The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [304]
Croft felt a curious mixture of satisfaction and fear. The thing was committed. "All right," he said, his lips numb against his teeth. He stood up and motioned the men to gather around him. "We're gonna go through the pass," he told them.
There was a sullen murmur from the platoon.
"All right, you men, you can jus' cut it out. We're goin' that way, and maybe today you'll keep your eyes open." Martinez stared at him and Croft shrugged meaninglessly.
"What the fug good does it do if we got to fight our way through the goddam Japs?" Gallagher asked.
"You can quit your bitching, Gallagher." Croft surveyed them all. "We're gonna get moving in five minutes so you all better get your ass in gear."
Hearn held up his hand. "Hold on, men, there's something I want to tell you. We sent Martinez out last night, and he reconnoitered the pass, and it was empty. The chances are it's still empty." Their eyes disbelieved him. "I'll give you my word for one thing. If we run into anything, any ambushes, any Japs in the pass, we're turning right around and going back to the beach. Is that fair enough?"
"Yeah," a few of them said.
"Okay, then let's get ready."
In a few minutes they started out. Hearn buckled his pack and hefted it to his shoulders. It was seven rations lighter now than it had been when they started, and it felt almost comfortable. The sun was beginning to give some warmth, which made him cheerful. As they moved along out of the hollow he felt good; it was a new morning and it was impossible not to feel hopeful. The dejection, the decisions of the previous night seemed unimportant. He was enjoying this, but if he was, so much the better.
Quite naturally he assumed the point and led the platoon toward the pass.
A half hour later, Lieutenant Hearn was killed by a machine-gun bullet which passed through his chest.
At the ledge that faced the first grove he had stood up casually, had been about to motion the others to follow him, when the Jap machine gun fired. He toppled back among the men gathered behind the shelf.
The shock was acute. For ten or twenty seconds the men in the platoon did nothing, squeezed themselves into the defilade of the rock, their arms covering their heads, while the Japanese rifles, the machine gun lashed above them.
Croft reacted first, poked his rifle through a gap in the rocks and fired rapidly at the grove, listening dumbly to the flat pinging sound of his empty clip as it popped out of his rifle. Beside him, Red and Polack had recovered enough to stand up and fire back. Croft felt a deep release; at that moment his body was light. "Come on, men, get some fire back," he bawled. His mind was working quickly. There were only a few men in the grove, probably not even a squad, or they would have waited for the whole platoon to show itself. This way, they wanted to frighten them off.
Well, that was all right. He wasn't going to hang around here. Croft stared for a moment at the Lieutenant. Hearn was lying on his back, the blood spurting softly from his wound, covering his face and body slowly and inevitably. Croft felt a sense of relief again. No longer was there that confusion, that momentary internal pause before he gave an order.
The skirmish continued for a few minutes, and the rifles and machine gun were silent in the grove. Croft ducked down again behind the shelf. A little frantically, the men were crawling away from the ledge.
"Hold it," he called out. "Let's get out of here the right way. Gallagher! Roth! You stay here with me, keep up some fire, The rest of you get around that knoll. Martinez, you take them" -- he pointed to the hillock behind them -- "when you get there, open up on the grove, and we'll pull out and join you." He stood up for a moment, squeezed off a few rounds from a new clip, and then ducked again as the Jap machine gun answered. "All right, now get going!"
They crawled away, and several minutes later Croft heard them firing behind him. "Come on," he whispered to Gallagher and Roth. They