicious carbines.

  If he could get any of the officers interested, enough to come along for one themselves, then they wouldn’t dare to confiscate his. At the same time it would be a big boost to the reputation of the guy who found the guns and thought of the idea—namely, Dale. Him. Me. Young Lt Culp of the weapons platoon, who was a former Dartmouth football player and was always laughing and kidding around with the men, would be the one. Or maybe he would go to Welsh. Welsh would always be game for anything like this. In either case, he was not going to say anything to that bastard Storm, who if he wanted a Thompson gun could go and find it for himself.

  Having figured it out to his satisfaction, Dale ducked back outside and carefully replaced the wall loop over its stake. But then he stopped. He could not help but feel he was leaving behind an opportunity which was too good to let go. Maybe they had sentries on this place, he would have, and the sentry was just goofing off somewhere asleep. They might come back to find the place guarded, out of reach. And Dale wanted one of those tommy guns so bad it made his hands itch. Especially since Storm had announced publicly that he was going up into the line with the outfit, and would take with him any cooks who wanted to go. Well, when he put it that way, who would dare to say he didn’t want to go? Certainly not Dale. Even though the pit of his stomach felt hollow when he thought of it.

  After a minute of standing lost in thought in the hot sunny afternoon with his hand resting on the warm tent seam, Dale loosened the loop, ducked back in, selected one of the Thompsons. With it and all the drums and clips he could cram into two of the canvas carriers, he ducked back out, refastened the loop and walked away into the cocopalms. He headed back toward the bivouac. A few of the men he met stared at him but seemed not to think his equipment odd, even though he was carrying his rifle as well. He did not enter the bivouac but instead turned off toward the jungle where it came closest to the company area. Inside the jungle he left the new gun hidden and went to the bivouac for a shirt, returned and wrapped the gun in it carefully, then hid it and the ammo in a hollow beneath the tall roots of one of the giant trees. Only then did he saunter into the bivouac, whistling innocently with his hands in his pockets, to look for either Welsh or Culp.

  It was Culp that he found. And the Lieutenant’s broad fleshy face with its broken pugnose wreathed itself in a happy acquisitive smile, when in his hoarse belligerent voice Dale told him of the find.

  “How many are there?”

  “Seven. I mean, six.”

  “Six Thompson guns,” Culp savored it slowly and gave a low whistle. “And you say all the drums and clips we can carry?” He paused, and appeared to be licking his chops. “This will require thought and planning, Dale. Yes sir. Yes, sir! Thought and planning.” Culp rubbed his footballplayer’s hands together. “Three men would be enough, if it was just the guns. But with the ammo—We’re going to need that ammo, Dale,” he said nodding; “we’re going to need it. Every bit of it and every clip we can get. Because can you imagine me going up to Regiment and asking for an issue of .45 ammo for six Thompson guns we ain’t even supposed to have? Yes, sir! Now let me think a minute,” he said but did not pause more than a second. “We’re going to have to take this to Captain Stein, I’m afraid. Yes, I think we’ll have to take it to Captain Stein.”

  “Well, will he go along?” Dale said. He stared at Culp stonily out of his flat, narroweyed face. He did not like the idea of bringing Bugger Stein in at all.

  “If he gets one for himself out of it?” Culp made a wise smile. “I wouldn’t see why not. I would myself, I know that. Wouldn’t you?”

  “I aim to,” Dale said flatly.

  Culp nodded, but absently, a faraway greedy look in his eye. “Yes, sir. Yes, sir. And anyway, he’d find out soon enough when he saw us sporting those tommyguns around here; and then what? Yes sir, if I had anything to say about it, Dale, you would get the first medal of the war to go to old C-for-Charlie. We need more men like you, Dale.”

  Dale flashed him a pleased smile. But he did not relinquish his point. “Well, what about takin Sergeant Welsh in on it, instead?”

  “We’ll take him, too. We’ll take him, too. But we’ve got to tell Captain Stein. Don’t you worry. He’ll go along. You just leave it to me. Leave me worry about everything, Dale.” He slapped his big hands down on his knees and pushed himself up. “Come on, Dale. We got things to do, things to do. Now, what do you think? I think mid-afternoon tomorrow. Just the same time you went there, you see. Night’s too dangerous; might get shot. And evening’s bad because that’s when everybody in the outfit’s home for supper.” He was already striding off toward the orderly tent and Dale with his much shorter legs had almost to run to keep up.

  In the end they took seven men. Dale could not say exactly how much .45 ammunition there was—except that there was a lot—and Culp wanted to be sure and get it all. As it turned out, they could have taken nine or ten and still not have carried off all of it.

