Astonished, Chuckler and I withdrew to the nearby battery of Long Toms to take counsel. We looked at each other and exploded in delighted anticipation of the discomfiture of the Eighth Marines.
We made our plan: I was to enter the jungle to cut my way up to the rear of the bigger tent. I would have both of our packs. After fifteen minutes, Chuckler was to stroll back to the PX clearing to engage the guards in conversation. The moment I heard voices, I was to cut my way into the tent, fill the packs and carry them back into the jungle.
The cool murk of the jungle was to my liking, as I began to creep toward the tent. My stiletto was very sharp and I had no difficulty sawing through the lianas and creepers blocking my path. It was the necessity for extreme caution that made my progress slow. I had to be careful not to disturb the birds or the crawling things, for fear they might betray me. I was sweating when I reached the rear of the tent; the handle of my knife was slippery. I heard voices and realized that I had been longer than had been anticipated.
A thrill shot through me at the touch of the hot coarse canvas. My stiletto slid through the drum-tight façade with an almost sensual glide, and in a moment I had cut an opening. It was close within the tent and the odor of creosote filled my nostrils. I had to widen the opening to let in light and air.
Cartons were stacked one upon another. I peered at the letters on their sides; they were mostly cigarettes; it was a joke, there were plenty of cigarettes on Guadalcanal. But there were other boxes and soon my sweat-soaked eyes fell upon a carton of filled cookies. Without another glance at the remaining cases, spurred by the rising and falling voices of Chuckler and the sentry, I bent to the task of transferring the contents of one carton into the packs.
Even as I worked I had to quell the greed rising within me: “Go on,” it said, “take more. Carry it out into the jungle by the boxful.” I hesitated, but then I decided to fit my larceny to my needs and resumed my work.
When I had filled one pack, I rose to draw a cautious breath and to listen for the voices. Chuckler’s deep laugh came floating through the canvas walls. I bent to the other pack, reassured. My eye fell upon a partially opened carton.
It contained boxes of cigars!
If cookies were worth their weight in gold on Guadalcanal, then cigars were worth theirs in platinum. In value, cigars could be surpassed only by whiskey, and there was no whiskey on Guadalcanal. Neither had there been cigars, until now. I had stumbled on what was probably the only store of them on the island!
I was for emptying my pack of the cookies, until I saw that there were but five boxes of cigars, which would just fit into the other pack. Quickly, I stuffed them in, and then, arranging one pack on my back and holding the other before me, I slipped from the heat and smell and tension of the tent into the cool and murk and relief of the jungle.
Covering the packs with branches, I rejoined Chuckler.
He grinned with delight when he saw me approaching.
“Hey, what the hell you doing down here,” he shouted. “I’ll bet you’re up to no good.” He nudged the sentry. “Better watch him. He’s one of them dead-end kids from Jersey. He’ll steal you blind.”
He grinned at me again and I could see the rash devil dancing in his eyes. But the guard thought it not hilarious and a certain nervous tightening of both mouth and rifle hand gave warning. That Chuckler! It was not enough that we should put our heads in the lion’s mouth, but we must tickle his throat as well!
My answering chuckle was a hollow thing, and after a few moments I had him by the arm and was leading him away.
“You crazy bastard,” I whispered, when we had got a safe distance from the sentry. “You want to tip him off?”
I shrugged hopelessly and we departed, to return softly about two hours later to retrieve our loot.
We came back to bask in the adulation of the Ridge. We shared the cookies with our buddies and kept the cigars for ourselves. For days afterward, our pits were visited by a stream of officers—and once even a major from the Marine air units—all seeking cigars; all smiling, now, at the jolly enlisted men; all full of fake camaraderie and falser promises.
We gave them none.
We knew that we were winning. We knew it from the moment the P-38’s—the Lightning fighters—appeared in our skies. They came in one day as we crouched in the ravine at chow. Pistol Pete had crashed his desultory shells not far from us, only a few minutes before. All of us braced for flight when we heard the roar of their motors and, looking up, saw the gladsome sight of their twin tails streaking over the jungle roof. We cheered wildly, and when Pistol Pete’s shells came screaming in again, we cursed him good-humoredly out of hope renewed.
