From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [157]
These were all part of it, he felt, looking down; important parts, as small memories are important parts of the life of a man, parts of your chosen heritage, even of your destiny maybe, small functioning parts of this tiny solar system that is the company that is lost among the galaxies of regiments that make up this universe that is the Army, the parts that give meaning to the only universe you know, he thought, the only universe you want, because it is the only one you ever found a place in yet. And now you are rapidly losing that.
“Come on, Angelo,” he said, watching the knot of noncoms clustered around the baldheaded, sandhog shouldered Dhom who towered over Chief Choate even, “we better get our asses down there.”
“Man, you look sick,” Angelo said as they fell in with the 1st Platoon.
“Not sick,” Prew said, looking at him sideways under the hat brim low over his eyes. “Just hung over.” But it was not the head, he thought, be honest, you’ve fallen out for drill with bigger heads than this before and always laughed them off. Four hours drill under a hot sun with a head on was as much a part of soldiering as was musketry with a half pint hidden in your belt to help you shoot, or as were forced practice marches with a Listerine mouthwash bottle full of saki on your hip. Soldiering and drinking have always been blood brothers. But what, he thought, is soldiering?
The very, very odd thing was that all this that was costing him, in the Army, had not a thing to do with soldiering. There should be something important, there, he told himself. Reality, he thought. To know the real from the illusion. Man, man, I think you’re off your nut, but he could not shake off this new sense of separateness.
The knot of noncoms on the green broke up, the giant Dhom going front and center and the others doubletiming back to their platoons. Standing out in front alone and looking very soldierly Dhom gave them right shoulder sounding very soldierly and the rifles moved and were smartly slapped in unison very satisfyingly soldierly, but even this did not free him from this agonizing separateness that was worse than any loneliness, this feeling that he knew a thing the others did not know.
They marched at attention out the northwest truck entrance and across the intersection where the well-bucked MP was directing the heavy early morning traffic and where they were given route step and somebody in the back began the ancient hallowed dialogue of the Infantry.
“Who won the War?”
“The MPs won it,” came the answer.
“How’d they win it?”
“Why, their mothers and sisters fuckin for Liberty Bonds.”
The tall, handsome, statuesque MP flushed deeply, and as they passed Post Theater #1 someone broke into the Regimental Song and the rest took it up, singing the words the regimental yearbook never printed.
“Oh, we wont come back to Wahoo any more.
No, we wont come back to Wahoo any more.
We will fuck your black kanaky,
We will drink your goddamned saki,
BUT we wont come back to Wahoo any more.”
And Chief Choate in his deep rich basso took his favorite line of the break alone.
“Kiss me, Charlie, theres some barley,
Runnin down my leg.”
And the voice of authority spoke through the brassy soldierly throat of S/Sgt Dhom.
“Can that, you men, or you can march at attention. Theys liable to be ladies present around here.”
And this was soldiering, the column of marching men that was George Company moving on out Kolekole Pass Road toward drill between the rows of tall old elms that lined the road on either side exuding an abiding permanence, but Pvt Robert E Lee Prewitt was untouched, the old shiver was not in his spine, because the soldiering that once was the only real