From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [44]
“Then, at four,” Chief said, “I’ll hit Choy’s a lick and find out how the beer holds out. This is my training season.”
Prew started, laughing, down the aisle, then turned back toward the Indian. “I sure guess them breakfast conversations are all through,” he said, and was suddenly embarrassed at what he should not have said.
“What?” Chief said, inexpressively. “Oh, them. Yeah, I guess they are.” He turned quickly, went on toward his bunk.
Chapter 8
THERE IS, IN THE Army, a little known but very important activity appropriately called Fatigue. Fatigue, in the Army, is the very necessary cleaning and repairing of the aftermath of living. Any man who ever owned a gun has known Fatigue, when, after fifteen minutes in the woods and perhaps three shots at an elusive squirrel, he has gone home to spend three-quarters of an hour cleaning up his piece so it will be ready next time he goes to the woods. Any woman who has ever cooked a luscious meal and ladled it out in plates upon the table has known Fatigue, when, after the glorious meal is eaten, she repairs to the kitchen to wash the congealed gravy from the plates and the slick grease from the cooking pots so they will be ready to be used this evening, dirtied, and so washed again. It is the knowledge of the unendingness and of the repetitious uselessness, the do it up so it can be done again, that makes Fatigue fatigue.
And any man who shoots his gun at squirrels and then gives it to his young son with orders to clean, any woman who cooks the succulent meal and gives the dishes to her non-cooking daughter to be washed—those grownups know the way an officer feels about Fatigue. The son and daughter can understand the way an enlisted man feels about Fatigue.
Fatigue, in the Army, occupies fifty percent of the duty time; in the morning there is drill, in the afternoon Fatigue; but it is a fifty percent unmentioned in the enlistment campaigns and the pretty posters outside every Post Office in the nation that are constantly extolling the romance of a soldier’s life, the chance for adventurous foreign travel (take the wife), the exceedingly high pay all unattached (if you get the rating), the chance to be a leader (if you get the commission), and the golden merits of learning a trade that will support you all your life. A recruit never finds out about Fatigue until some time after he has held up his right hand and then it is too late.
Most of the details are not too bad, they are only fatiguing. For there is the justification that they are necessary. If there is to be baseball, some one must spread the horse manure on the diamond so the infield will be grassy, and no one could expect that the players do it, since they do the playing.
Paper tissues have been invented to save the washing of snotty handkerchieves, but no one has yet invented a way to keep from scrubbing web equipment after a long march through the exotic pineapple fields of Old Hawaii. When some future Edison applies his genius to this problem and finds a way to free the human race, so proud of all its other freedoms, from this final slavery which the rich have relegated to the poor Romance (Long Live Romance) will be dead, war dominated, and Utopia and Armageddon come.
But in addition to the necessary details that are only fatiguing there are other details, in a Regiment of Infantry, that are not only fatiguing but degrading. It is hard to be Romantic about the cavalry when you have to curry your own horse, and it is hard to be Adventurous about the uniform when you have to polish your own boots. And this explains why officers, who are above such menial tasks, are capable of such exciting memoirs of war. A man may be bored with scrubbing his own cartridge belt after every sashay in the field but he is not disillusioned; but when he goes every afternoon to the Married Officers’ Quarters to manicure the lawns, wash the windows, sweep the yards, and clean the streets, he is not only disillusioned but degraded; he has really known Fatigue.
After every party at the Club there must be some loyal