Going back to the Ridge—where the others waited to be relieved for their turn at chow—it was necessary to pass the stream which served as our washtub. Two men—Souvenirs and his scouting partner, the red-beard who looked like hell’s Santa Claus—were washing there. They shouted at each other as they scrubbed their bodies. We stopped to listen, and Chuckler asked, “What the hell’s going on?”
Red Beard replied, “This simple tool thinks we’ve had it tougher here than the marines on Wake Island.” He glanced contemptuously at Souvenirs and then appealed to us—“How stupid can you get?”
“Whaddya mean stupid?” yelled Souvenirs. “Trouble with you old salts you figure nobody’s any good who came into the Corps after Pearl Harbor. How do you know about Wake, anyway? You weren’t there—and I still say it was a picnic compared to this place.”
Red Beard was aghast. Even as he turned to let Souvenirs soap his back, he shrieked at him in fury. “Picnic! Don’t talk like a man with a paper ass!”
“Aw, blow it … I’ll bet the newspapers say this place was twice as bad as Wake. How many times they get bombed there?”
“Who cares? How many of them are left?”
“They didn’t all get killed. Most of ‘em was taken prisoner. Did we ever surrender? Huh? How about that?”
Red Beard turned again, automatically reclaiming his soap from Souvenirs, hardly pausing to launch his counterattack.
“Don’t give me ’at bull about quitting. That’s all I ever hear you boots whining about. At Wake they said, ‘Send us more Japs.’ But you guys say, ‘When do we go home?’” His lip curled over his beard, and he raised his voice mockingly, “When does Mama’s boy go home to show the girls his pwitty boo uniform?”
So the battle raged, so it ended, as it always does, unresolved. The Marine Corps is a fermenter; it is divided into two distinct camps—the Old Salts and the Boots—who are forever warring: the Old Salt defending his past and his traditions against the furious assault of the Boot who is striving to exalt the Present at the expense of the Past, seeking to deflate the aplomb of the Old Salt by collapsing this puffed-up Past upon which it reposes. But the Boot will forever feel inferior to the Old Salt; he must always attack, for he has not the confidence of defense. The moment he ceases to slash at Tradition with the bright saber of present deeds, the instant he restrains that impetuous sword hand, trusting instead to the calm eye of appraisal—upon that change he passes over to the ranks of the Old Salts and ceases to be a Boot forever. Youth rebels and age conserves; between them, they advance. The Marines will cease to win battles the moment either camp achieves clear-cut ascendancy.
Awareness of this began to dawn upon me as we trudged back up the hill. I was grateful to Red Beard for having reminded us of the men at Wake, and I was confident that he, upon reflection, would lose some of his contempt for us.
We were back at the pits when Hoosier broke the silence: “You think Souvenirs was right—what he said about the papers? About Guadalcanal being famous?”
“Hell no!” Chuckler laughed. “I’ll bet we ain’t even made the papers.”
“Ah dunno, Chuckler,” the Hoosier said thoughtfully. “Ah kinda think he was right, m’self.” He turned to me. “Hey, Lucky—you think mebbe they’d give us a parade in New York?”
The answer ca
me quickly from Chuckler, his eyes glittering at the thought of it. “Saay! Wouldn’t that be something? That’s not a bad idea, Hoosier. Think of all them babes lining the street.” He paused, and the familiar expression of good-natured disdain returned. “Aw, forget it! You know they ain’t gonna give us no parade. They don’t even know we’re alive. Who the hell ever heard of Guadalcanal, anyway!”
“Ah’ll bet they have,” Hoosier returned, his calm bordering on the smug. “Ah’ll bet you we’re famous back home.”
“Well, I’ll bet you ain’t getting to parade in New York,” Chuckler came back. “If we’re that famous, if we’re that good—they’ll be using us for the next one. We’ll get to parade all right—right up Main Street, Rabaul!”
“You can say that again!” came the Runner’s gloomy second. He had been silent, biting a thumbnail to shreds. In an instant he had brightened at the thought of the parade and turned to me, speaking in a voice muffled by his munching, “Supposing they do give us a parade, where’d it be, Lucky—up Fifth Avenue?”
