From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [311]
He remembered suddenly, with a strange sense of disbelief, that there were people living on the Outside who did not even know this other world really did exist, except in the movies. But there was always a Skid Row, somewhere, in every town, where the great dividing line between the Guilty and the Innocent melted away before the one real immediate need, Mutual Defense. In France we called it the Underground, which was a heroic term. Here we called it the Underworld, and gave it a different connotation. But it was the same world, and the same kind of people, and with the same purpose. He had almost forgotten all of it, in the last five years, but he was beginning to get the feel of it again.
He had already had his first taste of the daily inspections.
In one way, to an old jailbird like him who had lived on the bum so long, it was almost like coming home.
First Call was at 0430 hours in the Stockade. Breakfast was at 0530 hours. The inspection started at 0600 hours and usually lasted till seven.
They inspected unarmed, Major Thompson and S/Sgt Judson, carrying their grub hoe handles loosely in their right hands just after of the balance as they moved down the line, S/Sgt Judson always just two paces in the rear. Major Thompson also carried his plumb bob and the white cloth dressglove he used for dust. It was the first dressglove Prew had seen since Myer, in the Old Army. S/Sgt Judson carried the demerit notebook and a pencil. That was all they carried, but there were two giants armed with riotguns at port arms and also wearing pistols standing just inside the locked double doors that a third riotgun-and-pistoled giant standing outside held the key to.
That first day there were only three men in the west barrack to get demerits. The almost weird versatility, speed, and accuracy of a grub hoe handle administering a demerit in the hands of these experts made Pfc Hanson look like a rank amateur. Berry had been right: Fatso was good with one. So was Major Thompson. And you had to admire their skill.
The first of the three men had his right foot an inch or so out of line. Major Thompson pointed to it with his grub hoe handle in passing and went on around the bunk to inspect the man’s equipment without looking back. The man tried frantically, during an infinite second to retrieve the offender but S/Sgt Judson, two paces in the Major’s rear, had already raised his grub hoe handle and reversed his grip in midair without breaking stride or stopping and said “Dress it up” and brought the square-sawed headend down sharply on the foot like a man driving down the piston of a churn, and went on around the bunk behind the Major without looking back before he stopped and entered the demerit in his notebook. The man’s face went white with a grimace of outraged affront at both himself and his goddamned stupid foot, and Prew had to smother the same tickling impulse to laugh out loud that you get when you have just watched the look of surprise on the face of a man who has just slipped on a banana peel and broken his hip. The man’s equipment passed the inspection perfectly and the Major and S/Sgt Judson went on down the line without looking back.
The second man had a belly which was out of line. He was a fat man from the 8th Field, a former cook, and he really had an unusual belly. Major Thompson, as he passed him going back up the other side some fifteen minutes later, raised his arm and drove the butt of his grub hoe handle backhand into the belly and said “Suck it in” without stopping to look back. Instead of sucking it in as he was told, the fat man, still staring straight ahead as if he had not had time yet to be surprised, grunted protestingly and raised both hands to his belly tenderly, and S/Sgt Judson, moving two paces in the Major’s rear, raised his own grub hoe handle and rapped the fat man across the shins as he came up abreast and said “You’re at attention, Prisoner. Suck it in” and went on around the bunk to the Major before he stopped and entered the demerit in his notebook. The fat man, like a runner caught off base flatfooted, still without time yet to think of moving his head, dropped his hands as if he were trying to throw them away. Still staring straight ahead, his fat lips began to quiver and two single trickles of tears began to run down out of his eyes into the corners of his mouth so that, watching him, Prew felt so painfully embarrassed he had to look away. By this time the Major and S/Sgt Judson were already three beds away.
The third man, a thin