From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [25]
“I’ve done straight duty before, Sir,” Prew said. “In the Infantry. I dont mind doing it again.” You fucking liar, he told himself, like hell you do not mind it. How is it that people make you lie so easily?
“Well,” Holmes said, pausing for the effect, “it looks as though you’ll get a chance to do it.” But he was no longer jocular. “You’re not a recruit and you should know that in the Army its not the individual that counts. Every man has certain responsibilities to fulfill. Moral responsibilities that go beyond the ARs’ regulations. It might look as though I were a free agent, but I’m not. No matter how high you get there is always somebody over you, and who knows more about it all than you do.
“Sergeant Warden will take care of you and get you assigned to a squad.” Nothing more was said about the Company bugler’s job. He turned to Warden. “Is there anything else for me to take care of today, Sergeant?”
“Yes, Sir,” Warden, who had been listening to this abstract conversation, said violently. “The Compny Fund Report has got to be checked and made out. Its due tomorrow morning.”
“You make it out,” Holmes said, undisturbed by the regulation that says no one but an officer may touch the Company Fund. “Fix it up and I’ll be in early tomorrow to sign it. I havent time to bother with details. Is that all?”
“No, Sir,” Warden said vehemently.
“Well, whatever it is, you fix it. If theres anything that has to go in this afternoon, sign my name. I wont be back.” He looked at Warden angrily and turned back to the door, ignoring Prewitt.
“Yes, Sir,” Warden raged. “Ten-nsh-HUT!” he bawled, bellowing it at the top of his lungs in the smallness of the room.
“Carry on,” Holmes said. He touched his crop to hat brim and disappeared. A moment later his voice came in the open window.
“Sergeant Warden!”
“Yes, Sir!” Warden bellowed, jumping to the window.
“Whats the matter with this outfit? This place needs policing. Look there. And there. And over by the garbage rack. Is this a barracks or a pigpen? I want it policed up! Immediately!”
“Yes, Sir!” bellowed Warden, “Maggio!”
Maggio’s gnomelike body bobbed up in its undershirt before the window. “Yesser.”
“Maggio,” said Capt Holmes. “Wheres your goddam fatigue blouse? Get your blouse and put it on. This is no goddamned bathing beach.”
“Yessir,” Maggio said. “I’ll get it, Sir.”
“Maggio,” Warden bellowed. “Get the other KPs and police the goddam area. Dint you hear what the Compny Commander said? It’s disgraceful. Disgraceful.”
“Okay, Sarge,” said Maggio resignedly.
Warden leaned his elbows on the sill and watched Holmes’s broad back move through the midst of Dog Company, called to attention by their duty sergeant. “Carry on,” Holmes thundered. After Holmes had passed, the blue-dressed figures sat back down to go on with their stoppage drill.
“The hell for leather Cavalryman,” Warden muttered. “Errol Flynn with fifty extra pounds.” He walked deliberately over to his desk and smashed his fist into his own rigidly blocked, flat-peaked issue hat hanging on the wall. “The son of a bitch’d try to ship me down if I bent up my hat like his.”
Back at the window, he watched Holmes climbing the outside stair to Regimental Hq, going up to Col Delbert’s office. Two aging men confabing with each other, leaders of men, patting each other on the back and looking frantically about to find someone to lead.
Warden had a theory about officers: Being an officer would make a sinner out of Christ himself. No man could swallow so much gaseous privilege and authority without having his guts inflated. The eager dewy-eyed young shavetails who left the Point prepared to become cavalier Jeb Stuarts, politician U.S. Grants, tragic R.E. Lees, fatherly Stonewall Jacksons, or Ramrod John J Pershings, heroes, each in his right, to the adoring populace who bought his plaster bust in all the 10¢ stores, had a choice of two developments. In every war there were two wars, the war for officers and the war of the enlisted man. And all the beardless shavet