“No. You’re thinking of St. Patrick’s Day. That’s where the Irish parade. Probably it’d be up Broadway—from the Battery.”
“Battery!” the Hoosier exploded. “What they gonna do, charge us up?”
Chuckler nodded. “Everybody. Everybody’s gonna get charged up on good old New York firewater. Right, Lucky?”
“Right. Thirty-day leave for all hands.”
“And two babes for every man—one white and one dark.”
Hoosier broke in sulkily, “Ah ain’t gonna parade. The hell with ‘em. Ah ain’t paradin’ for nobody. Soon as we get off the ship Ah’m gonna break ranks and lose m’self in the crowd.”
“Wouldn’t that be something?” said the Runner excitedly. “Supposing we came off the ship and everybody broke ranks and melted into the crowd. They couldn’t find you in a New York crowd. We’d all be gobbled up. Everybody’d be drunk, and they couldn’t do anything to you. Everybody’d be drunk, even the officers.”
Everyone fell dreamily silent, a quiet that was finally broken by the wistful voice of Hoosier.
“Ah bet they do, Chuckler—Ah bet they give us a parade.”
Two changes had been wrought: the skies of Guadalcanal had become American, and mail was coming through steadily. Both events improved our humor; so it was that a great ripple of mirth ran over the Ridge upon the arrival of a letter from my father.
I read the letter squatting on the hillside, my buttocks just above the wet ground. A torrential rain had fallen, filling the holes and pits in what seemed but a moment, subsiding suddenly and succeeded by an astonishing swarm of antlike insects so thick that one had to close one’s eyes and shield one’s mouth from them. Their tiny carcasses covered the ground when they fell (it seemed that they lived but a minute after that rain) and so it was that I was careful not to soil my freshly washed pants in either mud or the myriad of dead insects.
“Robert (my father wrote), your blue uniform is ready. Shall I send it to you?”
Ah …
There came to mind, swiftly and sharply, a set of marine dress blues. I saw that gorgeous raiment. I squatted, stuck up on our Ridge like Stylites on his pole, surrounded by wilderness and wetness and the minute corpses of millions of ephemeral ants. I squatted, clothed only in trousers cut off at the knee and a pair of moccasins stolen from an army duffle bag and I contemplated this vision of glory.
“Robert, your blue uniform is ready. Shall I send it to you?”
In an instant it had caught the fancy of the Ridge. Until we left the Ridge, I was “Lucky, the guy whose old man wants to send him a set of blues.” I would walk to chow, and the men from the other pits would greet me with “Hi’ya, Lucky—where’s yer blues?” or “Hey, Lucky, yer old man send you the blues yet?” My very approach was enough for smiles, as though each of them was envisioning the First Marine Division drawn up on our Ridge, resplendent in dress blues with flags flying and bands playing, marching off into the jungle to do battle.
There was no boisterousness, no guffaws; merely the smiles and the sallies and occasional rib-poking, as though the very quaintness of my father’s proposal were a thing to be cherished, like a family joke, a bit of whimsy to save one’s sanity on this mad island of ours.
Everyone thought my father a hell of a guy, and they often inquired after his health.
Sergeant Dandy gave us the bad news. He had visited us the day before to take our measurements for new clothing, and the inference had been so encouraging that we had spent the night in happy speculation. We were sure it meant we were leaving Guadalcanal; the question was, for where?
But Sergeant Dandy’s nasal cracker whine shredded our happiness like a whip.
“Stand by to move out in the mawnin’. Weah movin’ out from the Matanikau in a new offensive. Get all youah foul-weather gear ready and be sure youah guns is oiled and youah ammunition belt’s dry. Eighth Marines’ll be up to relieve us in the mawnin’.”
He stopped and we examined each other in silence. There was no pleasure on his straight-featured boy-man’s face, not even a hint of malicious satisfaction at being the bearer of bad tidings. The heart of Sergeant Dandy was as heavy as anyone’s. “Doan ask me whut it’s all about. Doan ask me no silly questions. Jus’ do what I tol’ you.” He turned and left.
After nearly five months, this.
