Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific (22 page)

This is the appeal most difficult to resist, this is the other fork of the tongue. But I resisted that siren’s call, and kept silent.

Now the top sergeant became petulant, and at last I said, “I’m willing to face charges.”

“Go back to your tent and stand by,” he snapped.

I made my departure, half exultant. Broadgrin must have protected me! Obviously, the top sergeant had no wish to bring me before the Battalion Commander, and this could be only because he was reluctant to admit that he had carried me present on his morning report for some days, when I was in fact A.W.O.L. My scheme was working. I sat in the tent and waited. In an hour, a runner appeared: “Top wants to see you.”

Alone, the top sergeant greeted me with a question: “Can you type?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, how’d you like to be my company clerk?”

Who can blame me if I smiled? At last I had seen it! If you cain’t lick ‘em, bribe ‘em!

I agreed, and three days later the top came down with malaria and I became the Acting First Sergeant of E Company.

But it was a boring job, hardly less tedious than the duties of company clerk, which I resumed when the top had returned from hospital. My ten days of managing E Company were almost without incident, except that once a toady offered me a bribe of two pounds to keep him off the weekend guard, which I refused, but which I coerced him into spending on Chuckler, Hoosier, Runner and the rest when we met one night at the slop chute. Otherwise my ludicrous metamorphosis from company culprit into company straw-boss provided only exterior comfort; interiorly, it was a stultifying chore, and that was why I leapt at the chance to transfer to Battalion Intelligence.

The Artist, who had been in my training platoon at Parris Island, was in Battalion Intelligence—B-2, as it is called. He had been transferred there as a scout from G Company, having distinguished himself at the Battle of the Tenaru, where a Jap rashly bayoneted him in the leg.

Not long after the top sergeant had returned, Artist accosted me on the battalion street. Lieutenant Big-Picture, the Battalion Intelligence Officer, was with him.

“Here he is,” he said to the lieutenant, motioning me over. “Here’s the man I was telling you about.” He introduced me. “I hear you used to be a newspaperman,” Big-Picture said. I nodded. “How would you like to put out a battalion newspaper?” I was delighted, and so ended my brief and eventful career as an E Company rifleman, during which I never once shouldered a rifle.

Of course, I never came close to publishing a battalion newspaper either; it was merely one of Big-Picture’s big ideas. It was a notion that flattered his vanity. There was not even a regimental or divisional newspaper; still, Big-Picture might boast of having a potential publisher in his Intelligence Section, might even—this being his nature—consider the wish to be a fact.

Even so, Big-Picture rescued me from the drudgery of the company office, brought me back to the field, and assuaged the pride wounded by McCaustic’s “shanghai.” I owe it to Big-Picture, also, that he cared nothing for my reputation as a rebel, not even that by then I was already a veteran brig-rat.

1

I have heard it said that General Smedley Butler was fond of observing: “Give me a regiment of brig-rats, and I’ll lick the world.”

It may be that Old Gimlet Eye never said this. But it is exactly the sort of thing he might have said, or, if not he, then many another Marine commander. For it is most especially a Marine sentiment, and when analyzed, it turns out to be not shameless or shocking, but merely this: a man who lands in the brig is apt to be a man of bold spirit and independent mind, who must occasionally rebel against the harsh and unrelenting discipline of the camp.

I am not attempting to exalt what should be condemned. I am not suggesting that because of their boldness or independence the brig-rats be forgiven and escape punishment. Brigged they must be, and brigged they were. Nor am I speaking of the habitual brig-rat, the steady malingerer, the good-for-nothing who is more often in the brig than out of it and who seeks to avoid every consequence of his uniform, even fighting. I speak of the young, high-hearted soldier whose very nature is bound to bring him into conflict with military discipline and to land him—unless he is exceptionally lucky—in the brig.

I speak of Chuckler and Chicken and Oakstump and a dozen others—and, of course, of myself.

George Washington’s birthday was the day on which Chuckler and I smudged the purity of our record books. The division was to parade in Melbourne that day. We were to march up Swanston Street, hardly a month after our arrival in Australia, to accept the plaudits of a city and nation still mindful of the Jap threat that had existed on Guadalcanal.

