Homer, the wool-hat, was right about Bos having it a Jap that night when he fired into the jungle. We discovered it today when I was returning with Al from the beach. It is not a very good beach, being made up of rather sharp coral and you can't swim very far for fear of sharks. I never know about them. You hear so many stories out here in the East. Some say that they will attack on sight and others that unless there is blood in the water, which rouses their appetites and tends to infuriate them, they will not bother you at all. What I do know is that there are plenty of them about and that I'm not taking any chances or allowing any of the men to take chances.
As a rule I go down with them in the morning for a swim merely to keep an eye on them. We don't only have sharks but we usually have a large audience of fuzzy-wuzzies as well. They have discovered the swimming hour and come down every day about that time, men, women, and children, to watch us. Homer, who has managed, during Ms amorous adventures, some means of communicating with them, and Solomon, a black boy who worked once at Port Moresby, say that it is our white skins that amuse them. They never seem able to get used to the whiteness, and they even bring friends through the thick jungle from the next village to watch us and especially to comment upon the extreme hairiness of the Sergeant and the milky-white streak of skin around the middle of Homer who never tans but only turns shrimp pink. At first their presence embarrassed us and we took to wearing shorts, but after a time we abandoned all coverings and took to swimming naked again which is much more pleasurable. I must say I have no feelings of modesty left. It's a little as if that string of dark-skinned people covered with grease and yaws, lined up on the edge of the jungle laughing and making what are clearly dirty remarks, were no more than a bunch of animals.
Al, the Kansas boy, and I came up from the beach today together, and as we passed through the jagged coral that makes a kind of barrier between the jungle and the beach, we caught a whiff downwind of a stench concerning which there could be no doubts. It was sweetish and sickly and repulsive. It was the smell of a dead man in a hot climate, a smell which I had encountered on the other islands once or twice before I was buried away here in this bloody hole. Al had never smelled it before since he has not been in action, but when I looked at him I saw that he understood.
"Something dead around here," he said, adding that all dead animals smelled alike. But the odd thing was that the big strapping Kansas farm boy had turned a little pale.
"We'd better go and investigate it," I said. "It'll only get worse."
So cautiously for the coral could cut through the canvas of our sneakers we worked our way upwind toward the smell. We were on the right track because the further we went the stronger became the repulsive odor. And then suddenly behind a clump of bushes we came upon the Jap.
He was lying on his back with one hand clutched at a gunshot wound in his abdomen, and the body had begun to swell so that the whole abdomen was hideously inflated. The lips, as in such cases, were drawn back to expose the projecting teeth, as if at the very end he had been grinning hideously. There was another hole in the chest just below where the ribs are joined, so Homer, the wool-hat, shooting blindly in the dark, must have gotten him in two places.
Death, the quiet death of old age or after a long illness when it comes as a relief, or even the death of a suicide, is not in itself distressing, since it seems to carry a certain sense of release and of naturalness. It is in the order of things, or someone has taken his own Life because it has become unbearable. But I have never succeeded in reconciling myself to the death of the young who wanted to live and had a pattern of experience and achievement yet before them to fulfill. There is a shocking sense of unfulfillment in the death of the young in battle. To me, that is what makes the idea of war insupportable and irreconcilable, particularly in the somewhat meaningless wars of our time which are caused by the confusion of man and of his machines, and men no longer die fighting hand to hand but are more often than not killed by some projectile coming from a wholly unseen point of departure or by stepping on some hidden explosive monstrosity against which there is no defense with not even the satisfaction of combat spirit roused by the proper functioning of glands. Today men die not with a spirit of fury or gallantry or even any longer in the sense that they are crusaders. The only emotion they know is a humiliating fear, without relief or compensation, since one cannot have a hand-to-hand struggle with a mortar shell or a mine.
I once saw a dead general but he left me unmoved because it seemed to me that, despite the fact that he had been blown up in a jeep, he had got what he wanted and what was coming to him. He who lives by the sword ... I confess that I was more moved by the sight of this dead, swollen, wretched little Jap than at the sight of the shattered body of the dead general. It seems to me that at the sight of death one must, provided he has any brains or humanity, ask, "Why?" and so as I stood there looking down, I could not help asking myself why this poor dead little yellow man should have been transported thousands of miles from his home to be killed while trying to steal piled-up, slowly rotting food out of an Army warehouse which had been virtually forgotten.
