Selected Letters of William Styron (17 page)

Your son,

Bill, Jr.

P.S. I thought the biography you sent to Duke was fine stuff, if a little embarrassing to read first-hand by the biographee.
^*Z

T
O
D
OROTHY
P
ARKER
^†a

June 19, 1951 Camp Lejeune, NC

TOP SECRET
                      8
^th
Marines (Reinf.)

IN THE FIELD

WES/wb-1

Dlt-14

AUTHENTICATED

TIME:191950Q

[Begun Tuesday P.M

for civilians]

REGIMENTAL OPERATION}

ORDER             16-51}
JOCKSTRAP

TASK ORGANIZATION
: ME AND YOU

Dearest: I am at present sitting in a tick-ridden bed of pine needles amidst a group of oddly-camouflaged tents surrounded, in the twilight, by a grotesque confusion of bushes and trees. Although I am not suffering hideously and although I have just gorged myself on a huge meal (in the field we eat twice a day, squatting or kneeling, at 6:00 A.M. and 5:30 P.M., so the interim hunger is great) I am definitely not enjoying myself, and the associate boredom and waiting, the total idiocy of the thing, the getting rained on when it rains, the mosquitoes and ticks, the sleeping on the good earth when and if you get a chance to sleep, the not taking of baths—all of these tend to put one in a state of mind which, mildly stated, might be called cranky. There will be tonight and tomorrow and tomorrow night and half of the next day; then all will be over for quite a while, but already I feel like I’ve been out here for a year.

Then yesterday I got your letter telling me that the weasel of Whittlesey House has pulled another of his fanciful coups and fired you—which made me feel ugly and distressed and more morbid than just the lack of sleep could ever make me—not so much because of his act in itself, because you’d be quitting anyway, but because again we have the tiny little man up to his abysmal, petty tricks. And I feel dreadful about the whole business. Why did he do it? And what weak-minded, mealy-mouthed excuses did he offer? And where do you think you will land another place, and when?

Of course—or perhaps not of course—but anyway a tiny bit of the sad
feeling I have is simply the fact of your leaving that monstrous green building; perhaps no building on earth should be less capable of evoking nostalgia, but topographically I have thought of you always enthroned in one of those fake mahogany offices, and now I shall have to rearrange all my tender visions.

But, as you say and seem to think, it’s all most very likely the best thing (I’ve always thought Aswell wanted to take you into his scented boudoir), and that pile of money due you certainly sounds worthwhile, God Knows. So I don’t know whether to really mourn or what; I think it’s just Aswell—who bears a remarkable resemblance, physically and morally, to some of the dangerous little colonels around here—that has sickened me, and the knowledge that somehow, no matter in what slight way, he has managed to hurt you.

Incidentally, and seriously—and I mean it—don’t you think it would be a good thing if I wrote to Hiram about you? I don’t know what he could do right off, but he knows well of you through me and he would be powerfully interested in you if I wrote, and I would write him a powerful letter. I’m dead serious about this, and Hiram is a man of influence and the fact of the matter is that he would do anything in the world for me that he could—so please think it over and let me know as soon as you can.

God, life is a bloody trial sometimes, isn’t it? Right now it’s almost ten in the evening and, having risen at 4:30 this morning, I feel that this day never really began, but just existed always. I am sitting in a blackout tent with my two sergeants (they are really fine fellows; the tragic part about war + the military is not—as the so-called sensitive person who has never seen it might think—the fact that one is thrown in among disagreeable people; for most all of the people are pretty decent and good, and grow affectionately together in their common misery) and the tent, being shut up, is stifling and smells of DDT. At midnight I will get off my stool and climb down on the ground in the fashion of some other animal than a human—a dog, perhaps—and sleep the four hours allotted me until H-hour at 4:00 A.M. and then arise, exhausted and scratching. Well actually, I suppose, it could be a lot worse and I’ve had it worse myself, but because it’s happening to me now I feel it with a moderate pang of hurt and degradation and futility, so please excuse a moment’s bitching. I’ve gotten it off my chest.

