From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [436]
“I was asleep,” Prew said dully. “I dint even wake up.”
“Neither did we,” Georgette said excitedly. “We didnt even know about it. I just happened to turn the radio on.”
“And I was asleep,” Prew said. “Sound asleep.” He poured another drink from the bottle in his left hand into the glass in his right hand and swallowed it off. His head was completely clear now; his head was clear as a bell.
“Those goddam fuckin Germans!” he said.
“What Germans?” Georgette said.
“Them,” he said, pointing with the glass to the radio.
“I have stood in the wards of Tripler General, the Army’s new modern hospital here,” the radio said, “and watched them bringing them in, some in full uniform, some in their underwear, some in nothing at all, all of them horribly wounded, horribly burned.”
“What about Schofield?” Prew demanded rigidly. “What did he say about Schofield?”
“Nothing,” Georgette said. “Aint even mentioned it. Wheeler Field was bombed, and Bellows Field, and the Kaneohe Naval Air Base, and the Marine Base at Ewa. And Hickam and Pearl Harbor; they got the worst.”
“But what about Schofield?” Prew said. “What about Schofield, goddam it?”
“He hasnt even mentioned it, Prew,” Alma said soothingly.
“Not a tall?”
“She told you no,” Alma said.
“Then they must not of bombed it,” he said relievedly. “He would of mentioned it. They probly only strafed it a little. Thats what they would do,” he said. “They would be after the airfields. Thats what they’d be after. Of course they wouldnt bomb Schofield.”
“Tripler General is a large hospital,” the radio said, “equipped with every convenience and every modern device of medical science, but it was not designed to handle such an inconceivable catastrophe as this. There is not room for even a small percentage of the casualties I saw brought in, some of them already dead and dying on their improvised stretchers in the halls and corridors simply because there was neither the room nor the trained personnel to take care of their numbers. Yet nowhere in the whole hospital was there so much as a single whimper of pain, a single complaint. Here and there some terribly mangled lad of nineteen or twenty, his hair and eyebrows and lashes burned completely off, would say to the doctors when they got to him: ‘Take care of my buddy here first, Doc; he’s hurt lots worse than I am.’ But all else was silence. An accusative silence. An angry silence.”
“The dirty bastards,” Prew said dully. He was weeping. “Oh, the dirty bastards. Those motherfucking babyraping dirty German bastards.” He reached up with the hand holding the bottle and wiped off his nose with the back of his hand and poured another drink from the bottle into the glass.
“It was the Japs,” Georgette said. “The Japs. The dirty yellow-bellied little Japs. They sneaked in without warning and made a cowardly attack while their decoys was still in Washington crying peace.”
“It has been,” the radio said, “a tremendously uplifting spiritual experience to me, to see the manliness with which these boys are enduring their sufferings, it has richened and deepened my faith in a form of government that can produce heroes like these, not in tens and twenties, but in hundreds and thousands, and I only wish I could have taken every American citizen into the wards of Tripler General with me, to see what I have seen.”
“Is that Webley Edwards?” Prew said, weeping.
“We think so,” Alma said.
“It must be,” Georgette said. “It sounds like him.”
“Well, he’s a great guy,” Prew said. He gulped down his drink and refilled the glass. “A great guy, thats all.”
“You’d better lay off that liquor a little,” Alma said uneasily. “Its still early yet.”
“Early?” Prew said. “Early! Oh, those dirty bastardly Germans. What the hell difference,” he hollered, and paused, “does it make? If I get drunk. I cant go back, can I? What the he’ll difference, I’d like to know? Lets all get drunk.
“Oh,” he said. “Oh, goddam them, goddam them.”
“The total extent of the damage,” the radio said, “is of course entirely unknown at the present time, and will probably be unknown for so