Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific (6 page)

We were circling, I know now, while awaiting word to head shoreward in what was to be our first amphibious maneuver. When it came, our boat’s motor roared into full voice. The prow seemed to dig into the water and the boat to flatten out. Mercifully, the rocking motion was abated.

“Down!”

The boats fanned out into assault line. We roared shoreward. The spray settled coolly on my face. There was nothing but the sound of the motors. There came a rough jolt, followed by the crunching sound of the keel beneath us plowing into the sand. We had landed.

“Up and over!”

I held my rifle high, grasped the gunwale with the other hand, and vaulted into the surf. I landed in cold water just above my calves. But the weight of my pack and weapons brought me almost to my knees. I was soaked. Weighted now by water as well as gear, we pelted up the beach.

“Hit the deck!”

We did. When we arose, after working our weapons against an imaginary defender, the sand clung to us like flour to a fillet.

The sweat of the march already had enflamed the moving parts of the flesh; the salt of the sea was into it, burning, boring; now to this was added the ubiquitous sand. The order came to fall in and to march off to our new camp, about a mile farther on, and as we did, the pain was excruciating. Each step, each thoughtless swing of the arm, seemed to draw a ragged blade across crotch and armpits.

When we had hobbled the distance, we came to a thick pine wood. On one side of the road the secondary growth had been cleaned out, and there the wood was more of a glade. In it were erected three pyramidal tents—one for the galley, another for sick bay, a third for the company commander. They fell us out here and told us this was our camp.

A cold rain had begun to fall as the compound began to be divided and subdivided into platoon and squad areas. Pup tents began to appear—not in careful, precise rows as in the old days, but carefully staggered à la the new passion for camouflage.

Exhausted as we might have been, suffering from the irritations of the march and the sea, hungry, shivering now in this cold rain—the business of setting up camp should have been a grim and cheerless affair. But it was not. We did not even curse the officers. Suddenly the thing became exciting, and the heat of the excitement was far too much for cold rain or empty stomachs or aching bones.

Soon we were limping about in search of pine needles to place beneath our blankets.

What a bed! Dark green blanket above, another below, and beneath it all the pliant pungent earth and fragrant pine needles.

As I say, we hurried about, and soon the glade resounded to our calls, the shouting back and forth and the good-natured swearing at the clumsy ones who could not then, or ever, erect a pup tent. And the rain—that baleful, wet intruder—perhaps confused at being the only mournful one among our carefree company, alternated between a drizzle, a drip and a downpour.

When we had ditched our tents—that is, dug a trough around them so that the ground within the tent would remain dry—we heard the call for chow. The food was hot, as was the coffee, and men living in the open demand no more. It had grown late, and it was in darkness that we finished our meal and washed our metal mess gear.

Returning to our company, we came through F Company’s area, tripping over pegs, lurching against tents and provoking howls of wrath from the riflemen within.

Penetrating references were made to machine gunners, and there were lucid descriptions of the lineage from which all gunners sprang. But such maledictions, though there is about them a certain grand vulgarity, are unprintable.

So ended—in rain, in darkness, in a volley of oaths—our first day in the field. We had qualified for the ranks of the gloriously raggedy-assed.

Next day I met Runner. He had been in Hoosier’s squad for the past few days, a late arrival, but I had not encountered him. He was coming away from Chuckler’s tent, laughing, tossing a wisecrack over his shoulder, and we bumped into each other. He almost knocked me over, moving with that brisk powerful walk. That was the thing about Runner: those strong, phenomenally developed legs. He had been a sprint man in prep school—a good one, as I learned later—and the practice had left its mark in those bulging calves.

Runner fitted us like a glove. His admiration for Chuckler was akin to hero worship. But Chuckler had the strength to prevent that without offending the Runner, and I suspect that he took a human delight in the adulation of the dark-haired boy from Buffalo, who spoke so knowingly of formal dances and automobiles, a world quite apart from Chuckler’s Louisville rough-and-tumble.