  Perhaps Stein would have refused them permission, except for the loud enthusiasm of Culp. Certainly Stein was not very hot on the idea. But there was no stopping Culp. Culp did everything, including convincing Stein. He even thought of borrowing pistols for them so they would not have to carry their rifles and thus could porter back more loot. He waved his bighanded arms around the orderly tent like windmill blades. Dale stood against the wall of the tent in silence, his flat face a careful mask, and let them talk.

  Culp and Welsh chose the personnel. Naturally membership did not get very far outside the club. Dale was the only man below staff sergeant in the party. And Dale had the feeling they would not have invited him if they could have found an honorable way out of it. But it was Welsh, not Culp, who suggested taking Storm.

  Dale was furious. But he daren’t tell them that the reason he had gone to Culp and Welsh in the first place was in order to keep Storm out. He continued to stand against the tent wall in silence and watched half his own reason for the raid go down the drain. Storm, when called in, said nothing. But he gave his second cook a glance which showed he unders
tood. And Dale knew Storm would not forgive him soon.

  So they had their personnel. They were Culp, Welsh, Storm, Dale, MacTae the young draftee supply sergeant, and two of the platoon sergeants: one officer, five sergeants, and Dale.

  They were very nearly six sergeants and Dale. Bugger Stein—even after he allowed the raid, and accepted one of the Thompson guns—still did not feel he should allow an officer to go. What if they should get caught? How would that look at Battalion? And at Regiment? An officer leading an organized raid to steal guns! On the other hand Stein had before him the example of what he thought his father the Major would have done in the First War. It was a difficult decision, and Stein took quite a while in making it.

  Stein had been confused and rattled by the air raids, too. He did not know whether as an officer and commander he should stay up in the open or get down in his hole like everybody else. It was a constant battle every night, and every raid. It was heroic to walk about and disdain to take shelter as officers had done in Napoleon’s time. And he could have done that. But it was common sense, in this war, to take care of yourself and protect your government’s investment in you, not get yourself killed pointlessly in some air raid. Every raid made an exhausting decision for him before he finally went to his hole, and it was the same sort of thing now with this decision.

  In the end he let Culp go. Culp was damn near irrepressible, that was the truth. But it was Stein’s father the Major and his example that finally decided the issue. Stein could remember stories of his father’s about the thieving expeditions they had carried out in France. These were what gave him a mental picture he could follow as a policy. He did not want to look like an old maid, a wet blanket who ruined all the fun with overcautious advice. It was easy for Culp who was young and without responsibilities to go around yelling and enthusiastically waving his arms. Culp did not have this company to run, and to answer for. When Stein looked at Culp he found himself realizing the price he unwittingly had paid for the command of a company which he once had wanted so badly. Brusquely, in a way which he felt effectively covered up his sad, sagging sense of age, he gave his consent.

  “There’s only one thing,” he said again; “officially. Officially I don’t know anything about it. What you men do without my knowing about it isn’t my responsibility. When you go, you’re on your own.”

  He thought that was a rather well-rounded, powerful statement of his position. He thought he had stated it boldly and well, and he was pleased by this. But his pleasure was negated by the sentiment which attacked him when he remembered he would soon be leading these same exuberant men into battle—battle in which some of them would surely die, very possibly including himself.

  But with Culp Stein drew the line. None of the other officers could go. That was a flat-out order by Stein, and the faces of the other three young platoon officers fell. All of them wanted to take part in the raid.

  The only officer who didn’t want to go was George Band, the exec—who nevertheless did want one of the submachineguns, and got it.

  First Lieutenant Band did not agree with, or like, the way his superior had handled this whole matter of the gun raid. Band was a tall, stooped, emaciated high school teacher, an OCS graduate whose spine had not been straightened by close order drill, a possessor of strange bulging eyes which looked as though they ought to require glasses and did. But Band felt he knew the Army. If you were going to command a company, you had to command it. You simply could not give the impression that you were letting your subordinates sway you in your decisions. Only by avoiding that, or even the semblance of it, could you truly command. And only by commanding could you stimulate and cause to grow that intense and closely knit working relationship of true comradeship, which should exist between the souls of men who had shared the rigors and shocks of combat, and which was the greatest human value of combat. Any other course led to fractionization, not unity. And that unity was what differentiated human men from the various beasts of the world.

  There was, for Band, a mysterious quality of deepest, most manly friendship which could exist between men who shared the pain and death, the fear and the sadness of combat—and the happiness, too. For there was happiness. Happiness in doing your best, happiness in fighting by the side of your friend. Band did not know where this powerful, manly friendship came from, or what exactly caused it, but he knew that it existed and there were times when Band felt closer to the men in his outfit than he had ever felt to his wife.

  But Band knew that the closeness could not be achieved as Stein was trying to do it: by giving them their head and letting them have their way. You had to let your men know where they stood. You had to make it plain to them what they were allowed to do, and what they weren’t allowed. Your men wanted to know that. If Stein wanted Culp to go, he should have said so at first, not let himself be talked into it—or else he should have refused and stuck by it. Just as he should sit down on that insolent Welsh and bring him to heel, and should have done it long ago.

