From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [442]
Warden grabbed a BAR from the rack and passed it out with a full bag of clips. Somebody grabbed it and took off for the roof, and somebody else stepped up to receive one. Warden passed out three of them from the rack, each with a full bag of clips, before he realized what he was doing.
“To hell with this noise,” he said to Grenelli who was unstrapping his tripod on his way out the door. “I could stand here and hand these out all day and never get up on the roof.”
He grabbed a BAR and clip bag for himself and pushed out the door, making a mental note to eat Malleaux’s ass out. There were a dozen bags of full clips in there, left over from the BAR practice firing in August. They should have been unloaded and greased months ago.
Outside, he stopped beside Henderson. Pete, Grenelli and Mikeovitch were already rounding the stair landing out of sight with the MG and eight belt boxes.
“Get your ass in there and start passing them out,” Warden told Henderson, “and start loading clips. And belts. Have Wilson go up and get a detail of men. Soons you get a batch loaded send a couple men up with them. Put three men on belts, the rest on BAR clips.”
“Yes, Sir,” Henderson said nervously.
Warden took off for the stairs. On the way up he stopped off at his room to get the full bottle that he kept in his foot-locker for emergencies.
In the squadroom men were sitting on their bunks with their helmets on holding empty rifles in black despair. They looked up hopefully and called to him as he passed.
“What gives, Sarge?” “Whats the deal, First?” “Are we going up on the roofs now?” “Where the hells the ammunition, Top?” “These guns aint worth nothing without no ammunition.” “Hell of a note to sit on your bunk with an empty rifle and no ammunition while they blow your guts out.” “Are we sojers? or boy-scouts?”
Other men, the ones who had slept through breakfast and were now getting up tousle-headed and wide-eyed, stopped dressing and looked hopefully to see what he’d say.
“Get into field uniforms,” Warden said, realizing he had to say something. “Start rolling full field packs,” he told them ruthlessly in an iron voice. “We’re moving out in fifteen minutes. Full field equipment.”
Several men threw their rifles on their beds disgustedly.
“Then what the hell’re you doin with a BAR?” somebody hollered.
“Field uniforms,” Warden said pitilessly, and went on across the squadroom. “Full field equipment. Squad leaders, get them moving.”
Disgustedly, the squad leaders began to harangue them to work.
In the far doorway onto the outside porch Warden stopped. In the corner under an empty bunk that had three extra mattresses piled on it, S/Sgt Turp Thornhill from Mississippi lay on the cement floor in his underwear with his helmet on hugging his empty rifle.
“You’ll catch a cold Turp,” Warden said.
“Dont go out there, First Sergeant!” Turp pleaded. “You’ll be killed! They shootin it up! You’ll be dead! You’ll not be alive any more! Dont go out there!”
“You better put your pants on,” Warden said.
In his room on the porch splinters of broken glass lay all over Warden’s floor, and a line of bullet holes was stitched across the top of his foot-locker and up the side of Pete’s locker and across its top. Under Pete’s locker was a puddle and the smell of whiskey fumes was strong in the air. Cursing savagely, Warden unlocked his footlocker and flung back the lid. A book in the tray had a slanting hole drilled right through its center. His plastic razor box was smashed and the steel safety razor bent almost double. Savagely he jerked the tray out and threw it on the floor. In the bottom of the locker two .30 caliber bullets were nestled in the padding of rolled socks and stacked underwear, one on either side of the brown quart bottle.
The bottle was safe.
Warden dropped the two bullets into his pocket and got the unbroken bottle out tenderly and looked in his wall locker to make sure his recordplayer and records were safe. Then he hit the floor in the broken glass, holding the bottle carefully and