Whistle (11 page)

It had not been a lucky patrol. All the same, Prell knew he had done everything right and correctly. He had done everything both according to the rules themselves, and according to the unwritten law that, unspoken, went along with the rules. The unwritten law was that you never risked your men. Unless the gain was worth it. Double worth it. In Prell’s case the gain had been worth more than that. Even if it had never got realized.

At the aid station, while they splinted him up and took care of the other wounded, there was a lot of rehashing of the patrol by the healthy, and the subject of the loud clank that had given them away to the Japs came up. Prell only heard the first part of it. He made his report to the battalion commander, stressing the coming attack and how close he had come to getting Sasaki, and then, relaxing his control and aided by the shot the doc gave him, quietly passed out for a while. There was more rehashing in the Division hospital when the squad came down to say good-by to him, and the clank of equipment they had all heard came up again. None of them, nor the other wounded either, would admit to having been the cause of it.

Several men thought the point man, Crozier, had done it when he came running down to them. Perhaps one of the dead men, Crozier or Sims, had done it. If one had, both had certainly paid dearly for it. More than anyone could punish either for now. Prell could only think bitterly how that single clank had kept him from becoming famous, kept him from getting $1000, and how it might still cost him both of his legs. It probably had kept him from single-handedly shortening the whole New Georgia campaign by a month. Because in the end, the cocky, strutty General Sasaki had put up an obstinate, gallant defense that was still going on in August, when they reached Frisco, and would go on into October. It was still winding down when Prell reached Luxor. He only heard of the end of it there. By that time he no longer really cared about New Georgia.

Prell had had a hard time of it, in the Division rear hospital, to keep from breaking down completely when the remnants of the squad—there were only nine now—filed out of the big tent after saying good-by. He had had to exercise all his considerable will power to keep tears from coming in his eyes. These nine men had saved his life. They had put together a makeshift stretcher for him without even being asked, and had carried him at least a mile along slippery trails, without being ordered to. At great risk to themselves. And without so much as one word of complaint or grumble. They had performed like princes. And they had saved him, and Prell hated to see them go away from him a last time. What they thought of him meant more to him than whether he ever got any medal, and they clearly thought well of him. For this, he loved them back.

In the railroad hospital car, the pain in his legs hurting him more than he could remember it ever had, he missed them deeply and he missed the company. At least on the ship he had had Strange and Landers to talk to once in a while. But after the shake-up at Letterman, he hadn’t seen either again. He had caught one fleeting glimpse of Strange at a distance, ambling down a hospital corridor in a GI bathrobe. That was all. He did not know whether either of them was going to Luxor. In fact, both of them were on the train, in other cars up forward, but Prell had no way of knowing that. He knew that there were some members of the company at Luxor; he had heard it vaguely somewhere. He hoped he would be able to get together with them. Without the old company, Prell did not really feel he belonged anywhere. And he was beginning to suspect that that was the way it was going to be, from now on, and go on being. All that was past, and in the past, and every hour and every mile put it further and further behind them all.

As the train started, sending a painful jerk up his hurting legs to the broken thighs, Prell realized he had not even seen one building of all of San Francisco. Before, on his way through, he had picked up a girl downtown on Market Street, and spent two days with her screwing in a hotel. He wondered how she was, and what might have happened to her. As the train began to fall into its peculiar rhythm of movement and speed up, he shut his eyes.

W
INCH WAS ONE OF
the few who did not have to go through the reprocessing. Almost before he was settled in, Winch found he had a friend in court at Letterman.

While the others were being sifted and sorted, and shunted from clerical team to clerical team, or hauled off in the ambulances down to their trains with their blue tags or green tags or yellow tags tied on their arms, Winch sat on his bed in a nearly empty ward and played solitaire or dealt himself poker hands, and waited for the three-day or five-day pass the hospital administration was sending down to him.

This was what came of knowing people in high places. Winch found it ironic. Most of the wounded from the ship would have given their eyeteeth to stay on, and get out into the town and taste again an American city. Winch had no desire to stay on, or to go on pass in the city. It was almost laughable. But Winch could not scare up enough good feelings in him to laugh. On the other hand, you didn’t turn down an unexpected, gratuitous pass into San Francisco.

