Battle Cry (12 page)

“Yes sir.”

“Yes sir.”

“Now don’t forget, when I give Eyes Right I want to hear them eyeballs click.”

Down the huge parade ground they marched, erect as one man. For the first time, they felt the full thrill of the title they would carry for the rest of their lives. Past the reviewing stand Beller barked “Eyes Right!” and he flashed his silver saber to a salute. The band struck up the Marine’s Hymn. The standards of the battalion and platoon dipped and the colonel returned the salute. To a man their hearts thumped, bursting with pride beneath the neat green uniforms. They had paid with sweat, with humiliation, and a few tears for the name they had. They were Marines now…and would be to the day they died.

CHAPTER 6

BACK AT
the barracks the pent-up joy broke loose after the final piece of gear was stowed and they were ready to leave the cursed grounds of the Recruit Depot. Happy hugs and back slaps—then terrible anxiety as Beller and Whitlock entered with disposition lists.

“Tenshun!”

“At ease, fellows. All right, gather around,” the squat sergeant said. “I know you boys want to get the hell out of here just as fast as you can. But I want to say just a couple of words, and goddammit, I mean it from the heart. You guys are the best bunch of boots I’ve ever had. It was all in a day’s work for me…maybe sometimes not such a happy day’s work. We all do what the Corps tells us but I hope what you guys learned here will help you out later some day. I reckon that’s about all the thanks me and Whitlock got coming. Best of luck to all of you…if any of you guys are still on the Base tonight, come over to the slop shute and have a beer on me.”

They cheered.

“Anything you want to add, Whitlock?”

“Fellows, just call me Tex.”

For an instant all eyes turned to Shannon O’Hearne, the vengeance-sworn hellion. He stepped forward and extended his hand. “Put her there, Tex.”

Beller relieved their anxiety. The majority of the platoon was assigned to a guard company. Norton to Pioneers. O’Hearne to Matthews as a rifle instructor, Chernik to North Island, aviation. A few got mess duty for a month.

“All right, you three—stop pissing in your pants. Forrester, Jones, and Ski—radio school!”

A last round of back slaps, handshakes and farewells; they lifted their seabags and walked from the barracks into a new day.

“You’ll be on the Base for a while, professor. I’ll look you up as soon as we get squared away.”

“Take her easy, Danny.”

“All right, you three fellows from this platoon for radio school. Fall in over there,” a corporal admonished.

Danny, Ski, and L.Q. wended with their load, rifle and seabag to the waiting group. Danny laid his seabag down and walked over to a husky lad wearing glasses.

“Hi,” the fellow said in a friendly manner.

“My name’s Forrester. This is my buddy Zvonski. Call him Ski. Old blubber butt there is L. Q. Jones.”

“Glad to meet you. My name is Marion Hodgkiss and this is Andy Hookans. We’re out of platoon One Thirty Eight.”

They all shook hands.

The corporal with the roster called roll and they lifted their load to their shoulders and trudged over the catwalks, past the tents, past the administration buildings to the edge of the Recruit Depot. Before them lay the sprawling parade ground of the Base. Running along its edge were long arched yellow buildings.

“Where is the school?”

“At the other end of the parade ground.”

“It would be.”

A new boot with slick-shaved dome passed between them. In his hand he held a bucket as he searched vainly for cigarette butts. He bumped into L.Q. Jones.

“Hey, you craphead,” L.Q. barked.

The boot snapped to attention.

“What’s the matter with you, can’t you look where you’re going?”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“You ain’t ever sorry for nothing you do in the Marine Corps.”

“Yes sir.” L.Q. slammed the pith helmet over the boot’s ears. “Carry on.”

“Yes sir.”

They moved down the endless grounds shifting their seabags from one shoulder to the other.

“What did you do that for?” Danny finally asked.

“Do what?”

“Chew out that boot.”

“Just wanted to see how it felt. Felt fine—and from the looks of him I’d say he’ll never learn—no sir, that boot will never learn.”

After several moments they reached the far end of the grounds, dropped their loads and awaited the stragglers. The last of the long row of buildings bore the sign: S
IGNAL

S
CHOOL
. Over the width of the parade ground was a temporary set of eight-man tents facing an isolated building marked F
IELD
M
USIC
S
CHOOL
.

