Battle Cry - Leon Uris [113]
The swabbies cooked up a turkey dinner with all the trimmings, but that didn’t help much. Food wasn’t what we were hungry for. Of course, an old salt like me didn’t get homesick. I only wished they’d give the men liberty, so I could get plastered too. L.Q. tried to snap us out of it, but somehow his jokes didn’t seem so funny. Times like this you could feel the dirty, rotten, stinking hunger of soldiering.
Ski opened his letter and read it once more. It was the last one from his sister. It told of the complete failure of his dream of only a year ago. Susan had been thrown out of her father’s house and was living in a hotel with her husband. His mother’s health was failing, mostly out of grief for him. And his sister, only a child, was already dating servicemen and thinking of quitting school to take a high-paying shipyard job.
“Come on, Ski,” Danny said, “they just blew chow down. They got a nice dinner fixed, turkey and the works.”
The bosun’s whistle squealed through the ship’s intercom. “Now hear this, now hear this. Shore leave will be granted to all Marines with the rating of Staff NCO and above.”
“Blow it out!” a lower pay grade man screamed.
As for me, it was just in time. I was going nuts. I figured that Burnside and me could get drunk enough for the whole squad. I quickly doffed my dungarees and dug up a set of greens from the stored locker. The last button on my blouse was set, when Andy came up behind me with a very soulful look.
“Nothing doing, Andy. I’ll blow my cork if I stick around this hole any more,” I said.
“I just thought, maybe…well, I told you how things were with Pat and me.” He turned away. I wasn’t getting soft, but after all, I thought, a good sarge has to look after his boys.
“Andy,” I called. Andy spun around quickly. There was a big grin all over his face. I peeled off my blouse and threw it to him. Andy threw his arms about me.
“Who the hell wants a musclebound Swede slobbering all over you on Christmas Eve? Go on, get the hell out of here before I reverse my course.” I went to my bunk, thoroughly disgusted with my sentimental outburst.
Gunner Keats entered our quarters and summoned Marion and me.
“Seen Gomez, Mac?”
“No, sir, I haven’t.”
“Have you, Hodgkiss?”
“Er…no, sir.”
“I thought so, he went over the side. When he comes in, no matter what the hour, I want him sent up to my quarters. He’s going to ride this trip out in the brig.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Corporal Hodgkiss, you seem to be the only man in the company I can trust. I want you to take the quarterdeck watch from twenty to twenty-four hundred,” he said. “Here is a list of the men aboard rating liberty and I want each one checked off as he comes up the gangplank. If any of the lower pay grades try sneaking aboard, you are to call the ship’s brig.”
“Yes, sir.”
The Gunner turned to go. I followed him to the hatchway and tapped his shoulder. “I know what you are going to ask me, Mac, and the answer is no.” Old Jack Keats was a Mustang, up from the ranks, and he knew how an enlisted man felt on Christmas Eve in a foreign port. It wasn’t so many years ago that he and I had been corporals together, tossing pisscutters in Shanghai. He rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “For Chrisake, Mac, if you take them ashore get them back before Hodgkiss gets off duty or we’ll all be up the creek without a paddle.”
“Merry Christmas, Jack,” I said.
“Go to hell, Mac.”
I gathered the squad in the head and locked the door. “Now look, you bastards, you all meet me in front of the Parliament House at twenty-three fifty, and God help the guy that doesn’t show on time. Remember, Mary goes off the watch at midnight and we’ve got to be back aboard. Lighttower!”
“Ugh.”
“You come with me.