From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [406]
Warden could teach him a lot, he said, if he wanted to, during these next two months before his commission came through.
That was true, Warden agreed, aware that this was only a holding action. If Prewitt didnt come back, it wouldnt mean anything. What he was hoping was that the maneuvers would bring him in. Prewitt would know about the maneuvers; everybody in Hawaii always knew about maneuvers. On an island the size of Wahoo the annual maneuvers were almost as much of a territorial holiday as the Army Field Day in April. Truck convoys moved through town stopping traffic, and details set up machineguns at all the important civic installations, and other details laid road blocks on all the highways, and the bars in town always did a land office business. An old soldier snorts over maneuvers like an old firehorse snorts over a dry-run fire.
Warden went about setting up his CP at Hanauma Bay and waited, wondering why it was he was bothering so much about a common fuckup. Maybe he was losing his touch. He was getting as sentimental as Dynamite Holmes. He must be, to go out of his way to try and save the neck of a man he had called clean for a fuckup the first day he came in the Company.
Yet somehow there was something else. Prewitt seemed to hold the key to something. He felt if he could save Prewitt he would be saving something else. A something that if it was saved would provide the justification for still something else. Prewitt had become a symbol to him of something. When he did not show as the days passed and Lt Ross’s good-humored leniency got thinner and thinner, Warden found himself taking it almost as hard as if it really meant something to him personally.
Probly its because you feel guilty about becoming an officer, he told himself. Probly thats all it is.
He decided he was staying away because he still thought they were looking for him for Fatso. That must be the reason. But how to get word to him that that was blown over? You couldnt, unless you knew where he was. And you couldnt look for him, not with the maneuvers on and you out in the field.
The maneuvers started out to be pretty much the same as last year, and the year before that. It was the same old stuff. They moved out in the trucks to the beach and set up the MGs according to the Defense Plan and settled down to wait till they were called into action. G Company’s sector of beach ran from Sand Island in Honolulu Harbor east clear to Makapuu Point and included Waikiki Beach and the estates along Black Point and Maunalua Bay. It was one of the choicest sectors on the rock; Waikiki had the best bars on the rock and the Black Point estates had the most wahine maids, and most of the maids had their living quarters right there on the estates. But since the whole Company knew they would be pulled off and relieved by the Coast Artillery as soon as the reds landed they did not get very excited.
This year the master plan was built around the landing of an enemy assault force at Kawela Bay on the north end of the island. The 27th and 35th with the 8th Field were the red attacking forces; the 19th and 21st, together with the rest of the Field Artillery and all the Coast Artillery, were the white defensive forces. The reds landed the third day. At the very least it took two days to lay the groundwork with even the most amenable wahine maids. G Company, instead of laying groundwork, made a 35-mile forced march up Kamehameha Highway through Wahiawa to Waialua where it made rendezvous with the Regiment and took up defense positions. They dug slit trenches all the next day and the day after were picked up by trucks and carried around by back roads in the dust to the other side of the island while another outfit took over their slit trenches. At Hauula, five miles below Kahuku where the main white line rested, they went into reserve. In an open field with no shade they dug more slit trenches and set up a bivouac that could have passed, and did pass, a regular full field inspection. They stayed there the rest of the two weeks and did nothing. It was the same old stuff. A typical maneuvers. They played cards and talked about how they wished they were back on the beach positions and compared notes on wahine maids and waited till word came that the battle was all over and the enemy all repulsed or captured and they broke camp and piled into the trucks to go home where, if there was not a plethora of wahine maids, there were at least showers.
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