From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [450]
If it had not been for 1st/Sgt Dedrick of A Company, who was about his size and had remembered to lock his wall locker, he would not have even been able to scare up two whole field uniforms. Just about the only thing that had been left untouched were the folded pyramidal tents in the supply room.
By the end of the seventh day, when they had got the tents back downtown and distributed out to the positions and set up ready to occupy, every man on the Company roster—including the two men serving time in the Stockade who had been released with the rest of the prisoners—had shown up and reported for duty. With the single exception of Prewitt.
Chapter 51
PREWITT SLEPT THROUGH the entire attack. He had gotten even drunker than usual the night before while the girls were at work because Saturday night is always supposed to be holiday. He did not even find out there had been an attack, until the insistently dynamic voice from the radio talking on and on tensely finally beat a hole through the thick, very dry, dehydrated hangover in his mouth that, even while still asleep, he knew was there and did not want to wake up to.
He sat up on the divan in his shorts, (since he had moved out on the divan he had taken to sleeping in shorts for the sake of modesty,) and saw them both crouching before the radio in their dressing gowns tensely.
“I was just going to call you!” Alma said excitedly.
“Call me for what?” The strongest thought in the dry eye-ache that was his mind was to head immediately to the kitchen for water.
“. . . but the damage inflicted upon Pearl Harbor itself was by far the most serious,” the radio said. “Hardly a building appears to be left standing undamaged. At least one of the battleships that were resting in harbor is sunk to the shallow bottom with its superstructure awash in the still flaming oil-covered waters. Most of the high altitude bombers were concentrated there and upon Hickam Field right across the channel. Next to Pearl Harbor itself, Hickam Field appears to have suffered the worst damage.”
“Its Webley Edwards,” Georgette said.
“He’s broadcasting back to the Mainland,” Alma said.
“Either a very large bomb, or else a torpedo,” the radio said, “was dropped into the main messhall of the new Hickam Field barracks where four hundred of our unsuspecting airmen were seated at breakfast.”
Prew knew what it was by this time, but he was having a very hard time getting it through the mud of his head. He could not get it out of his head that it was the Germans; even later on after he had learned it was the Japs, he still could not get it out of his head that it had been the Germans. They must have developed some totally new kind of bomber, that would be able to fly that far nonstop, even with a base on the east coast of Asia. Because they never could have gotten a carrier task force out into the Pacific past the British navy. What a hell of a time to be caught short with a hangover! Water would never help a hangover like this; the only thing would help a hangover like this was a couple of stiff drinks, and even that wouldn’t be quick enough.
“Wheres my pants?” he said, getting up in his shorts. A violent throb passed through his head like a concussion, and he headed across the room toward them and the bar in the top of the radio.
“They’re right there on the chair,” Alma said. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“No, not those. My uniform pants,” he said, opening the bar over their heads and pouring a stiff shot of scotch into one of the long-stemmed cocktail glasses. “I’ve got a uniform around here someplace. Where is it?”
He downed the shot, shuddering; but he could tell it was going to help.
“What are you going to do!” Alma demanded, inarticulately wildly. “What are you doing!”
“Going to put enough liquor in me so I can see past this hangover and then get the hell back to the Post. What the hell do you think?”