From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [434]
It was five days before things were organized enough to allow the sending of a detail back to Schofield for the rest of their stuff, that they had not thought they’d need, and the Company’s quota of pyramidal tents. But even these didnt do the men at Makapuu any good since out there there werent any trees to set them up under.
Warden, armed with the request list of each man which altogether covered an entire pad of legal-size scratch paper, led the detail of three trucks. Pete Karelsen, who was the only man in the Company who had been anywhere near comfortable in the five days, was his second-in-command. They pulled into the quad with their three trucks to find another outfit already moved into the barracks and the footlockers and wall lockers of G company thoroughly rifled. Their lists were useless. Peter Karelsen, again, had been practically the only man in the Company who had bothered to lock either his foot-locker or wall locker that Sunday morning. But even Pete’s extra set of false teeth, which had been out on the table, were gone.
And, of course, none of the new tenants they talked to knew a damn thing about it.
Warden’s records and player were gone, also his $120 Brooks Bros. suit, saddle-stitched Forstmann jacket, and the white dinner jacket and tux pants he had bought but never worn yet, together with all of his uniforms. Also, the brand new $260 electric guitar, still less than half paid for, that Andy and Friday had bought while Prew was in the Stockade, was gone too, speaker jackplug and all.
If it had not been for 1st/Sgt Dedrick of A Company, who was about his size and had remembered to lock his wall locker, he would not have even been able to scare up two whole field uniforms. Just about the only thing that had been left untouched were the folded pyramidal tents in the supply room.
By the end of the seventh day, when they had got the tents back downtown and distributed out to the positions and set up ready to occupy, every man on the Company roster—including the two men serving time in the Stockade who had been released with the rest of the prisoners—had shown up and reported for duty. With the single exception of Prewitt.
Chapter 51
PREWITT SLEPT THROUGH the entire attack. He had gotten even drunker than usual the night before while the girls were at work because Saturday night is always supposed to be holiday. He did not even find out there had been an attack, until the insistently dynamic voice from the radio talking on and on tensely finally beat a hole through the thick, very dry, dehydrated hangover in his mouth that, even while still asleep, he knew was there and did not want to wake up to.
He sat up on the divan in his shorts, (since he had moved out on the divan he had taken to sleeping in shorts for the sake of modesty,) and saw them both crouching before the radio in their dressing gowns tensely.
“I was just going to call you!” Alma said excitedly.
“Call me for what?” The strongest thought in the dry eye-ache that was his mind was to head immediately to the kitchen for water.
“. . . but the damage inflicted upon Pearl Harbor itself was by far the most serious,” the radio said. “Hardly a building appears to be left standing undamaged. At least one of the battleships that were resting in harbor is sunk to the shallow bottom with its superstructure awash in the still flaming oil-covered waters. Most of the high altitude bombers were concentrated there and upon Hickam Field right across the channel. Next to Pearl Harbor itself, Hickam Field appears to have suffered the worst damage.”
“Its Webley Edwards,” Georgette said.
“He’s broadcasting back to the Mainland,” Alma said.
“Either a very large bomb, or else a torpedo,” the radio said, “was dropped into the main messhall of the new Hickam Field barracks where four hundred of our unsuspecting airmen were seated at breakfast.”
Prew knew what it was by this time, but h