As friendship became firmer among us four, it became clear that Chuckler’s word was going to carry the most weight, simply because he could rely on Runner’s support.

So Chuckler became the leader, a fact which neither Hoosier nor I ever admitted and which Runner indicated only by his deference to him.

It is odd, is it not, that there should have been need of a leader? But there was. Two men do not need a leader, I suppose; but three do, and four most certainly, else who will settle arguments, plan forays, suggest the place or form of amusement, and generally keep the peace?

This was the beginning of our good times here in the boondocks. We slept on the ground and had but a length of canvas for a home, but we had begun to pride ourselves on being able to take it. Under such conditions, it was natural that the good times should be uproarious and, often, violent.

A day’s training could not tire such young spirits or bodies. If there were no night exercises, or company guard, we were free from after chow until reveille. Sometimes we would gather around a fire, burning pine knots and drinking from a bottle of corn liquor bought from local moonshiners. The pine knots burned with a fragrant brilliance, as did the white lightning in our bellies.

Wilber “Bud” Conley (“Runner”)

We would sing or wrestle around the fire. There would be other fires; and sometimes rival singing contests, which soon degenerated into shouting matches, developed. Occasionally a luckless possum would blunder into the circle, and there would arise a floundering and a yelling followed by a frantic shucking of shoes, with which life was pounded out of the poor little animal. Then the men who loved to sharpen their blades would whip out these razor bayonets and skin the beast. Its tiny, greasy carcass would be consigned to the flames, and a pitiful few mouths it was that ever got to taste of the poor thing.

At other times, Hoosier and Chuckler and Runner and I would gather after chow and walk the two miles from camp to the highway, the sound of our going muffled by the thick dust underfoot; sometimes silent in that violet night with the soft pine wood at either side; sometimes boisterous, dancing in the dust, leaping upon one another, shouting for the sake of hearing our voices flung back by the hollow darkness; sometimes sober, smoking, talking in low voices of things at home and of when or where we would ever get into action.

The highway was a midway. It was lined with honky-tonks. To reach it was to sight a new world: one moment the soft dark and the smell of the wood, our shoes padding in the dust; in the next, cars and military vehicles hurtling down the cement strip, the crude shacks with their bare electric bulbs shining unashamed, their rough joints plastered with Coca-Cola and cigarette ads.

There were no girls, though. Sex was farther up the road, in Morehead City and New Bern. Here it was drinking and fighting. There was a U.S.O. at Greenville, but marines from the boondocks, clad in their dungarees, rarely went there except at the risk of being picked up by the M.P.’s for being out of uniform. Chuckler and I chanced it, once, and were rewarded with delicious hamburgers.

The Green Lantern became my battalion’s hangout, probably because it stood closest to us on that garish highway, on the corner where the dirt road met the concrete and seemed to slip beneath it. It had the attraction that banks advertise, conveniently located.

Fights were common in The Green Lantern. They were always just ending or just beginning or just brewing no matter when you arrived. Every morning at sick call the evidence was plain: gentian violet daubed with a sort of admiring liberality over bruised cheekbones and torn knuckles.

We had our first adventure in another of the shacks. It was on a weekend and we were in full uniform, having come back to the huts and been given a rare liberty. The four of us were en route to Morehead City at night and drinking along the way. We hitchhiked because we could not afford the exorbitant taxi fares. But we tired of fruitlessly thumbing for rides and frequently crossed the road into the shacks. In one, when we had discovered our money was getting low, I proposed stealing a case of beer. The cases were stacked up at the back of the room in full view.

“You’re nuts,” Chuckler growled in a low voice. “You’ll never make it. He can see every move you make.”

I persisted. “No. We’ll go to the head—it’s right near the beer. The door opens inward. We’ll crawl out and work one of the cases loose. He can’t see over the counter. We’ll push it right under his nose, and when we get near the door—we’ll just jump up and run for it.”

