The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [8]
"And in the middle of all that, Croft stands up in their rubber boat, and he says, 'Why, you ornery sonofabitch, give me that gun.' Billings gives it to him, and Croft stands up in plain sight of all those Japs on the beach, fires the gun twice, and then loads it."
Stanley shook his head in commiseration. "That Croft is quite a guy," he said.
"Quite a guy! Listen, he's made of iron. He's the one man I'd never cross. He's probably the best platoon sergeant in the Army and the meanest. He just doesn't have any nerves," Brown said bitterly. "Out of all the old guys in recon, there ain't one of us whose nerves ain't shot. I tell ya, I'm scared all the time, and Red is too. And Gallagher, he's only been with us six months but he was in on the rubber boat deal and he counts too I suppose, he's scared, and Martinez is the best little scout you could ever want but he's even more scared than I am, and even Wilson although he don't let on much is none too happy. But Croft -- I tell you Croft loves combat, he loves it. There ain't a worse man you could be under or a better one, depending on how you look at it. We lost eleven guys out of seventeen in the platoon, counting the Lieutenant we had then, some of the best guys in the world and the rest of us weren't good for anything for a week, but Croft asked for a patrol the next day, and they assigned him to A Company on TDY until you and Ridges and Toglio came in as replacements and we had enough men to make up a squad."
By now, Stanley was interested in only a facet of this. "Do you think we'll get enough replacements to fill out the platoon?" he asked.
"As far as I'm concerned," Brown said, "I hope we never get the replacements. Until then, we're just an odd squad, but if we ever get up to T/O we'll still only be two squads of a lousy eight men apiece. That's the trouble with being in an I and R platoon, you're just those two undersize cavalry squads, and they send you out on missions where you really need an honest-to-God infantry platoon."
"Yeah, and we get screwed on the ratings too," Stanley said. "In any other platoon in the regiment you and Martinez would be staffs, and Croft would be a tech."
Brown grinned. "I don't know, Stanley," he said, "if we get the replacements, there's still a corporal open. You wouldn't sneeze at that, now would you?"
Despite all his efforts, Stanley felt himself reddening. "Ah, hell," he muttered, "who am I to be thinking of that?"
Brown laughed softly. "Well, it's something to think about."
Furiously, Stanley told himself that he would have to be more careful with Brown in the future.
A psychologist in a famous experiment rang a bell every time he gave food to a dog. Naturally, the dog's saliva flowed at the sight of the food.
After a time the psychologist took away the food, but continued to ring the bell. The dog kept on salivating to the sound of it. The psychologist went one step further: he took away the bell and substituted many kinds of loud noises. The saliva continued to form in the dog's mouth.
There was a soldier on the ship who was like the dog. He had been overseas for a long time, and he had seen a great deal of combat. At first the sound of a shell and the impact it made were very much connected to the fear he felt. But after many months, he had known too much terror, and by now any sudden sound would cause him panic.
All this night he had been lying in his bunk and shuddering at the sound of quick loud voices, or at a change in the throbbing of the ship's engines, or at the noise of a piece of equipment when someone kicked it along the floor. His nerves were pitched tauter than he could ever remember, and he lay sweating in his bunk, thinking with dread of the morning to come.
The soldier's name was Sergeant Julio Martinez, and he was the scout of the I and R platoon of headquarters company of the 460th Infantry Regiment.
2
At 0400, a few minutes after the false dawn had lapsed, the naval bombardment of Anopopei began. All the guns of the invasion fleet went off within two seconds of each other, and the night rocked and shuddered like a great log foundering in the surf. The ships snapped and rolled from the discharge, lashing the water furiously. For one instant the night was jagged and immense, demoniac in its convulsion.