From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [447]
After it was all over, and the dead silence which no sound seemed able to penetrate reigned, they all smoked a last cigaret up on the roof and then, dirty-faced, red-eyed, tired happy and let-down, they trooped down reluctantly into the new pandemonium that was just beginning below and went to roll their full field packs. Nobody had even been scratched. But they could not seem to get outside of the ear-ringing dead silence. Even the pandemonium of moving out could not penetrate it.
Warden, instead of rolling his pack, went straight to the orderly room. In the three and a half hours before they finally left he was in the orderly room all the time, getting it packed up. Lt Ross, whose Company was the only one that was ready ahead of time, had already forgotten to be angry and came in and helped him. So did Rosenberry. Warden had plenty of time and to spare, to pack the orderly room. But he did not have any time left to roll his full field pack or change into a field uniform. Or, if he did, he forgot it.
The result of this was that he had to sleep in the popcorn vender’s wagon at Hanauma Bay without blankets for five days before he could get back up to Schofield to get his stuff, and he would have welcomed even a woolen OD field-uniform shirt. He did not see how the hell he could have possibly have forgotten that.
One by one, each company’s consignment of trucks lined up before its barracks in a double file and settled down to wait. One by one, the platoons of troops filed out into their company yards and sat down on their packs holding their rifles and looked at the waiting trucks. The Regiment moved as a unit.
No two companies were going to the same place. And when they got there each company would be a separate unit on its own. But one company, that was ready, did not leave out by itself for its beach positions ahead of the other companies, that were not ready. The Regiment moved as a unit.
Everywhere trucks. Everywhere troops sitting on their packs. The quad filled up with trucks until even the Colonel’s jeep could not worm through between them. The yards filled up with troops until even the Colonel’s adjutants and messengers could not work through them. There was much swearing and sweaty disgust. The Regiment moved as a unit.
And in the G Co orderly room, Warden chortled to himself smugly, as he worked.
Once, when Lt Ross had gone to the supply room, Maylon Stark stuck his head in at the door. “The kitchen truck’s loaded and ready to roll.”
“Right,” Warden said, without looking up.
“I want you to know I think you done a hell of a swell job,” Stark said reluctantly strangledly. “It’ll be two hours, anyway, before any other kitchen in this outfit is ready; and some of them probably have to stay behind to get loaded and come down later.”
“You done a good job yourself,” Warden said, still not looking up.
“It wasnt me,” Stark said. “It was you. And I just want you to know I think you done a hell of a job.”
“Okay,” Warden said, “thanks,” and went on working without looking up.
He rode down in the jeep at the head of the Company’s convoy with Lt Ross, Weary Russell driving. There was terrific traffic. The roads were alive with trucks and taxis as far as the eye could see, bumper to bumper. The trucks were taking them down, to beach positions; the taxis were taking them up, to Schofield, where their outfits would already be gone. Recons and jeeps slithered in and out among the long lines of trucks, but the big two-and-a-halfs could only lumber on, a few feet at a time, stopping when the truck in front stopped in back of the truck in front of him, waiting to move on until the truck in front of them moved on a little in back of the truck in front of him.
The trucks had been stripped of their tarps and one man with his BAR or machinegun mounted over the cab rode standing on the truckbed wall. Helmeted heads were poked above the naked ribs watching