The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [332]
Only two things ever intruded on this. They were afraid of Croft and this fear had become greater as they grew more exhausted; by now they waited for his voice, plunged themselves forward a few additional yards each time he flicked them with a command. A numb and stricken apprehension had settled over them, an unvoiced and almost bottomless terror of him.
And in opposition to that, they wanted to quit; they wanted that more than anything they had ever hungered for. Each step they advanced, each tremor of their muscles, each pang in their chests generated that desire. They moved forward with a dumb blistering hatred for the man who led them.
Croft was almost as exhausted; by now he appreciated the breaks as much as they did, was almost as willing to allow each halt to drag out to double its intended length. He had forgotten the peak of the mountain, he wanted to quit too, and each time a break ended he fought a quick battle with himself, exposed himself to all the temptations of rest, and then continued. He moved on because somewhere at the base of his mind was the directive that climbing this mountain was necessary. His decision had been made in the valley, and it lay as an iron warp in his mind. He could have turned back no more easily than he could have killed himself.
All through the afternoon they straggled forward, toiling up the gentler slopes, proceeding from rock to rock when the walls of the mountain became sheerer. They traveled from one ridge to another, stumbled painfully along the slanting inclines of minor knolls, slipped and fell many times when they passed over swatches of moist clay. The mountain seemed eternally to rear above them. They glimpsed its upper slopes through the fog of their effort, followed one another up the unending serpentines, and plodded along gratefully whenever their route was level for a time.
Minetta and Wyman and Roth were the most wretched. For several hours they had been at the tail of the column, keeping up to the men ahead with the greatest difficulty, and there was a bond between the three of them. Minetta and Wyman felt sorry for Roth, liked him because he was even more helpless than they. And Roth looked to them for support, knew in the knowledge of fatigue that they would not scorn him because they were only a little less prostrated than he.
He was making the most intense effort of his life. All the weeks and months Roth had been in the platoon he had absorbed each insult, each reproof with more and more pain. Instead of becoming indifferent or erecting a protective shell, he had become more sensitive. The patrol had keyed him to the point where he could not bear any more abuse, and he drove himself onward now with the knowledge that if he halted for too long the wrath and ridicule of the platoon would come down upon him.
But, even with this, he was breaking. There came a point where his legs would no longer function. Even when he stood still they were close to buckling under him. Toward the end of the afternoon he began to collapse. It was a slow process, dragging out through a series of pratfalls, a progression of stumbling and sliding and finally of dropping prostrate. He began to tumble every few hundred feet and the men in the platoon waited gratefully while he forced himself slowly to his feet, and staggered on again. But each fall came a little more quickly than the one that had preceded it. Roth moved forward almost unconsciously, his legs buckling at every misstep. After a half hour he could no longer get up without assistance, and each step he took was doubtful, uncertain, like an infant walking alone across a room. He even fell like an infant, his feet folding under him while he sat blank on his thighs,