Battle Cry - Leon Uris [128]
Below us there was a small stream that ran toward the sea. Across the stream was a thick woods which we presumed was infested with Japs. In the CP we had an excellent vantage point. We could look down on the enemy without being seen ourselves.
As the day drew to a close, reconnaissance planes buzzed the woods past us for photos and a destroyer dropped anchor offshore to stand by for additional gunfire support. We set up our radios and dug in on the rocky deck.
I gave my squad the glad tidings. “You guys can take off your shoes tonight.”
“Man, that sounds like money from home without writing for it.”
As boondockers came off, a terrible smell arose over the bivouac. We hadn’t seen our feet in over a week. I tugged on my socks and they disintegrated to shreds. I scraped a half inch of hard caked mud off and looked between my toes. As I had suspected from the pain, they were turning green with fungus growths.
“Don’t scrape that stuff off,” Pedro warned. “I’ll be around to put some joyjuice on them, Mac.”
At least we had the jump on the fungus which was growing in our ears, but the feet would be a long time healing. And a long time healing the crud that drained our weight and sucked every ounce of energy until often we ran on sheer will alone. And the malaria which was cropping up, and the yellow jaundice which made our atrabine tans yellower. We were grateful we couldn’t see each other’s faces under the grizzly-bear beards and layers of hardened sweat and mud.
In honor of the shoe doffing, we all took whores’ baths in half helmets of water. It was very refreshing. Burnside and me even omitted the usual growl about wasting the stuff.
“I’d sure like to brush my teeth again before I die.”
“Just think, I used to fight with my old lady about taking a bath once a week.”
We settled around our foxholes near the radio and batted the breeze.
“I hear say, cousin, that Dugout Doug done reported that all Jap resistance is over on Guadalcanal. Some rear echelon guy heard it over shortwave.”
“Mighty nice of Doug. He’ll get another medal for that.”
“Get any good souvenirs today?”
“Me and Danny went hunting last night but them riflemen don’t leave too much.”
“I hear some of the guys in Fox Company can shoot a Jap at fifty yards and have him field-stripped before he hits the deck, dead.”
“I got mine,” Spanish Joe said holding up a bottle of gold teeth.
“If you want to go around with your pliers yanking teeth out of pore old dead Japs, that’s your business. They stink too much for me.”
“Anybody here got a weed?”
“What do you think this is, a USO?”
“I got one left,” I said. “Who’s got a match?”
“Not me, gave up smoking, it’s bad for my health.”
The cigarette lit, we passed it around, each man taking a drag while the others watched cautiously. When it got back to me I had to slip a pin through the end to keep from burning my lips.
“I’d sure like to be in a nice clean bed with a broad snuggled up next to me.”
“Knock it off, sex is a reverent subject around here.”
“I ain’t had one on in a week.”
“I hear that malaria will make us sterile.”
“I’d sure like to find out.”
“You wouldn’t know what to do with it if you had it.”
Andy broke out a deck of greasy tattered cards. Each one was bent or torn so that even the rankest player could read them. He dealt.
“This is the old legit, gentlemen, five card draw.”
“Hmmm,” L.Q. said, “I’ll open.”
“Easy, L.Q.,” Forrester said. “You already owe me six million, three hundred thousand, four hundred and six dollars and eight cents.”
“I guess,” L.Q. said, “I’ll have to dig into my assets. I’ll open for the Golden Gate Bridge.”
“The Golden Gate in forty-eight, the bread line in forty-nine.”
“I’ll call that with the U.S.S. South Dakota.”
“I call with my cundrum factory and raise you all my whorehouses in South Carolina.