Chuckler grinned. “Okay.”

It was smooth. We worked a case free, and, worming on our bellies, silently conveyed it to the door beneath the very nose of the proprietor. We were as two caterpillars connected by the case of beer, a sort of copula. Only the endurance of the boondocks enabled us to hold that bulky, heavy case a few inches from the floor, so that it would emit no telltale scraping while we squirmed doorward.

When we had arrived there, we got our knees under us, secured the case between us, came halfway erect and shot through the open door like Siamese twins.

It was exhilarating. The night air was like a buoyant tonic as we streaked for the highway, then across it impervious to the breakneck traffic streaming up and down. On the other side, we dropped the case on the shoulder of the road and rolled down the bank, laughing, whooping gleefully, half hysterical. We would all be six bottles of beer richer, and the night seemed to stretch out in time.

Chuckler crawled back up to the road, while I remained to relieve myself. When I returned I saw he was not alone. A man was with him, and he spoke to me as I approached.

“Take that damn case back,” he said. It was the proprietor.

I pretended a jolly laugh. “Take it back yourself,” I said. Then I saw he had a gun. He waved it at me. I could see he was angry. But I was stupid, and when he repeated: “Take it back,” I thought he was going to shoot me. But he merely was tightening his grip on the pistol. My bravado departed. With Chuckler, I took hold of the case and carried it back across the road, the proprietor covering us from behind with his pistol.

Shame burned my cheeks upon our re-entry. Runner hid a grin behind his hand. We marched to the back of the shack, like men walking the plank, and restored the case to its place.

Compassion is a specialty; it is a hidden talent. The proprietor had compassion. When we turned, he was walking behind the bar toward Runner and Hoosier. His pistol must have been pocketed at the door. He had conveyed to everyone in the shack the notion that our unsuccessful robbery was a great joke. He had four bottles of beer opened when we rejoined Runner and Hoosier.

“Here, boys,” he said, “have one on me.”

We told him we were sorry. He grinned.

“Lucky for you Ah’m soft-hearted. When Ah saw yawl run out of heah with that case, Ah was so damn mad Ah felt like shooting yuh right in the ass. Reckon you lucky Ah changed mah mind.”

We laughed and drank up. He grinned again, pleased that he had mastered us and could dispense with punishment like the gracious conqueror he was.

One could always bargain for trouble in those shacks. And one could always bargain for trouble of a different sort in the cafés of the camp towns—New Bern, Morehead City, Wilmington. I call them cafés, because that was how their proprietors styled them. They were hardly better than the shacks, except that they were on the streets of the towns rather than the highway and they had paint on the walls.

But there was also this great difference: there were girls. They came from the town and had no connection with the cafés. Probably the proprietors encouraged their presence, perhaps presented them with favors, but they did not have the official standing, to use a euphemism, as do dime-a-dance girls or the professional teasers of the big-city clip joints.

In the marine towns of New Bern and Morehead City—where the streets were thronged with green on Saturdays—there were cafés at every turn: cheap, dingy, the air banked with clouds of cigarette smoke, and the juke-box wail so piercing that one half expected to see it stir up eddies in the lazy smoke.

Always the girls.

They sat at marble-topped tables where the faded wide-ringed imprints of soda glasses were linked to one another by the newer, narrower marks of the beer bottles. This was the beer hall, superimposed on the soda parlor.

They sat at the tables, drinking slowly, smoking, giggling, their bodies seeming to strain to be free of their tight clothing—mouths working, sometimes with gum, sometimes with words, but no matter, for it was the eyes that counted, the eyes roving, raking the tables, parading the aisles, searching … hunting … hungering for the bold, answering look … and when it came, the deliberate crushing of the cigarette, the languid getting to the feet and straightening of the skirt, the sauntering, thin-hipped progress to the table, as though they had sat through endless showings of “Hell’s Angels” and had sex down stride perfect.