  Band said nothing of all this, however. It was not his place to interfere—especially with junior officers and sergeants present. All he said out loud was his modestly murmured request for one of the guns—which he knew Stein would let him have, as soon as he asked for it. And Stein did.

  With two Thompson guns siphoned off the top by the element of command, that left four. It was decided to apportion these beforehand to avoid argument after. Culp of course got one. Dale, who continued his cautious silence and did not mention the one he had hidden in the woods, was allowed one as the finder. And Welsh and Storm, being the next two men in line of rank, got the other two. MacTae, the young supply sergeant, didn’t want one anyway, because he was not going to go up with the company; he was only going along on the raid for the lark. The two platoon sergeants had to be content with carbines, but both were glad enough to have the chance to go.

  All this was decided the afternoon of the raid, with the seven raiders standing excitedly around the orderly tent wearing their borrowed pistols, shortly before taking off.

  The reason Dale had not mentioned the seventh gun was because he did not fully trust in the successful completion of the raid. With his country suspicion of authority, he feared his Thompson might wind up in the possession of Bugger Stein or Brass Band (as Tall George was sometimes called) before the raid ever commenced—in which case, if the raid was unsuccessful, he would be out of luck. After the raid was over and successful, he brought it out of its hiding place in his slow deliberate way, pretending to grin sheepishly at his own dishonesty—thus elevating it to the plane of humor, where everyone was forced to laugh. The extra, unexpected gun went to MacTae—who had changed his mind and decided that, when the time came, he too would go up and see what combat was like, as Storm and all the cooks were going to do.

  The time came much sooner than any of them had anticipated or expected.

  The sounds of mortar and small arms fire off in the hills had grown steadily louder, growling more angrily, day by day. The excited little jeeps scurrying along the mud roads bearing highranking officers with mapcases had gradually increased in number, and in their speed. This much C-for-Charlie knew. And yet, when their orders finally came to go up, everybody was astonished and surprised. Partly of course it was because they somehow had never quite believed this time would come, this moment arrive. Their own orders to move seemed to burst upon them suddenly and resoundingly—echoing in their ears like an explosion in a cave.

  Corporal Fife was sitting on a watercan in the sun outside the orderly tent when Bugger Stein and his driver, Stein with his mapcase across his knees, roared up in the company jeep. Before either of them jumped out Fife knew by the look on their faces what they were coming back to say. Fife realized then that the hollow echoing he was hearing was not an explosion in a cave after all, but the slow bumps of his own heart perched beneath his swallowing mechanism. Reluctance and anticipation pulled him excitedly in two directions. If his excitement got the least bit stronger, he w
as afraid it might turn to open fear, perhaps uncontrollable.

  Fife had been a bystander at the conferences over the submachinegun raid only a few days before. He had not yet forgiven Welsh for that. He had wanted one of those guns, and to go on that raid, so badly that it made his face twist into a gargoyle mask whenever he thought about it.

  He had even broken his solemn promise to himself never to ask Welsh for anything. He had asked Welsh outright. During a lull, of course; when nobody else was around to hear. He didn’t even ask for a gun. All he wanted was to go along. The darkbrowed sergeant had merely stared at him—stared with a deliberately feigned astonishment, while his black eyes kindled murderously.

  “Kid,” he said; “I want that sickbook with them three new malaria cases in five minutes. Flat.”

  That was all. Fife did not think he would forget the shame of it during the rest of his life. He did not believe even the terrible demands of combat could erase this brand. The thought of it made his flesh itch, still.

  During those two days while the event of major importance which was the gun raid was happening to the company, something of minor importance had happened to Fife. He had been visited by his second friend—second counting Bell, that is, Fife’s other friend. Though lately Fife was about ready to give up and stop counting Bell. This second friend of Fife’s was a man named Witt, and he had been transferred out of the company two months before the outfit sailed.

  This man Witt was a small, thin, Breathitt County Kentucky boy, an old Regular, a former Regimental boxer. He had been in C-for-Charlie several years. His transfer had been a fine object lesson to Fife, an interesting study of the ways in which armies worked.

  Shortly before its troops were hurled bodily into what was officially called Final Training Phase, a new company had been created in the Regiment. Existing first on paper as a directive from the War Department, and dreamed up for reasons largely technical and uninteresting to anyone not a student of tactics, this new unit was called the Cannon Company. There already was an Anti-Tank Company. But in addition to using its new type guns as antitank defense, Cannon Company was to be able to elevate them for use as artillery, and was to serve as a tiny artillery force within the Regiment, capable of putting heavy fire down quickly onto targets of platoon- or company-size.