From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [427]
Other men, the ones who had slept through breakfast and were now getting up tousle-headed and wide-eyed, stopped dressing and looked hopefully to see what he’d say.
“Get into field uniforms,” Warden said, realizing he had to say something. “Start rolling full field packs,” he told them ruthlessly in an iron voice. “We’re moving out in fifteen minutes. Full field equipment.”
Several men threw their rifles on their beds disgustedly.
“Then what the hell’re you doin with a BAR?” somebody hollered.
“Field uniforms,” Warden said pitilessly, and went on across the squadroom. “Full field equipment. Squad leaders, get them moving.”
Disgustedly, the squad leaders began to harangue them to work.
In the far doorway onto the outside porch Warden stopped. In the corner under an empty bunk that had three extra mattresses piled on it, S/Sgt Turp Thornhill from Mississippi lay on the cement floor in his underwear with his helmet on hugging his empty rifle.
“You’ll catch a cold Turp,” Warden said.
“Dont go out there, First Sergeant!” Turp pleaded. “You’ll be killed! They shootin it up! You’ll be dead! You’ll not be alive any more! Dont go out there!”
“You better put your pants on,” Warden said.
In his room on the porch splinters of broken glass lay all over Warden’s floor, and a line of bullet holes was stitched across the top of his foot-locker and up the side of Pete’s locker and across its top. Under Pete’s locker was a puddle and the smell of whiskey fumes was strong in the air. Cursing savagely, Warden unlocked his footlocker and flung back the lid. A book in the tray had a slanting hole drilled right through its center. His plastic razor box was smashed and the steel safety razor bent almost double. Savagely he jerked the tray out and threw it on the floor. In the bottom of the locker two .30 caliber bullets were nestled in the padding of rolled socks and stacked underwear, one on either side of the brown quart bottle.
The bottle was safe.
Warden dropped the two bullets into his pocket and got the unbroken bottle out tenderly and looked in his wall locker to make sure his recordplayer and records were safe. Then he hit the floor in the broken glass, holding the bottle carefully and under him, as another plane went over going east over the quad.
As he beat it back out through the squadroom the men were beginning bitterly to roll full field packs. All except Turp Thornhill, who was still under the bunk and four mattresses in his helmet and underwear; and Private Ike Galovitch, who was lying on top his bunk with his rifle along his side and his head under his pillow.
On the empty second floor, from which men were hurriedly carrying their full field equipment downstairs to roll into packs, at the south end of the porch by the latrine Readall Treadwell was going up the ladder in the latrine-supplies closet to the roof hatch carrying a BAR and grinning from ear to ear.
“First time in my goddam life,” he yelled down; “I’m really goin to git to shoot a BAR, by god. I wount never of believe it.”
He disappeared through the hatch and Warden followed him on up, and out into the open. Across G Company’s section of roof most of G Company’s first-three-graders were waiting to meet the enemy from behind one of the four chimneys, or else down on their knees in one of the corners, the BAR forearms propped on the crotch-high wall, or a chimney top, their muzzles looking eagerly into the sky, and their bottles of whiskey sitting beside them close up against the wall. Reedy Treadwell, who did not have a bottle, was just dropping down happily beside Chief Choate, who did. Two of the first-three-graders had hopped across the wall onto F Company’s roof and were standing behind two of their chimneys. A knot of first-three-graders from F Co were just coming up through their own hatch. They crossed the roof and began to argue violently with the two first-three-graders from G Co, demanding their chimneys. All down the 2nd Battalion roof, and on the 1st and 3rd Battalion roofs, first-three-graders were coming up through the hatches eagerly with BARs, rifles, pistols, and here and there a single MG. There were a few buck sergeants visible among them, but the only privates visible anywhere were Readall Treadwell and the two other BAR men from GCo.
“Throw your empty clips down into the Compny Yard,” Warden hollered as h