The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [52]
"I promised Hutchins a reinforced platoon. I'm going to send up Pioneer and Demolition, but we'll have to add a squad to that from some other platoon."
"How about I and R, sir?"
"Fine, we'll give it to recon. Now, work out some march orders. Quickly, man!" He lit a cigarette and turned to Hearn. "I suggest you pick us up some cots, Lieutenant." Hearn was no bother to him at this moment.
In the battle that followed that night, Dalleson's suggestion to add a squad from recon to the pioneer and demolition platoon was the only contribution he made.
5
Roth dreamt that he was catching butterflies in a lovely green meadow when Minetta wakened him for guard. He grumbled and tried to go back to sleep, but Minetta kept shaking him. "All right, all right, I'm getting up," he whispered angrily. He rolled over, groaned a little, got on his hands and knees, and shook his head. "Three hours' guard tonight," he realized with dread. Morosely he began to put on his shoes.
Minetta was waiting for him in the machine-gun emplacement. "Jesus, it's spooky tonight," he whispered. "I thought I'd be on forever."
"Anything happen?"
Minetta gazed out at the black jungle before them. It was just possible to discern the barbed wire ten yards beyond the machine gun. "I thought I heard some Japs sneaking around," he muttered, "so keep your ears open."
Roth felt a sick fear. "Are you sure?"
"I dunno. The artillery's been going steady for the last half hour. I think there's a battle going on." He listened. "Wait!" A battery fired a few miles away with a hollow clanging sound. "I bet the Japs are attacking. Jesus, recon is gonna get caught right in the middle of it."
"I guess we're lucky," Roth said.
Minetta's voice was very low. "Yeah, I dunno. Being doubled up on guard ain't so good either. Wait, you'll see. Three hours on a night like this is enough to make you flip your lid. How do we know that the Japs won't break through, and before your shift is over they'll be attacking right here? We're only ten miles from the front. Maybe they'll have a patrol out here."
"This is serious," Roth said. He remembered the way Goldstein's face had looked when he was making his pack soon after the storm. Goldstein was up there now, seeing combat. Roth had an odd sensation. He might even be killed. Any of them -- Red, Gallagher, Sergeant Croft, Wyman, Toglio, or Martinez or Ridges or Wilson; they were all up there now, right in the middle of it. Any one of them could be gone by tomorrow. It was horrible the way a man could be killed. He wanted to tell Minetta some of this.
But Minetta yawned. "Jeez, I'm glad this is over." He started to go and then turned back. "You know who you wake up?"
"Sergeant Brown?"
"That's right. He's sleeping on a blanket with Stanley over there." Minetta indicated the direction vaguely.
Roth muttered, "Just five of us on this part of the perimeter. Think of it, five men having to hold down a whole platoon's part of the perimeter."
"That's what I mean," Minetta said. "We ain't getting any break. At least there's a lot of men where the first squad is." He yawned quietly. "Well, I'm going," he said.
Roth felt terribly alone after Minetta left him. He gazed into the jungle, and got into the hole behind the machine gun as silently as he could. Something like this was beyond him, he told himself; he didn't have the nerves for it. This took a younger man, a kid like Minetta or Polack, or one of the veterans.
He was sitting on two cartridge boxes, and the handles cut into his bony rump. He kept shifting his weight, and moving his feet about. The hole was very muddy from the evening storm, and everything about him felt damp. His clothes had been wet for hours, and he had had to spread his blankets on the wet ground. What a way to live! He would have a cold by morning, he was certain. He'd be lucky if it wasn't pneumonia.
Everything was very quiet. The jungle was hushed, ominous, with a commanding silence that stilled his breath. He waited, and abruptly the utter vacuum was broken and he was conscious of all the sounds of the night woods -- the crickets and frogs and lizards thrumming in the brush, the soughing of the trees. And then the sounds seemed to vanish, or rather his ear could hear only the silence; for several minutes there was a continual alternation between the sounds and the quiet, as if they were distinct and yet related like a drawing of some cubes which perpetually turn inside-out and back again. Roth began to think; there was some heavy thunder and lightning in the distance, but he did not worry about the threat of rain. For a long time he listened to the artillery, which sounded like a great muffled bell in the heavy moist night air. He shivered and crossed his arms. He was remembering what a training sergeant had said about dirty fighting and how the Japs would sneak up behind a sentry in the jungle and knife the man. "He'd never know at all," the sergeant had said, "except maybe for one little second when it was too late."