“All right, fellows, my name is Corporal Farinsky. You people will stay in these tents until a new class is formed in about a week. Find an empty spot and grab it. When you dump your gear, fall in for a pay call and draw cots and pads. Uniform of the day is dungarees. For Base liberty you wear greens, field scarfs, and you must be covered at all times away from the school area. You have liberty every other night and every other weekend. On duty nights you may have Base liberty. Any questions?”

“Yes, sir. What do we do until a class is formed?”

“First of all, Marine, don’t call me sir. You’re out of boot camp now. Mostly you’ll have a few hours a day on work parties and cleaning details. If you behave, you’ll have plenty of sack time. Just turn to when there’s work and we’ll get along. Find an empty spot, drop your gear and fall out in ten minutes.”

“How about seeing if we can get together,” Marion suggested to Danny.

“Swell.”

The five entered a tent midway along the row. There were just three men there, all lying prone on their cots. One arose.

“Ah,” he said, “enter our humble domicile. Up, you crumbs, we got visitors.”

“Hi,” Danny retorted, “got room for five small ones?”

“Why sure. My name is Brown, they call me Seabags. You’ll love it here, love it. Just wait till you hear the sound of fifty bugles blowing reveille outside the tent from that field music school. Do nothing but crap out all day.”

“My name’s Forrester. This here is Ski, L.Q. Jones, Marion Hodgkiss and Andy Hookans. Just left that wonderful place at the other end of the grounds.”

“Charmed. That thing there trying to crawl to his feet is Speedy Gray. You’ll have to forgive him, he’s a Texan. That…is Shining Lighttower, pride of the all-Navajo platoon. He’s an Injun.”

“How, white man.”

“He’s a card,” Brown explained.

“Ugh.”

As promised, the wait till the new class was one of easy duty. For a few hours in the morning they performed menial tasks in the nearby barracks, mainly consisting of the eternal search for cigarette butts. For the most part they caught up on rest and found it hard to become accustomed to the new mantle of freedom and respectability they wore. The scars of boot camp were slow in healing. They walked and acted as though they were treading on hot coals, expecting to have their heads torn off at any moment. They ventured out and walked about the base with the timidity of curious puppies.

Each morning the student buglers and drummers fell out opposite their tents to blow reveille. The fifty field musics blasting at one time nearly blew the tents down. The din was awful. Then they’d parade the length of the base and return to the tents to blow for another ten minutes as the recipients lay shaken.

“More, more!” L.Q. would scream each morning in anguish. And the buglers generally obliged as the tents nearly buckled. They soon stopped calling for more.

Danny was content to remain on the base, take in a movie, write letters, or bat the breeze. He did look up Beller at the beer hall for the promised brew, but returned to his tent early. The beer had the same sour taste it had had the last time he tried it a year before. Many evenings after chow he donned his greens, as prescribed at this military showplace, and visited Norton, who lived in a tent area not too far away.

One night, a week after boot camp, he felt a siege of loneliness falling over him. This feeling had become more and more severe with each passing day. He showered after late chow, dressed, and picked up a liberty card at the First Sergeant’s office.

“Where you going, Danny?” Ski asked.

“Into Dago, how about coming?”

“Naw,” the feathermerchant lamented, “got to save my dough. Besides, there’s nothing there. The guys all say it’s lousy.”

“I just feel jumpy. I’ve got to see somebody but a gyrene. We been locked in for three months. Besides, I want to get my blouse cut down, buy a barracks cap and get some pictures taken. My folks are riding me for a picture.”

“You know something, Danny?”

“What?”

“I’d be a little scared of going into town.”

“Scared?”

“Kinda. We been away from people so long, I mean other people…and women. You know, strange town, strange uniform.”

“Yeah, it does feel funny at that. Want anything in Dago?”

“You could get my basic medal and pistol, bayonet, and BAR bars. Also a sharpshooter’s medal.”

“O.K.”

“Take it easy.”

“How do I look?”

“Like a dream. I’ll wait up for you so you can tell me what it’s like.”

Danny crossed the parade grounds, past the long line of yellow buildings, and down the road of palmed and lawned streets to the main gate. He rubbed the sleeve of his blouse over the buckle on his fair leather belt and squared away his cap a dozen times. He approached a guard and handed him the liberty card.

“Where is your battle pin, Marine?”

