From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [55]
Dynamite could be seen moving around the Post with sagging shoulders and an irritated brow and it was rumored that he would be shipped down, relieved from boxing, and for the first time in several years G Company had two court martials in a single month and sent two men to the Stockade.
But in the big octagonal hole in the ground with its serrated scalloped concrete sides it was not important, to the spectators, who was fighting, or who would win. It was only important that the winy air and excitement of anticipated conflict be enjoyed, bringing back the distant continent of home where all the grave young highschool athletes who, despite their coaches with their turned-up topcoat collars and conflicting visions of Knute Rockne movies and jobs they feared to risk, fought frantically with the magnificent foolishness of youth as if the whole of life depended on this game, and who were still young enough to cry over a defeat, an illusion that their coaches never shared, a thing that like Santa Claus they themselves would lose all too soon before the widening range of vision and the knowledge that their loyalty was a commodity and could be shifted easily, and a thing that the men who perched on the concrete of the Boxing Bowl remembered fondly in their own hunger for a return to innocence.
The Regiment did not suffer over its defeat near as much as Dynamite, or as much as Dynamite thought it did. Its loyalties had been shifted from one outfit to another too many times, and its depression lasted exactly the time it took to walk home from the Bowl and get a small change crapgame started in the latrine. The bright light of the boxing squad faded rapidly. Payday was much nearer than next year’s season, and there were rumors that half the houses between River Street and Nuuana Avenue had got in shipments of new girls.
But if the honor of the Regiment had no other exponent except Dynamite, it had a great one there. After his interview with Col Delbert and the securing of his borderline reprieve, he collected his charts and maps and began the planning of next year’s campaign which was to be the greatest yet, and would bring the trophy back where it belonged. “It shall return,” he said, and even before the last Smoker had been played out he had begun to make his overlays and gather up his forces.
No Jeb Stuart, for his Pennsylvania raid, ever picked his personnel more carefully; no U.S. Grant, on this move against Jackson, ever deduced the counter movements of his foe more shrewdly; no Blackjack Pershing, in his fight for an American Army in France, ever played his politics more staunchly. And in addition, Dynamite Holmes ran his company, too. He even took care personally of the transfers that he needed.
Milt Warden was standing in the corridor doorway when Holmes loosed the thunderbolt of the transfer of the cook, Stark, from Ft. Kamehameha. It was raining hard that day and from the doorway he watched his commander come striding through the silver curtain, oblivious of the muddy quad, his tailored belted topcoat with its collar up around his ears flapping soddenly, but still smartly, around his booted legs, and shamefully there was none of the traditional, cheerful adoration in The Warden’s heart. Something about the striding figure told him this was not a routine trip to see that everything was running right and he was afflicted with a sense of foreboding ill.
“Boots and saddles,” he sneered out loud defiantly, but not loud enough for Holmes to hear, and turned his back upon the coming Captain and went inside, to prove his independence to himself.
“I want these fixed up right away,” Holmes said, coming