They had assigned him to the heart ward. For a check-out, they said. Winch had not been in it an hour, when a baby-faced 2nd/lt opened the door and stuck his head in, and asked if 1st/Sgt Winch was there. When Winch admitted he was, the boy handed him a sealed envelope. “I’ll wait,” the lieutenant said, “in case there’s any answer, sir.”

The envelope was a handsome one, with an embossed Letterman General return address on it and no stamps. “Deliver By Hand” was scrawled across the face. The letter inside it, when Winch unfolded it, was from old T.D. Hoggenbeck. Winch had known old T.D. in Fort Sam Houston six years before. Old T.D. had been a tech/sgt when Winch was serving his first tour as a newly made staff/sgt. Old T.D., nicknamed “Touchdown,” naturally enough, was now a senior warrant officer, the typed signature showed, and sgt/maj of Personnel Records Section at Letterman. Winch should, “Come up and see [me] sometime,” when he had nothing to do.

Sgt/maj of Personnel Records at Letterman was no mean, lousy job. God knew how many wounded passed through there. And each soldier’s sacred Service Record booklet and 201 File had to go with him wherever he went, and could not be lost. The records a hospital ship carried for its wounded must have taken up almost as much room as the bodies.

“Sure, sir, any time. I’ll take you up there right now if you want,” the lieutenant said, when Winch asked him. “I can show you the way.” Winch stared at him curiously, and only nodded. He was not used to being called “sir” by officers, however young. The lieutenant was authoritative enough with the ward boy and the nurse on the ward, though.

The corridors were jammed. Another ship was due in from New Guinea in a few days, and space had to be cleared, people had to be moved east to make room. When they got to the right building, making their way along through all the frenetically moving men in uniforms or bathrobes, the Personnel Records Section was on the top floor.

The office itself looked as big as a basketball court. There must easily have been fifty or sixty desks in it. Down at the other end, where the lieutenant led him, and where there was a plate-glass window through which old T.D. could look out over his toiling slaves, was old T.D.’s office. It was not a cubicle.

The w/o himself stood leaning his meager buttocks against his desk edge, his skinny arms folded over his thin chest. He must have seen them coming through the plate glass, but he made no move and said nothing, until the lieutenant had gone out and closed the door. Then he stood up and grinned. But he did not shake hands. Instead, he came forward with both arms out. With his two hands he took Winch by both shoulders, and shook him a little, and then embraced him, putting both arms clear around him. Watching with a cold curiosity, Winch wondered if T.D. was not actually going to get tears in his eyes.

“How are you, Mart old boy, how are you?” old T.D. said.

“Hello, T.D.,” Winch said. “Looks like you got yourself a fair berth here. Even got second lieutenants to run errands for you.”

“I got more than that,” Hoggenbeck said, grinning, and went behind his desk, where he got out a bottle of Seagram’s Seven Crown and two glasses. “See? I even remembered your brand.” He did not bother to close the curtains over the plate glass. Winch was acutely aware of its openness behind them. “When I seen your name on that manifest, I sent somebody right out for a bottle.” He paused to take a breath. “You fellows who are doing so much for us out there, you by God deserve every by God thing we can give you.” Winch thought coldly that this time there actually were a few tears in the chicanerous old hypocrite’s eyes. Probably they were even sincere. “Yes, I got a lot more than that,” Hoggenbeck said, taking back up his first thread. “Second looies for office boys, and captains and majors for assistants. They’re finally beginnin to realize just how valuable and important some of their old-time Regular noncoms are to this nation. There’s more worthless commissions floating around, that don’t know how to do nothing, than you can shake your dick at. Political commissions, that somebody bought for their kid or their cousin. They’re full up to choking with them. Nobody knows what to do with ’em and men like me and you can just about write our own ticket. I got me a big house outside the Presidio, and buying another. Got a piece of the NCOs’ Club. I’m in on a piece of the PX. Got a half interest in one of the gambling sheds. My wife’s got a shop. I tell you the sky’s just about the limit around here nowadays. The sky’s not even the limit. They need us, Mart,” old T.D. said, “they need us. Without us, nobody can run this damned civilian Army for them.” He filled the glasses. “Here,” he said, and poked one of them across the desk. “I knew your Division was out there. Relieved the 1st Marine on Guadalcanal. Then I saw your name on that boat roster, and you could of knocked me down.” He drained his own glass. “Tell me, what’s it like out there, Mart. Pretty rough? Hunh? Where were you hit?”