Danny jumped like a startled fawn, flushed, and dug it from his pocket. He put the tie pin on and passed through the gate. His heart thumped as he made it to a bus stop and inquired the way into San Diego. As the bus moved past the aircraft plants, an uneasy sensation took hold of him. Although there were several Marines on the bus, he felt alone, as though he were either naked or dressed in some outlandish costume and everyone was staring at him.

After he had debarked and walked down the gaudy tin-plated Broadway the feeling became more apparent. He couldn’t understand it. What was there to be afraid of? Almost like the tightness he had known before the opening kickoff in a big game.

Blinding, blinking lights. Hawkers. Dim lights and soft music of the hundred bars. The sea of white-capped sailor hats bobbing up and down, the drunks, the noise, the litter. It all blended into a symphony of discord that set his head reeling.

They say it is easy to spot a new Marine. He has that boot camp stare. They knew the stare in San Diego and had become rich on it. It takes a year of wear for the wool nap of Marine greens to wear down and acquire the knifelike sharpness of a veteran. The boot’s uniform wrinkles easily and fits badly. It is easy to see the awe of a boy who has never been away from home. You can spot him in a minute.

The merchant who sold him his basic medal and barracks cap and the photographer who literally jerked him in off the sidewalk had well-oiled tongues and open palms. After an hour a gum-popping floozy took his pictures and he hastened to return to the base.

He walked through the gate disgusted, with himself and with San Diego. As he retraced his steps and crossed the dark parade ground he felt more alone and confused than ever. He trudged toward his tent. Baltimore…she had run down the platform waving and stopped as the train took up speed…Danny gritted his teeth. He halted before his tent and drew a deep breath and smiled at his buddies. They were gathered about L.Q.’s sack playing poker.

“Back so early?”

“Yeah, not much doing.”

“How was Dago?”

“Oh, not bad…not bad. Got an open hand there?”

“Step right up, Cousin Dan. Your money is good.”

“Er…I never played poker before, so you guys will have to sort of help me along.”

The course at radio school was divided into four parts: code, Naval procedure, theory, and field practice. When Class 34 formed and moved into the barracks of Signal School, it was a relief to Danny’s restlessness. The course wasn’t particularly difficult, but he found it fascinating. His day was full and the evenings were largely given to helping the Indian and Ski with studies that seemed to throw them.

As in all Marine schools, the teachers were experts. Radiomen who compared in their way with the illustrious rifle teachers at Matthews. Old salts from the Fleet, all were Tech or Master Tech Sergeants who could read and transmit code in their sleep. As in boot camp and on the rifle range, the lessons were drilled home with hours of practice and study.

Major Bolger’s Signal School taught a shorter course than that given the prewar men. Old-timers were stationed aboard ships and large land stations that required high speed operators. The new men learned low speed field operation. A mere eighteen words of code and twenty-two in English to pass. In the expanding Corps the slant was for men to work the sets they’d use in battle.

With each eventful day, a lonely night. Soon Danny Forrester knew the loneliness of soldiering. Cigarettes and poker. Lonely men need diversion from work and the hours of talk about women and home. He could not clarify the riddle of Kathy. Was it love or circumstances? Was it right or wrong to hold on to her? His letters were almost as impersonal as hers were endearing. He dared not speak of the hunger in his heart—she might drift from him. This thought chilled him. His mother, father, his home and friends all seemed hazy. Only Kathy filled his thoughts. He wondered if this worship wasn’t out of proportion. Taps—and men without women slipped between sheets of their empty beds and thought.

Sunday afternoon. Weekend liberty. Danny returned from the usual Sunday chow of fried chicken to the deserted barracks. On the veranda, a line of mattresses lay over the rail being aired. Other Marines lay in swim trunks sunning in the quiet, lazy dog, their muscled torsos reflecting the light. In the barracks two fellows went about fixing “short sheets” to snarl their returning buddies.

At one end of the enormous room Marion’s record player spun on. The music haunted the empty place. Danny crushed out a cigarette, threw it into the sandbox beside a dozen others he had smoked. He lay back on his bunk and stared aimlessly at the ceiling, melancholy sweeping into every pore of his body. A pain of loneliness almost sent him screaming. He rushed to his locker, dressed, and left the cursed barracks. He walked the length of the hot, empty parade ground until he came to the tents of the Pioneer battalion. Thank God Norton was there and alone.