As near as one could judge he had probably been little more than a boy and undoubtedly he had no idea why he was fighting or what it was all about. But in that he was no different from Homer, the wool-hat, or a great many other common soldiers I have talked to in our own Army. But here he was, dead, in a world which made no sense at all,
To Al, I said, "Poor bastard! Well have to bury him quickly before he stinks up the whole camp," and then I saw that Al's face had turned from gray to white. A moment later he began to retch and vomit The effect of the corpse on Al, who was a farm boy, surprised me, but I felt sorry for him. I said, "Come along. IT! send Homer and Meyer back to bury him. If Homer can stand the smell of these fuzzy-wuzzies, he won't mind this."
But Al said, "If you don't mind, Captain, I want to go back to the beach."
For a moment while he continued retching I was puzzled. Then I said, "Okay," and he went off across the white coral and plunged again into the brilliant blue sea and I understood what he was doing. He was young. He was washing the smell of death off him.
Back at the camp I found Meyer washing his clothes and Homer just sitting with his backside against the shady wall of the hut. He was chewing tobacco and playing a game of seeing how far he could spit. I called them together and said, "There's a dead Jap down there by the beach. You two fellows get a couple of shovels and cover him up deep or he's likely to smell. Dig the grave up leeward side, and when it's dug you can take the jeep and a cable and drag him into it!"
A gleam of pleasure came into Homer's weak blue eyes. "So I got him, did I?" he said.
"Yes, you got him in two places right through the middle."
"I gotta see that!" he said. "Come on, Meyer." It was the first time I had ever seen him move quickly. Meyer simply stood there, a look of fear in his big deer eyes. "There must be others around, Captain," he said. "He wouldn't be alone."
"Sure there are." I said. "You saw their footprints. But as long as we feed 'em, they'll let us alone."
Then Homer came back carrying two shovels and called out, "Come on, Meyer. I want to see the sonofabitch!" and they went off together in the direction I indicated.
A little later I saw Al coming back, a towel wrapped about his tanned naked body, and I called out. "Come in for a minute. A drink'll make you feel better."
He came in looking rather shamefaced and said, "I don't drink usually but I'll take one this time."
The clear salt water had brought back his color, but he still seemed a little shaky. "I'm sorry, Captain," he said sheepishly. "I don't know what happened to me. I wasn't scared. It wasn't that. I only saw one dead person before and that was my grandfather and he looked kind of peaceful... in his coffin... and right. I didn't get sick like this at all."
I laughed. "It's nothing. It often affects people like that. Some people can't even stand the sight of blood. Sometimes they get used to it and sometimes they don't."
He took the drink, swallowed, and coughed. "Maybe," he said, "it would be a good idea for me to go back there and bury the Jap alone... just to get over this."
"You don't need to worry. Homer will enjoy it. He vomited the other night because he was scared but this kind of thing won't bother him." I grinned. "Knowing Homer, he may even enjoy it."
"Don't think it was because I was scared."
"Sure I don't think that."
"It was just like I'd eaten something that made me throw up."
"You feel better now?"
"Yes." Then he looked directly at me and said, "Excuse me, Captain, if I ask you something?"
"Sure... go ahead."
"When do you think we'll get out of here if we ever do?"
"I don't know."
"I'd like to get out," the boy said. "On active service. I'm not afraid of fighting but this is bell. I'm twenty-two and I've been out here already almost three years wasting my time, wasting my life. It wouldn't be so bad if I felt I was getting anywhere or that any of this meant anything." He looked down at his empty glass. "But it won't get anywhere. It'll just begin all over again."
"What makes you think that?"
"If it isn't Germany or Japan I'll be somebody else unless..."
"Unless what?"
"Unless we finish the job right and tell the others what they've got to do."
I didn't answer him for a moment and then I said, "You seem to have been doing a lot of thinking."
He grinned. "What else is there to do in this hellhole?"
A look almost of excitement came into his face, and I realized suddenly that all along he had wanted to talk to me but was too shy. Now with the hot, unaccustomed whisky in his stomach he had courage.
He said, "You know, I look at these fuzzy-wuzzies or that poor dead Jap and wonder what it's all about. And sometimes I think about the farm and the way things are there. You know a farm is awfully close to the way nature operates. It's a kind of pattern. It's pretty complex too a let more complex than most people realize. It's complex, but it's got to have direction and some kind of orderly pattern. You don't just say to all the animals, "Now we'll have democracy. You take over..." I mean the hogs and chickens and cattle... If you take over and run things. Make up a government for yourself and take over." That would be a hell of a mess. The cattle would eat up everything so there wasn't any forage when winter came. The hogs would eat the ducks and chickens and there'd be yackety-yack and arguments about everything. No, a farm, which is as good a pattern as any, has to be managed and it has to be managed by the smartest animal on it or everything goes to hell. And who's the smartest animal? Why, the fanner of course. He's what holds it together and makes it possible for all the animals to live at all."