Winch thought his own mind must be deserting him, because he felt ice-cold all over. The whiskey in his glass seemed to have disappeared even before he touched the glass. Old T.D. refilled it. Winch’s teeth clenched. He wanted to pick up the beautiful, precious bottle of Seven Crown and crown Hoggenbeck with it, split his skull. In full view of every eye on the other side of the plate glass.

“Pretty tough? Pretty rugged, hunh? Is it as rough as the papers say? Don’t want to talk about it, eh?”

A picture of his blank-faced, fear-eyed platoons, bleeding and breathing mud for every yard of ground, passed across the inside of Winch’s eyes. Through it, he studied his old drinking buddy, coldly. Icy. All of that had nothing to do with any of this, nothing at all.

“It’s hell, T.D.,” Winch said, straight-faced. “Real hell. They’re great, tough fighters, those Japs. Rough. They’re mean.”

“I know they are, I know they are,” T.D. said.

“And they know the jungle. But we’ll lick them, T.D., we’ll lick them,” Winch said.

“I know we will, I know we will,” old T.D. said.

Winch realized his second glass was gone. T.D. refilled it. And refilled his own. “That jungle’s rough, hunh? Where did you get hit?”

“In the leg,” Winch said.

“Was it bad?”

“It was pretty bad. In fact, it was terrible, T.D.”

“Did you have a heart attack, too?”

“No, nothing like that. Just what they call a murmur. But the two, together. You know. And I was pretty sick, from dengue and malaria. I figured it ought to be enough to get me home, and that it was about time.”

T.D. cackled, and his bushy eyebrows went up and down. “I figured, I figured,” he giggled.

Winch winked, and then noted his third glass was gone. The straight, blended American whiskey, neat like that, was like the ambrosia of the gods. They could have all the Scotch in the world, if he could have one bottle of Seagram’s Seven. Old T.D. pushed the bottle over to him.

“You help yourself,” T.D. said. “I’ve got to keep my head about me. Got work to do. But you go ahead.”

Winch shook his head.

“You always could drink more than me,” T.D. said. “Or anybody.” He grinned. Leaning back in his deluxe swivel chair, he told Winch what he wanted to do for him.

There was no need for Winch to go through the reprocessing. By evening T.D. would have a three-day or a five-day pass for him. A five-day, if he could slip it through. After that, Winch could have another five-day, and another. When he was ready to go east, Hoggenbeck would get him on an Army Transport Command plane and fly him, to any of the eastern hospitals he chose.

Winch, in his depression, had not even thought about San Francisco. Now he thought about it. “I haven’t even got a uniform, T.D.,” he said.

“They’ll issue you a uniform!” T.D. grabbed a book of chits on his desk, and a pen.

“Oh. I know those hospital issue uniforms,” Winch said. There seemed no way to escape from T.D.’s overeffusive generosity.

“Wear them outside the gate, and go to a tailor shop!” T.D. cried. “You can get an officer’s tropical worsted with shoulder straps at any joint on Market Street for thirty-six bucks!” Did he have money? Otherwise, old T.D. would arrange it for him to draw a partial-pay voucher.

Winch said he had money.

“Then you’re all fixed,” T.D. cried. “For a fine time. I wish it was me. You won’t believe this town, Mart. It’s changed. It’s like it must of been during the Gold Rush.”

He’d be glad to invite him out to the house for dinner, T.D. added. But he was sure a quiet dinner with his old woman was not what Winch was looking for. Not after them jungles.

The petty stuff out of the way, Hoggenbeck hitched his chair closer and, grinning, said he had something else to tell him. When he had seen Winch’s name on that early ship’s roster, he had started doing a little exploring. He wanted to send Winch to the hospital in Luxor, Tennessee. The point was, T.D. could do just about anything he wanted to from here, with in-transit casuals. He knew Winch’s wife was installed in St. Louis, and that might prove a big hitch. He had looked up Winch’s records as soon as they came in. But if Winch did not mind not going to St. Louis, he thought he had something pretty good lined up for him.