The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [77]
Tag ends of the battle spouted for a few days, and there were many local fire fights and patrol clashes, but the General, with what Hearn had to admit was unerring instinct, had cut through the subsidiary clashes, the confusing and contradictory patrol reports, to understand that the battle as far as Toyaku was concerned was over after his smash at the middle of the line had been absorbed. The General spent the next day in re-establishing the hole in his lines, and diverting again his reserve to its work on the road. Two or three days later, after a lot of patrol activity, he made an unopposed advance of over a mile, which brought his front elements within a few thousand yards of the Toyaku Line. He estimated it would take him another two weeks to bring the road up to his front, and in another week the Toyaku Line should be breached. He was exceptionally easy to get along with the week after the battle, and as a symptom of that, he was continually feeding Hearn his private military maxims. "Toyaku's through in an offensive sense," he told Hearn. "When the over-all strategy of your campaign is defensive you can figure on losing about a fifth of your force in counteroffensives, and then you've just got to dig in. Toyaku frittered it away. The Japanese brood their way through campaigns; they sit around restless until the tension gets too great and then they erupt. It's a fascinating paradox. They have that game of theirs, go, which is all feverish activity, all turning of flanks, and encirclements, and then when they fight they act like wounded animals who roar down clumsily when the flies become too goading. It's not the way to work it. In an army whenever you have unnecessary precautions, men guarding sectors which don't demand it, or being idle for some other reason than that they need the rest, then you've acted immorally as a commander. The less duplication, the less wasted effort, the greater it follows will be the pressure you exert on your opponent. And the greater will be the opportunities that arise for you."
As a corollary of this, he had set his headquarters troops to rebuilding their bivouac two days after the battle. The tents went up again, the gravel walks in the officers' portion of the bivouac were filled in again, and the General's own tent had a floor of duckboards. Officers' mess in this bivouac had a better location, but after the storm it was improved even more with secondary bamboo ridgepoles which held the sides straight. A consignment of fresh meat came in, and headquarters company's ration of it was divided equally. One half went to the one hundred and eighty enlisted men in the bivouac at the time, and the other half went to the thirty-eight officers in officers' mess. The General's electric refrigerator was uncrated, and was fed from the gasoline generator that created all the electric power for the bivouac.
Hearn was disgusted. And once again he was bothered by one of the minor enigmas about the General. The meat business had been a flagrant injustice, one which Hobart as the G-4 in command of assigning supplies would be quite capable of committing, but Hobart had not been responsible. Hearn had been in the General's tent when Hobart had come up with a grin and told Cummings that some fresh meat had come. The General had shrugged and then given some unmistakable suggestions on how it should be divided. It was incredible. The General with his undeniable perception must have known what the effect would be on the enlisted men, and yet he had disregarded the resentments it would cause. It could not have been to satisfy his belly, for Hearn watched him pick tastelessly at the fresh meat during the meals that followed, and he almost always left his plate half filled. Nor could it have been from habit; the General was quite aware of what he was doing. He considered it effective. After Hobart had left, the General had looked at Hearn blankly, his great pale eyes quite expressionless, and then unaccountably he had winked. "Have to keep you happy, Robert. Perhaps if the meals are better you won't be indulging your temper so much."