But Chuckler and I did not want to march. We wanted to see the parade, and this, you will understand, is quite impossible to the person who marches in it, rifle glued to the shoulder, eyes straight ahead and unswervingly focused on the nape of the forward fellow’s neck.

By some subterfuge we evaded this odious duty, and so it was that we were firmly entrenched outside the City Club, drinks in hand, when the First Marine Division marched in Melbourne on the afternoon of February 22, 1943. Around us rose the cheerful and delighted calls of the Australians, as our comrades swung past.

“Good on you, Yank!” “Ah, a bonzer bunch, indeed!” “Good-o, lads!” “Hurrah for the Yankee lads!”

The men wore field uniforms, combat packs and full combat dress. Rifles were slung and bayonets fixed; each man wore or carried the weapon which was his in battle. So they were impressive; lean, hard, tanned—clean-limbed and capable-looking. I swallowed frequently, and my eyes were moist as they passed by. Even the Australians—who have inherited the British fondness for heel-clicking, arm-swinging, strutting troops—even they finally fell silent at the noiseless passage of the First Marine Division, walking in that effortless yet wary way that marks the American fighting man moving to the front.

Soon, Chuckler sighted the waving red-and-gold banner of our regiment. We ducked out of sight, moving from our front row position back to the third or fourth. The First Battalion swung by. Then came ours, and our hearts beat faster. E Company, F Company—now, at last, H Company. There they were! There were Hoosier and Runner, Lieutenant Ivy-League and the Gentleman and Amish—all of them! Oh, what a proud sight! It was exhilarating, it was heady, it was as good as reading your own obituary or hearing your own funeral oration—to see them move so confidently and so proudly along, and to mark the admiration in the eyes of the Australians around us. Great day, indeed! We hoped it would never end, but it did, and there was nothing left to do but to substitute for this rare and genuine exhilaration that other artificial sort which is kept, corked and capped, in inexhaustible supply within bottles. So we turned around and re-entered the City Club.

And of course we drank too much.

By nightfall, we had had it. But Chuckler was due to stand guard at the slop chute that night. He took his leave, wavering slightly. But by the time he arrived at the Cricket Grounds, I was sure the waver would be gone. Chuckler had that faculty.

After a time, I too returned to camp, arriving there only by luck or the intercession of my guardian angel. I ran for a tram speeding up Wellington Parade, leapt for the platform, missed it, grabbed the handrail and was dragged for two blocks until a pair of strong-armed Diggers were able to pull me aboard, like a drowning man.

Wavering, I came erect and thrust out my chest: “Tha’s nothin’,” I said. “Las’ night—I got hit by one!” There was laughter until I reached my stop and got off.

I found Chuckler standing glumly outside the slop chute entrance. He had hoped for interior guard, where he might sneak a beer or two.

“I’ll get you one,” I promised.

I returned with a big glass seidel, out of which Chuckler might take a surreptitious sip. There were more seidels, until Chuckler said, “I’ve got to go to the head. Here—cover for me.” He gave me his pistol belt and helmet, and made off.

For a sentry to be drunk, and then to desert his post and surrender his weapon, is to combine cardinal sin with unforgivable offense. I was anxiously hoping that he would hurry back. But then an unfortunate thing happened.

Lieutenant Ivy-League came striding down the corridor.

I say it was unfortunate because Ivy-League was the officer of the day. More than that, he was still the man who had filched my cigars—the enlisted men’s cigars, if you will. My anger was nourished by the alcohol within me and I drew Chuckler’s pistol and pointed it at him and said, “Stop where you are, you lousy cigar-stealing son of a bitch—or I’ll blow your gentleman’s ass off.”

Or words to that effect.

Whatever the phraseology, the pistol made the point. Lieutenant Ivy-League retreated, returning reinforced by the corporal of the guard (Smoothface, who had rejoined the regiment) and the sergeant of the guard. While Ivy-League engaged me in conversation, Smoothface and the sergeant were infiltrating. Suddenly they sprang. I had been outwitted—now, I was overpowered.