There was a light in his eye and I did not interrupt him. I look at these fuzzy-wuzzies. Why, they're no smarter than our collie dog or one of our brood sows... maybe they aren't as smart as a sow who's the smartest animal on a farm. What I can't get into my head is that a lot of damned fools want to set the fuzzy-wuzzies free and tell them that now they must practice democracy. And that poor Jap what the hell did he know about anything? He just went on breeding when he shouldn't have bred, until there got to be too many people and all of 'em were living half like animals. And they were used just like animals sent out to be slaughtered just the way we'd send steers to market." He put down his glass and scratched his blond curly head in a puzzled fashion. "Sometimes I think we've gotten a long way... too long a way... from such things as natural law. We get sentimental about people and we keep alive a lot of people to breed who nature would eliminate for the good of everybody. And we talk about making people free who don't want to be free and about giving democracy to people who have never heard of it and couldn't understand it." He stood up suddenly and said, "We're just goddamn muddles. That's all. That's why it'll happen all over again until somebody like us Americans says, "Listen, you! This is what you're going to do for your own damned good and the good of the rest of the world!" Then maybe well have peace and order and there won't be any more wars."
He hitched the towel tighter around his narrow waist.
I said, "There's something in what you say. God knows there's too many people in the world, and most of 'em don't care much whether they live or die, and some of them aren't much above the level of animals. That poor little yellow bastard with the holes in him was probably like that. Eat and breed and make Banzai charges when somebody... some sonofabitch told him to."
Evidently the boy didn't want to talk any more. He said, "Thanks, Captain, for the drink. I feel a lot better. Excuse me if I talked too much. I think till my head aches. I want to get out of here before I go nuts. When I think of all I might be doing back home instead of sitting here rotting away, guarding a lot of spoiled food, I damned near go crazy!" He looked at me suddenly. "It's a waste you know... a waste people and the world can't afford when you multiply it by millions. Hell!" lie added. "Sometimes I get sick of the lousy reformers!"
I watched him cross the brilliant sun-drenched strip of white coral and I thought, "There's something in what he says and they'll be back after him when it happens all over again." Because I knew that he was right. Germany and England and France were probably finished. There was only one nation strong enough to bring order to the world, if it played its cards right. What would happen if all the young people in the world rose up and said, "We've had enough. We won't go on with this damned nonsense. Let us alone to work and create and build"? But that, of course, would never happen. They'd simply go on being killed or rotting away in the abysmal deadly brutishness of a soldier's life.
Anyway, Al had a chance to let off a little steam. If he lived and went back he'd be a good citizen, for at least he was one of those who think things out. He didn't live by emotion and cheap slogans and millenniums.
A little before eating time the Sergeant came across the white sand to my hut. He said, "I just heard something over the radio. They've used something called an atomic bomb on the Japs. It seems they blew up a whole big town old men, women, children, and everything with one bomb."
"I suppose it was bound to come some day."
"Well, it's something I wouldn't want on my conscience. It's something I wouldn't want anything to do with. I'd be ashamed before my own children... If I had any that I knew of."
"It's just bigger than any other bomb. That's the only difference."
"No, it ain't," said the Sergeant.
"What do you mean?"
"It's because we done it first. We hadn't any right to do it... at least not to be the first ones. It's horrible! It makes me kind of ashamed of being an American."
"Take it easy."
Then suddenly he burst out. "I am takin' it easy. I never had any proper schooling like a lot of these here scientists and I ain't never been President of the United States. I've been an immoral sonofabitch all my life but there are some things I wouldn't do. Whoever decided to do that is a cheap ignorant sonofabitch. Somebody's got to have standards."
Then as if I had been responsible for the bomb he turned his back and stalked out of the hut and across the blinding white sand. After he had gone I lay down on my Army cot and lay there for a long time thinking... so long indeed that I forgot all about eating. I kept piecing together what Al and the Sergeant had said and, fitted into a pattern, it made great sense. They were both ashamed in their ways of being American and neither one knew quite why. I kept thinking back to Jefferson and his faith in the common people who never got very far away from the realities or from the same pattern Al had described in talking about his family farm. They never had their common sense or their moral sense distorted by ambitions and glory and egotism or science and intrigue and vanity... or, worst of all, by the feeling that they were the saviors of mankind. They never felt that warm, almost sexual glow of sanctimony which afflicts the frustrated perverted false Christers. The common man! Hell! There wasn't any such thing. There were apes like Homer, the wool-hat, but you didn't shed tears and sanctify them for being apes.
