From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [363]
It had been a very long time in Robert E Lee Prewitt’s life since any individual had impressed himself upon it as much as Angelo Maggio, if you did not count Jack Malloy and The Warden. But while both of these, each in his totally different way, were superior beings of another grade that moved on another orbit, Angelo Maggio—first American-born generation of Brooklyn immigrant Italian stock, absolute hater of the Army; the total opposite of a mountain boy and thirty-year-man soldier whose white ancestors had come from Scotland and England before the Revolution, and still hated foreigners—Angelo Maggio was more nearly his own kind and caliber and closer to him than the big guns like Malloy and Warden. He left a very large hole.
That he would never see or hear from him again, once he was discharged, he accepted without question; that was the way it was, in the Army, where alliances are formed out of the stock in hand today. And that he would be discharged, he accepted as unquestionably as the fact that he would not get to see him either before he went in the Black Hole or after, when he was transferred to the Station Hospital nut ward. There were only two alternatives: either Angelo would die in the Black Hole, or else he would be discharged. Knowing Angelo, Prew did not believe he would die in the Hole. But neither the knowledge of what was to come, nor the acceptance of it, helped to fill up the hole.
Prew followed the fortunes of the engagement from the sidelines of Barrack Number Two with an openly frank anxiety that would have embarrassed him at any other time, and it was during those weeks that Jack Malloy without being asked came up and stood behind him.
Actually, Maggio was not in the Black Hole for thirty days. But outside of that, the plan of battle he had laid out was correct. He had only been in the Hole a few hours over twenty-four days, when they pulled him out and sent him up to the prison ward in the Station Hospital for mental observation. It was the guard Pfc Hanson who kept them informed of the progress of the contest. Hanson was usually the lockup man for Number Two after evening chow, and almost every evening he would pass on what had taken place during the day and the night before. Outside of that, they knew nothing, and Angelo Maggio might as well have passed clear out of existence for all they knew. No word from Maggio himself ever reached them out of the dark depths of the Black Hole.
Hanson did not know or even guess at the calculated plan behind the action. Hanson really believed Maggio had gone crazy. It did not decrease his admiration for The Wop.
“You ought to see him,” he would tell them, as he locked the barred doors on the crowd gathered to hear the news. “He’s terrific. You’d have to see it to believe it. Boy, if thats crazy, its a pity there aint more madmen in the world.
“He’s the first one they’ve had since I’ve been here,” he explained. “I’ve heard them talk about the old ones, but this is the first one I’ve ever really seen. You were here when one of the old ones was in the mill, werent you, Jack?”
“Two,” Malloy said. “Both of them during my first stretch.”
“Well, this is my first one,” Hanson said, shaking his head again in admiration, “and boy, its really an experience. Its unbelievable, thats all. You cant tell me any man gets guts like that just from going crazy, any more than he can get it from a bottle. Guts like that is born in a guy, he’s either got them or he aint, and thats all.”
“I think I’d agree with you,” Malloy said.
“Its a shame the Army has to part with guts like that,” Hanson said. “Guts like that is what Armies needs the most.