“Get that pistol and pistol belt,” ordered Ivy-League, white with rage. “Now, find that damn fool Chuckler!”

There was no need. He came hurrying up, too late, alas! Ivy-League ordered him imprisoned. Quivering with fury, his hands clenching and unclenching, his lantern jaw so tautly set one could almost hear the molars grinding, Ivy-League surveyed us. Then—

“Brig ‘em!”

Smoothface led us away. Unaccountably, as we neared the forbidding steel-cage façade of the brig, we were given a reprieve. The sergeant said something and Smoothface halted.

“G’wan up to youah sacks,” he said. “Ivy-League’ll see yawl in the mawnin’.” He shook his head sadly, especially sorrowful as his gaze fell upon me. “Ah dunno what the damn hell’s got into yawl, Licky. Tryin’ to shoot the O.D.! Ah know a guy got ten years, just fer sockin’ ‘n officer.”

Someone awakened me roughly in the morning. It was the sergeant of the night before.

“C’mon, get your clothes on. Full green. You’re going to see the man.”

He stood bleakly by as I hastily covered my long underwear with battle jacket and trousers. The sergeant might be bleak exteriorly, but I was positively frozen interiorly. What I had done the preceding night was now upon me: twenty years at hard labor would not be too severe punishment for assaulting the officer of the day!

Frostier than either of us, the battalion sergeant major awaited us outside the colonel’s door. Tall, sharp-featured, his sandy hair thinning and the hairs of his military mustache bristling like bayonets, he seemed more a sergeant of Scots Guards than American Marines.

“The prisoner,” he said, looking through me, heedless of my horror upon hearing myself so described—“the prisoner will enter the colonel’s office when I give the order. Upon the command to halt he will come to attention before the colonel and remain there until dismissed. Teen-shun! Forrr-rrd harch! Prisoner halt!”

My eyes fell upon the pink bald pate of Mr. Five-by-Five, our battalion commander.

Mr. Five-by-Five got his nickname from his build—a few inches over five feet in height and almost that much in breadth. It was an affectionate nickname, and we were really fond of him, or at least had been on Guadalcanal, when not a day passed that did not bring Mr. Five-by-Five toiling up and down those mountain ridges to look over his lines and his men.

Now, the sergeant major was reading the charges, the crispness of his military style occasionally defeated by a difficulty with words.

Then he had finished and the colonel looked up and through me, as though my stomach were transparent.

“Lieutenant, let’s hear your version of what happened.”

Ivy-League’s voice came floating over my shoulder. I felt Mr. Five-by-Five’s eyes upon me while Ivy-League, talking in a strained voice—as though either he, too, were abashed by the colonel, or else he were reluctant to do what he had to do—related the night’s events. He told the truth, including that most important piece of evidence, the fact that I had been drinking; for drunkenness goes a long way toward mitigating an offense in the Marine Corps.

The colonel studied me sternly. I stared ahead, trying not to swallow, trying to put steel into my stature, trying to keep from blinking, trying to keep my tongue moist so that I might answer quickly and clearly when spoken to—trying in every way to raise a false strength upon the sinking sands of my craven stomach. The colonel’s manner was stern. I could learn nothing from his face, while he studied my record book, leafing the pages slowly, seeming to weigh these against the words of the sergeant major and of Ivy-League. Would he be cruel or kind? I could not tell. But I knew this, as every soldier knows in war: my future, my life, even, was his to dispose of. It is a most unsettling thought.

“How d’ya plead?”

Against my will, I cleared my throat and swallowed. “Guilty, sir.”

He studied the book again.

He raised his gaze and held my eyes.

“I’m not going to ruin your life,” he said, and my stomach that had been fleeing seemed to pause, and turn. “I could put you away for a long time for what you’ve done. Being drunk is no excuse—a marine is supposed to be able to handle his liquor. You’ve got a good war record, though”—he went on, leafing the pages of my record book again—“and you seem to have a good background. So I’m not going to ship you back to Portsmouth, where the books says I should ship you—but I’m not going to let you get away with it, either.” His face hardened.