From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [444]
In the corner of the quad at the megaphone, among all the men running back and forth, the guard bugler was blowing The Charge.
“What the fuck are you doing,” Warden bellowed.
The bugler stopped and looked up and shrugged sheepishly. “You got me,” he yelled back. “Colonel’s orders.” He went on blowing.
“Here they come, Pete!” Grenelli hollered. “Here comes one!” His voice went off up into falsetto excitedly.
It was a single, coming in from the northeast on the down leg of the 8. The voice of every gun on the roofs rose to challenge his passage, blending together in one deafening roar like the call of a lynch mob. Down below, the running men melted away and the bugler stopped blowing and ran back under the E Company porch. Warden screwed the cap back on his bottle and ran crouching over to Pete’s chimney and swung around to fire, again with no rest. His burst curved off in tracer smoke lines well behind the swift-sliding ship that was up, over, and then gone. Got to take more lead.
“Wouldnt you know it?” Pete said tragically. “Shot clear behind that one.
“Here, Mike,” he said. “Move back a little and make room for the 1st/Sgt so he can fire off the corner for a rest. You can set the bottle down right here, Milt. Here,” he said, “I’ll take it for you.”
“Have a drink first,” Warden said happily.
“Okay.” Pete wiped his soot-rimmed mouth with the back of his sleeve. There were soot flecks on his teeth when he grinned. “Did you see what they done to our room?”
“I seen what they done to your locker,” Warden said.
From down below came the voice of the bugle blowing The Charge again.
“Listen to that stupid bastard,” Warden said. “Colonel Delbert’s orders.”
“I dint think the Colonel’d be up this early,” Pete said.
“Old Jake must of served his first hitch in the Cavalry,” Warden said.
“Say, listen,” Grenelli said, “listen, Pete. When you going to let me take it a while?”
“Pretty soon,” Pete said, “pretty soon.”
“Throw your empty clips down in the Compny Yard, you guys!” Warden yelled around the roof. “Throw your empty clips down in the Compny Yard. Pass it along, you guys.”
Down along the roof men yelled at each other to throw the empties down into the yard and went right on piling them up beside them.
“God damn it!” Warden roared, and moved out from behind the chimney. He walked down along behind them like a quarterback bolstering up his linemen. “Throw them clips down, goddam you Frank. Throw your clips down, Teddy.”
“Come on, Pete,” Grenelli said behind him. “Let me take it a while now, will you?”
“I got firsts on it,” Mikeovitch said.
“Like hell!” Grenelli said. “Its my gun, aint it?”
“Shut up,” Pete said. “Both of you. You’ll both get your chance. Pretty soon.”
Warden was behind the Chief and Reedy Treadwell on the inside edge when the next ones came in, a double flying in in echelon from the northeast like the single, and he dropped down beside them. Down below the bugler stopped blowing and ran back in under the E Company porch again.
Straight across from Warden on the roof of the Headquarters Building there were only two men up. One of them he recognized as M/Sgt Big John Deterling, the enlisted football coach. Big John had a .30 caliber water-cooled with no tripod, holding it cradled in his left arm and firing it with his right. When he fired a burst, the recoil staggered him all over the roof.
The winking noseguns of the incoming planes cut two foot-wide swathes raising dust across the quad and up the wall and over the D Co roof like a wagon road through a pasture. Warden couldnt fire at them from laughing at Big John Deterling on the Headquarters roof. This time Big John came very near to falling down and spraying the roof. The other man up over there had wisely put the chimney between him and Big John, instead of between him and the planes.
“Look at that son of a bitch,” Warden said, when he could stop laughing.
Down below the