From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [452]
“Tripler General is a large hospital,” the radio said, “equipped with every convenience and every modern device of medical science, but it was not designed to handle such an inconceivable catastrophe as this. There is not room for even a small percentage of the casualties I saw brought in, some of them already dead and dying on their improvised stretchers in the halls and corridors simply because there was neither the room nor the trained personnel to take care of their numbers. Yet nowhere in the whole hospital was there so much as a single whimper of pain, a single complaint. Here and there some terribly mangled lad of nineteen or twenty, his hair and eyebrows and lashes burned completely off, would say to the doctors when they got to him: ‘Take care of my buddy here first, Doc; he’s hurt lots worse than I am.’ But all else was silence. An accusative silence. An angry silence.”
“The dirty bastards,” Prew said dully. He was weeping. “Oh, the dirty bastards. Those motherfucking babyraping dirty German bastards.” He reached up with the hand holding the bottle and wiped off his nose with the back of his hand and poured another drink from the bottle into the glass.
“It was the Japs,” Georgette said. “The Japs. The dirty yellow-bellied little Japs. They sneaked in without warning and made a cowardly attack while their decoys was still in Washington crying peace.”
“It has been,” the radio said, “a tremendously uplifting spiritual experience to me, to see the manliness with which these boys are enduring their sufferings, it has richened and deepened my faith in a form of government that can produce heroes like these, not in tens and twenties, but in hundreds and thousands, and I only wish I could have taken every American citizen into the wards of Tripler General with me, to see what I have seen.”
“Is that Webley Edwards?” Prew said, weeping.
“We think so,” Alma said.
“It must be,” Georgette said. “It sounds like him.”
“Well, he’s a great guy,” Prew said. He gulped down his drink and refilled the glass. “A great guy, thats all.”
“You’d better lay off that liquor a little,” Alma said uneasily. “Its still early yet.”
“Early?” Prew said. “Early! Oh, those dirty bastardly Germans. What the hell difference,” he hollered, and paused, “does it make? If I get drunk. I cant go back, can I? What the he’ll difference, I’d like to know? Lets all get drunk.
“Oh,” he said. “Oh, goddam them, goddam them.”
“The total extent of the damage,” the radio said, “is of course entirely unknown at the present time, and will probably be unknown for some time. Because an emergency exists, and to facilitate coordination and cooperation of all agencies, General Short has declared the Territory to be under Martial Law.”
“I’ll tell you something,” Prew wept, pouring another drink, “there aint no murder rap against me.”
“There isnt?” Alma said.
“There aint no murder rap against anybody. Warden told me, and he wouldnt lie.”
“Then you can go back,” Alma said. “But,” she said, “if you went back wouldnt they still put you in the Stockade for being AWOL?”
“Thats just it!” he said. “Now I cant go back anyway. Because I wont go back to no Stockade, see? If I went back, I’d get at least a Summary, and maybe a Special. But they’ll never send me back to that Stockade. Never! See?”
“If only you could go back without going to the Stockade,” Alma said. “But you cant. And you wouldnt help the war any in the Stockade.”
She put her hand on his arm.
“Please lay off the liquor, Prew. Let me have the bottle.”
“Git away from me!” he said, jerking his arm loose. “I’ll knock you on your goddam ass. Git away! and stay away! from me. Lee me alone.” He poured himself another cocktail glass full of whiskey and looked at her belligerently.
After that, neither one of them said anything to him or tried to stop him. It was not an exaggeration to say that there was murder staring at them out of his red-rimmed eyes.
“And as long as they put me in their fuckin hogpen of a Stockade, I’ll never go back,” he said ferociously. “You nor