The main thing, of course, is that I love you and that grows and grows
until sometimes I feel I won’t be quite able to stand it—if that doesn’t sound too silly. Out here in the swamps, separated further from you by this week’s chancy business of mail, I feel that an ocean of silence keeps us apart—and the ocean is green—not “our” ocean—with the unhealthy, persistent green of a military forest.
They
even shame nature in war, soiling what should be grand and exciting by their very presence, their very touch. Anyway, I love you more and more each moment, because each moment allows me to think more about your loveliness and all the things I love about you; and you touched me when you said that when we meet it’ll probably be like two strangers who have only heard a lot of each other, because that’s no doubt true and we’ll likely be
absurd
for a while—but not for too long. So last night gave me quite an opportunity to think about you, for the first night in the woods is generally a sleepless one for me, and, supine in the weeds, with this damn gasoline lamp roaring in the tent about me, I went through the most fetching fantasies—trying, I suspect, to summon you to accompany me to sleep and dreams: first I thought of you and I walking through Central Park and then of you and I in the Green or perhaps White Mountains, then of you and I slumbering together in a garden full of flowers.

A few days later: well, I was mistaken: we all suffered pretty hideously. Immediately after the above trifle was written, the Colonel came in the tent with plans for a hike. I went to bed at four, woke at six and spent all morning on the radio. Then at noon all hell broke loose; two mortar shells burst into the Sixth Marines lines adjacent to us—strictly an accident (did you read about it in the papers?) but eleven men were killed and twenty-some wounded and I had to guide our own regimental surgeon to the area to give aid. It was terrible. I stood by down there for three or four hours while the wounded were evacuated, and then at eight o’clock in the evening we began a 30-mile forced march back to the base. It went all night, with a ten minute break each hour, and it was sheer hell. A hike doesn’t sound like much, probably, but 30 miles is a long way, even for the Marines and I don’t believe any of us thought we’d make it, considering the fact that none of us had more than four hours’ sleep during the two preceding nights. I have blisters the size of eggs on both feet and I all but collapsed at the finish line and—oh well, I’m frankly just too goddamn tired to bore you about it any longer, though I’ll probably regale you over martinis with a complete account of the whole ghastly day.

I had intended to write you much more but I just haven’t had enough time, and now I must pack up (it’s Friday noon now) and go out to the rifle range for a week. Write me at the same address you have. I want this to get to N.Y. in time for you to read it when you get back on Monday. It ain’t much of a letter and I wanted to tell you many more times that I love you. And I do love you, my darling, and for 30 miles the thought of you kept my feet moving ahead, and the thought of you will forever sustain me through worse trials than that.

—Bill

T
O
S
IGRID DE
L
IMA

June 30, 1951 Camp Lejeune, NC

My dearest Such a Sweet Baby,

I’m sorry for taking such a long time to write you this time, but I’ve never had two weeks in which time was at such a premium and when so many things seemed to be happening. First we went out to the woods and I will tell you about it. We established a bivouac for the regiment (this was Monday before last) in the most trackless wilderness of sand and pines and thorns I’ve ever seen. It rained constantly and though every now and then I had a tent to shelter me, I still stayed soaked for hours. The first night I got two hours’ sleep, in the wet grass, the second night I got 3½ hours sleep, this time a little dryer, though—wrapped up in a poncho. On the third day all hell broke loose. The regiment adjacent to us and working with us on the problem had two mortar shells go off in its line, killing nine men (did you read about it in the papers?) and wounding twenty-odd.
^†b
Although it was not our outfit, we of course sent doctors and ambulances and it was my duty to take the regimental surgeon down to the area in a jeep. It was ghastly, and it was just like war, and that’s about all there is to say. Then that night the colonel ordered the entire regiment to
march
the entire 33 miles back to the main base. We marched and marched and marched from 8:30 P.M until 7:00 the following morning, and it was sheer hell. I don’t believe anyone has the slightest idea of how far 33 miles
are, until one has hiked them, at a set pace (2½ miles per hour) and in 85° heat and with a ten-minute break every hour. Even for the marines this hike was something of a record and only 65% of the regiment made it and I made it all the way in, with blisters on both feet the size of pingpong balls—though why I stuck it out I don’t know. I—who have not walked 200 consecutive yards in the last five years. Now if you will add, to the simple fact of the hike, the blisters, the drugged, dead, plodding exhaustion after the no-sleep for the two preceding nights, the memory of the slain marines I’d just seen, the heat and, above all, the futility of it all—you can imagine what a state I, and all the others, was in at the end of the trail. I fell into bed and slept until 5:00 in the afternoon and only now have my feet begun to cease limping.