Runner had malaria, Brick barely stirred from the pit except at night, Hoosier and Oakstump were subject to long periods of depression, Red had long since left us, I had dysentery, Chuckler was irritable—all of us were emaciated and weakened beyond measure.
But we were to move out on the attack. We could not move to chow without gasping for breath, but we were to move on the enemy.
We despaired.
In the morning, we crouched by our guns and waited for the order to dismantle them and move out. It did not come.
Nor did it come the next day or the next, and Hope came creeping back, blushing, ashamed of her disloyal flight but commending herself to us once more with the promise never again to desert the ramparts.
Then one morning the word came to move out.
Sergeant Dandy gave it to us.
“Leave the guns behind,” he said. “Take only your rifles and foul-weather gear.”
He grinned.
“We’re being relieved!”
It was December 14, 1942. We had been on the lines without relief since August 7. My battalion—the Second Battalion, First Regiment—was the last of those in the First Marine Division to come out of the lines.
Guadalcanal was over.
We had won.
We came clanking down from the Ridge in a chill drizzle, while the men of the Eighth Marine Regiment came clambering up. They wore kelly helmets, the kind which our fathers wore in the First World War and which the British still wear. They looked miserable, plodding up the slippery Ridge in the drizzle. We pitied them, even though all the worst was past. But we could not resist needling them, these men from San Diego in sunny California. “Here come the Hollywood Marines.”
“Yeah, will you look who’s here. If it ain’t the Pogybait Marines!
Where’s your PX, boys?”
“Aw, blow it …”
“Tch tch—will you listen to them talk! That ain’t the way they do it in the movies. Shame on you!”
“Hey—what’s the latest from Hollywood? How’s Lana?”
“Yeah—that’s it—how’s Lana? How’s Lana Turner?”
They tried to appear disgusted but they could not conceal the awe with which the reliever must inevitably regard the relieved. We went down the Ridge, haggard but happy; they came up it, full-fleshed but with forebodings. I have said we were happy; we were; we were delirious.
The next week we spent beneath an improvised tent on a hillside where the ridges meander down to the kunai fields, Chuckler and I visiting and revisiting the food dumps until we had collected so much food that I could afford to devour a gallon can of preserved
apricots, making myself wonderfully, wonderfully sick to my stomach. I lay on my belly and felt the stretching pain and marveled: “I’m sick. I ate too much. It’s the most wonderful thing in the world—I ate too much!”
Only desultory visits from Washing Machine Charlie served to remind us that the Japanese were still contesting Guadalcanal.
The following week was spent in a Garden of Eden. We marched to the mouth of the Lunga River to a tent encampment in a grove of coconuts. They gave us a ration of beer. Somehow we managed to gather enough of it to get mildly drunk every night. During the day, we swam in the Lunga, that marvelous river whose cold swift waters kept the malarial fire out of my blood. Swimming was often hazardous, due to the wags who delighted in throwing hand grenades into the water. Once I heard a mighty shout out on the seashore, and running over, was astonished to see the giant sting ray which some men had trapped in a native fishing net. Of course it was dead, punctured in a thousand pieces by having offered a thousand trigger-happy men the opportunity to “get their gun off.”
Then we were sleeping alongside a road, waiting to embark the next day. On that day, they brought us our Christmas packages from home. We could not take them aboard ship with us, for we were not allowed to carry more than our packs and weapons. Chuckler and I had already asked Lieutenant Ivy-League to carry our remaining boxes of cigars in his sea bag; officers would be permitted to carry sea bags. It puzzled us to see the reappearance of sea bags—strictly the issue of enlisted men—and it angered us to see them handed out to officers.
This was the first piece of discrimination which we encountered, the first flip of the Single-Sided Coin, whereby the officers would satisfy their covetousness by forbidding us things rightfully ours, and then take them up themselves, much as politicians use the courts to gain their ends. So we devoured what we could of these Christmas gifts from home, and threw the rest away.
“Stand by to move out. Forrr-ward, harch!”
We ambled down to the beach, our gait, our bearded, tattered aspect unable to match the precision of that command. We clambered into the waiting boats. We stood at the gunwales and watched the receding shoreline.