From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [394]
Chapter 44
IN ALL, COUNTING the extra time for the trip to the Black Hole and the transfer into Number Two, he served 4 months and 18 days, and G Company was changed.
The Warden was gone; on a 14 day furlough. Leva was gone; transferred to M Co and a S/Sgt Maylon Stark was a S/Sgt, and Lt Culpepper was the Company Commander now. Dynamite Holmes had been reassigned to Brigade HQ with a majority. Holmes had taken S/Sgt Jim O’Hayer with him and O’Hayer was a M/Sgt. They were expecting a new Company Commander, a Captain, to be shipped in any day. It was a different company.
He pulled in from the Stockade wearing the same CKC uniform he had worn at the trial. It felt strange and new after 4 months and 18 days of nothing but the outsize Stockade fatigues. The suntans were neither dirtier and more wrinkled, nor cleaner and more pressed. They had hung on a hanger in the Stockade supply room for 4 months and 18 days and except for a faint crease across the knees were just exactly like they had been when he took them off. He could not overcome a feeling of surprise at this. It was the same with everything.
He drew his bedding and equipment and his same old foot-locker with all the old familiar personal possessions in it just like he had left them but looking strangely new and unused. They were the same blankets, and the same riflebelt and pack and canteen, but Leva did not issue them to him. They were issued to him by the welcome-grinning S/Sgt Malleaux, the new supply sergeant. From behind Malleaux Pete Karelsen, a S/Sgt too now, and still on SD in the supplyroom, came up grinning to shake hands also. Apparently, he was still a celebrity. They asked him about Maggio. He had promised himself he would wait nine days.
In the orderly room Acting First Sergeant Baldy Dhom, sweating grimly to bend his sausage fingers to a fountain pen, gladly dropped his work and shook hands happily. The new clerk, a Jewboy named Rosenberry, did not offer to shake hands and stared at him with frightened awe.
Rosenberry, he found out somewhere, was a peacetime draftee. He had taken Mazzioli’s place when the new reorganization of Personnel Section had moved Mazzioli and the other Company Clerks to desks in Regiment. Rosenberry was a Pfc. They called him the “forward echelon clerk.” Mazzioli was still Company Clerk but Company Clerks stayed with Regimental HQ in the “rear echelon” now. Mazzioli was a buck sergeant now.
There were new faces besides Rosenberry’s. At chow that night there were more new faces than familiar ones. The company strength had been filling up steadily, but the short timers were still going home. The new faces all stared at him with the same frightened awe as Rosenberry.
After chow he sat on his bunk and worked on his rifle, a brand new Garand M1 with its barrel still full of cosmoline. He worked on it in silence, studying the awkward unwieldy lines that would never become comfortable. In the dim lights the new faces watched him covertly with the same unchanged frightened awe. Chief Choate and all the other new buck/sgt squad leaders and s/sgt platoon-leaders, with the exception of platoon-guide S/Sgt Ike Galovitch, came over and shook hands and slapped him on the back. Apparently The Treatment was off. He was a celebrity. Everybody wanted to know about Maggio. He had promised himself that he would wait nine days.
With Capt Holmes gone and G Co no longer a jockstrap outfit, all the old forces that had caused the trouble were gone now, obsolete, rescinded. They were expecting the new CC any day now. He felt somewhat like a man on a mountainside