Battle Cry - Leon Uris [237]
“He’s right, dammit!” Andy cried. “When you think they’ll send us back—in a box maybe!”
“Be quiet,” L.Q. said.
“First the Feathermerchant, then Levin and Burnside. Do you think they’re finished? Hell no! The Corps will get us all. If you ain’t lucky enough to get a bullet you’ll get it the other way—the bug, the crud, jungle rot, yellow jaundice, dengue.”
“You’re feeling sorry for yourself,” Marion said.
“What’s the matter? Marines can’t feel sorry for themselves? Marines ain’t allowed to get homesick?” Andy shouted.
“Why don’t you let me write you out a T.S. chit and go over and cry on the chaplain’s shoulder,” L.Q. spat.
“Sure, Mac sold us a bill of goods. Everybody is selling us a bill of goods.”
“Go up to Lulu and cry with some of the doggies. They feel sorry for themselves too.”
Danny tossed and clenched his teeth as another pain tore through his body.
“Go on, Mary, tell him something fancy from the goddam books you read.”
“Why don’t you shove off, Andy?”
“Poor bastard. Look at him…you like to see a guy like that cry?”
“Why don’t you grab a ship and go down and play with the Kiwi birds, Andy? I think you’re getting yellow.”
“Stop it, you two,” Marion hissed. “We’re all in the same boat. What were you looking for when you joined the Corps?”
“Yeah, Semper Fidelis, buddy,” Andy snarled and walked from the tent.
For three days they kept a constant watch over the fever-ridden Danny. It seemed as though it would never break. Doc Kyser came up to look at the cases in the Fox camp and removed the less sick to Sarah. As for Danny and other severe cases, he feared the long choppy ride would damage the inflamed, enlarged joints. There was little or nothing known about the virus passed by the flies and mosquitoes.
Danny’s temperature hovered between a hundred and two and a hundred and four. In the cycles when it shot up he went into deliriums, calling over and over for his wife. Each day brought a new sign of wasting of what had once been a strong constitution. The siege of dengue fever all but squashed the listless will of Huxley’s Whores.
The day before Christmas found the battalion in sadder straits than I had ever seen it. The camp on Sarah was like a morgue. Everyone was touchy and even the comics and the cooks who prepared a chow with all the trimmings failed to lessen the bitterness. The men were too bitter to bitch. A Marine bitches when he is happy. Watch out when he’s quiet. Gunner Keats urged me to go up to Fox Company for a few days now that Lighttower and Spanish Joe were back on duty. I was anxious to see Danny and took his offer and set out with the early morning alligator run.
When I landed at the Fox camp, I found it a far cry from the wild stories. It was quiet, too. All about was evidence of the dengue fever epidemic. Any release they had found in their former escapades had been cut off under the stern command of Major Wellman and Marlin.
Sister Mary greeted me like a long-lost father and led me to the radio shack. I entered the tent and dropped my gear. Danny lay with his back to me. I walked to his sack and sat on its edge. The movement of the cot made Danny groan and roll. I was horrified! It had been five weeks since I had seen the lad. He had wasted to a skeleton. His eyes were ringed with thick black circles and his cheekbones protruded from a chalk-colored flesh. A long growth of hair gave his slitty eyes the look of a wild animal. I had known he was sick, but I had no idea it was like this. I wanted to cry.
On the deck lay a stack of neatly tied letters, and pinned to the tent side so he could see it, a picture of Kathy, the picture I had seen a thousand times pinned up in the barracks at Eliot, at McKay, at Russell, aboard the Bobo and the Bell and the Jackson, and always beside him in his foxhole or in his pack.
“Hi, Mac,” Danny whispered.
I leaned close to him so he could hear. “How do you feel?”
“Not so hot.”
Pedro Rojas trudged into the tent and greeted me. Pedro showed the fatigue of working