From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [333]
He had done it all, a lot of it things he did not like, because he thought he could change it and prove it did not matter. When he had seen how fighters were respected in the Compny, he had become a fighter. Did they think he liked being a fighter? When he had seen how noncoms were looked up to and liked, he had become a noncom. Did they think he wanted to be a noncom? He had worked hard at it. When he saw that Regimental and Division champions were admired even more than the ordinary fighters, he had set his sight on that—and in less than a year achieved half of it and was well on his way to achieving the other half. When he saw that the higher the noncom the more he was venerated, he determined to gain that too. He was not going to leave them one single loophole they could turn to for escape. It wasnt easy, what he had done was not handed to anybody on a silver platter. But he had stuck to it; because he meant to make them like him, meant to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt to them that there were no such things as Jews.
But in the end it hadnt any of it made any difference. And he knew it never would make any difference. Instead of liking him, the more honors he gained the more they hated him. Facts didnt have anything to do with the stubbornness of those minds; they twisted the facts to suit whatever they already believed in the first place. How could you fight a thing like that?
He had thought it was going to be different, for once, when he enlisted in the Army. But it wasnt ever going to be any different, any place.
Bloom went ahead, a little deeper, and faced the rest of it.
He didnt have what it took. He had never had what it took. Prewitt had whipped him, hands down. He had been kicked out of NCO School point blank, cold turkey. He had been called in and questioned about being a homosexual, to his face: He was suspected as a queer.
It did not matter that the Chaplain had stopped the fight. It did not make any difference that he had still gone in the ring afterward, either. Or that he had won. Prewitt still had whipped him, and they all knew how Prewitt still had whipped him. And they would never let themselves forget it either. A little guy half his size, a natural welter, had whipped him, a natural light-heavy.
It did not matter that it was the queer investigation that had partly caused the NCO School to get down on him. It did not make any difference that he still made corporal anyway, either. Or that he would make sergeant. He had still been kicked out of NCO School as unfit noncom material, and all of them knew he had still been kicked out of NCO School as unfit noncom material. And that was the thing they would pick out of all of it to remember. One of the three men out of one-hundred-and-seven candidates who had received that singular distinction.
Almost half the company had been called in on that queer investigation. Why was it none of them had been suspected of being queer? Of course that bitch Tommy had spread it all around how Bloom had let him talk him into it that one time. That was Tommy’s meat, that; he loved those. But what about all the others that had tried it, too? What about them? They all tried it sooner or later, if they hung around with them long enough. Familiarity bred laxity, like that Hal guy was always saying. But they found it inconvenient to remember that, the rest of them, when they got together