Battle Cry - Leon Uris [28]
“Or a hundred ‘up and on shoulders.’”
“Or send you to the bay.”
“Or make you sleep with it.”
“Or make you scrub the catwalk with a toothbrush.”
“Or make you stand at attention in front of the water fountain for a couple hours in midday sun.”
“Or make you balance it on your fingertips.”
The consoling of his friends had little effect. He trudged out. They slapped his back and sighed as he headed for Beller’s quarters.
“Sir, Private Jones reporting.”
The barrel-chested sergeant looked up from a letter he was reading. “Just stand there.” He finished it with a fiendish slowness and replaced it in its envelope. “I believe you called your rifle a gun today, at inspection.”
“Yes sir.”
“But it isn’t a gun, is it, Jones?”
“No sir, it’s a United States Rifle, M-1903, thirty caliber, breach-loading, bolt-operated shoulder weapon, sir.”
“Then why did you call it a gun?”
“I forgot, sir.”
“Do you think you can remember?”
“Oh yes sir, infinitely and eternally.”
“I believe we can help you remember it.”
“I’m sure you can, sir.”
Beller arose and put on his duty NCO belt and led Jones from the tent. Heads peered out down the row.
“Private Jones, unbutton your fly.”
“Yes sir.”
“That’s your gun.”
“Yes sir.”
He led Jones through the entire tent area. At each street he blew his whistle and a platoon of boots came flying from their tents. Jones then stood there, holding his “gun” in his right hand and his rifle in his left and recited:
“This is my rifle,
This is my gun,
This is for fighting,
This is for fun.”
Days slugged by. One Forty Three moved to a prefabricated barrack in a new area to make way for the increasing flow of recruits. With each day Whitlock and Beller were able to discover less dirt and fewer errors. They marched smartly and did their other work well. With the lessening of errors, the slack in wrath was taken up by pouring on more and more drill.
“Hit those pieces when you change shoulders. If you break them we’ll buy you new ones.” And hands, at first tender, grew leathery and calloused.
The punishments of the early days decreased. Only O’Hearne, who was late for roll call one day, received an especially stiff one. He was discovered in the head, shaving in leisurely fashion and singing “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.” For this crime, O’Hearne stood at attention one entire night in front of the D.I.s’ barracks serenading them with Irish ballads. Each time he weakened, a bucket of water and the one-word command “Sing!” greeted him. The loss of his voice was generally welcomed by the rest of the outfit.
There were many aggravating, to say the least, tricks that Whitlock constantly pulled from his grab-bag. A favorite was to march the platoon back and forth before a water fountain at Port Arms. As the sun blistered down, he would take a sip of the cool stuff and march them in rear marches until they were dizzy, their tongues hanging out, and their arms falling off from the weight of their rifles.
When they were at the point of collapse he would give them three minutes rest, then double time them through the ankle deep sand of the boondocks. Then, carrying their pieces at an arm-breaking Trail Arms he would run them clear back to the barracks.
It was about this time that they began to get a little proud of themselves. They firmly believed they could outdrill any other outfit in the Depot. Whitlock arranged to have their ego deflated.
It came the day they went to the edge of the Depot to receive booster shots. They “stacked arms,” received the shots and fell in for the exercise they knew was coming, to work out the stiffness. As they prepared to depart, a platoon of Sea School Marines doing close order drill on the Base grounds marched by.
“At ease, I want you guys to watch this.”
The Sea School Marines were a sight to make any boot cringe. Six feet tall, husky and tanned, they were the men who manned the guard of battleships and cruisers of the fleet. The air was alive with the color of their dress blues. Their