Then comes better news, or I should say great news. This last Monday we went to the Rifle Range, and there—as I had anticipated—I pulled my trump card. As I told you, I can’t see a bloody thing out of my right eye at any distance. So after failing to hit the target at 500 yards I turned into the hospital with a sad story. The results were astonishing. They examined me, found the old cataract, and immediately recommended that I be released to inactive duty—i.e. discharged. This was further corroborated by the Chief Medical Officer of the Camp, who ordered me transferred to the Marine Barracks here for processing to release from active duty. So it looks from here like I’m to really be out of this lousy outfit very soon—and for good. There is still a slim chance that they’ll try to delay it or waiver me or something, or take a long time at it—but the chance is slim, I’m certain, and I don’t think I’m being too optimistic when I say I think I’ll be back in the city fair, permanently, within a month. Now isn’t that great news, following the story of my hardship?

Strange, though, I don’t feel too overwhelmed. If I get out, it’s sheer good fortune and there are too many guys down here still suffering for me to be exclusively happy. I won’t forget them and when I’m out I’m going to campaign for them to the very limit, because the misery of the company of the damned, who seem to be faced with endless years of 30-mile hikes and exploding mortars, is sad indeed.

Last night I listened to the Emperor Concerto with this friend of mine, and the music reminded me of V.C. fair. Are you there, with Talluley and the flowers and everything? I hope and trust it won’t be long before I’m there, sitting with my Sweet Baby in the warm summer filled evening,
listening to the music from the other room and perhaps gnawing on a piece of golden Bantam corn … Love to Aggie and all. This weekend I’m going to Durham, where Blackburn is throwing me a cocktail party, and I will wish that you were there.

With all love from,

S.B.

Styron was discharged from the Marine Corps in August 1951
.

T
O
W
ILLIAM
B
LACKBURN

August 22, 1951 West 13
^th
Street, New York City

Dear Doctor,

I’m in New York now, staying with a friend on West 13
^th
street.
^†c
I would like to have come to Durum
^†d
before I left Lejeune, but I had to go see my father in Newport News (he is much better) and to go to both places would have been a little too much.

Hiram is sending you a copy of the book, fruit of our (your and mine) efforts. I think it’s going to go fine. Maxwell Geismar thinks it’s the
best
book he’s read this year.
^†e
Malcolm Cowley
^†f
says the book is “wonderful” and is going to feature it in
The New Republic
.
Harper’s Bazaar
has got an effete picture and article on me next month. Best, though, is news that
John W. Aldridge, the young critic who just wrote the book damning all the young writers, thinks that my book is
terrific
and is going to review it in the
Times Book Review
.
^†g
I’m becoming a sensation. Full-page ads everywhere.

I’ve never been so happy, I guess. And you know how much you helped make it this way. I’ll try to come to Durum before long. Tell Brice I’ll send him a copy shortly, but that he’ll have to read it. And thanks for everything again.

Always yours,

Bill

T
O
W
ILLIAM
B
LACKBURN

September 13, 1951 West 13
^th
Street, New York City

Dear Doctor,

Thank you so much for your wonderful letter. I hardly think I deserve
that
kind of praise, but thank you ever for your faith in me, and trust.

I tried to give you a much bigger plug than what finally came out in the
Saturday Review
profile on me. I told the girl interviewing me that
you
were the prime mover of my talents; that you are an “instructor” who liked “some” of my work is just her transcription.