From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [486]
“Mother,” her son said from behind her. “I’m hungry. When do we eat on this old boat?”
“Pretty soon now,” she said.
“Mother, do you think the war will last long enough so I can graduate from the Point and be in it? Jerry Wilcox said it wouldnt.”
“No,” she said, “I dont think it’ll last that long.”
“Well, gee whiz, mother,” her son said, “I want to be in it.”
“Well, cheer up,” Karen said, “and dont let it worry you. You may miss this one, but you’ll be just the right age for the next one.”
“You really think so, mother?” her son said anxiously.
THE RE-ENLISTMENT BLUES
Got paid out on Monday
Not a dog soljer no more
They gimme all that money
So much my pockets is sore
More dough than I can use. Re-enlistment Blues.
Took my ghelt to town on Tuesday
Got a room and a big double bed
Find a job tomorrow
Tonight you may be dead
Aint no time to lose. Re-enlistment Blues.
Hit the bars on Wednesday
My friends put me up on a throne
Found a hapa-Chinee baby
Swore she never would leave me alone
Did I give her a bruise? Re-enlistment Blues!
Woke up sick on Thursday
Feelin like my head took a dare
Looked down at my trousers
All my pockets was bare
That gal had blown my fuse. Re-enlistment Blues.
Went back around on Friday
Asked for a free glass of beer
My friends had disappeared
Barman say, “Take off, you queer!”
What I done then aint news. Re-enlistment Blues.
That jail was cold all Sa’day
Standin’ up on a bench lookin down
Through them bars I watched the people
All happy and out on the town
Looked like time for me to choose, them Re-enlistment Blues.
Slep in the park that Sunday
Seen all the folks goin to church
Your belly feels so empty
When you’re left in the lurch
Dog soljers dont own pews. Re-enlistment Blues.
So I re-upped on Monday
A little sad and sick at my heart
All my fine plans was with my money
In the poke of a scheming tart
Guy always seems to lose. Re-enlistment Blues.
So you short-timers, let me tell you
Dont get yourself throwed in the can
You might as well be dead
Or a Thirty-Year-Man
Recruitin crews give me the blues,
Old Re-enlistment Blues.
Acknowledgment
LOOKING BACK, IT SEEMS to me now that the writing of this book was a collective enterprise. This is a rather startling development. If someone had suggested such a thought to me a couple of years ago when it was somewhat less than half completed, he would have been met with such a vehement attack of denial that he would have been forced to retire in embarrassment. Nevertheless, it is true.
Grateful acknowledgment is here tendered to the late Mr. Maxwell E. Perkins, for his help in even getting it started and his aid in keeping it going up to the time of his death; to Mr. John Hall Wheelock, for his periodic injections of encouragement and his help in editing it; to Mr. Burroughs Mitchell, for his sweating of it out over a period of almost three years without the slightest whimper and his fine work of editing; and to Mr. & Mrs. Harry E. Handy of Robinson, Illinois, without whose initial impetus I would never have started out to be a writer at all, and whose material and spiritual expenses over a period of seven years provided me with necessary nourishment.
Without all of these people this book would never have been written.
Afterword
Publishing History
“I HAVE ALWAYS WANTED to do a novel on the peacetime army,” James Jones wrote his editor, Maxwell Perkins, on February 10, 1946. Jones had resubmitted the manuscript of his novel They Shall Inherit the Laughter on January 17, 1946, and was impatient to learn the decision of the publishing house, Scribner’s. He perhaps had a premonition that the manuscript would not be accepted, for he sketched out several novels he was thinking of writing, including the one that became From Here to Eternity:
I want this protagonist to be: (Stewart is an old friend in the army, Wendson is a former 1st/Sgt of mine. I would use both in the same company.) ‘Draw Stewart’s life in army, his intense personal pride, his si