The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [359]
"General MacArthur announced today the official end of the battle for Anopopei. Mopping up continues."
"American troops under Major General Edward Cummings announced capture today of five enemy strong-points and large concentrations of food and ammunition. Mopping up is in progress."
Astonishing reports continued to come in to Cummings's desk. It was discovered from questioning the few prisoners that for over a month the Japanese had been on half rations, and toward the end there had been almost no food at all. A Japanese supply dump had been destroyed by artillery five weeks before, and no one had known it. Their medical facilities had been exhausted, there were portions of the Toyaku Line which had been in disrepair for six or eight weeks. Finally they discovered that the Japanese ammunition had been almost depleted a week before the last attack had begun.
Cummings searched through old patrol reports, read again all accounts of enemy activity on the front for the past month. He even digested once more the puny findings of intelligence. In all that, there was no hint of the actual Japanese situation. From the reports, he had made the only possible assumption -- that the Japanese were still in strength. It bothered him, terrified him; this was the most powerful lesson he had ever derived from a campaign. Until now, while he had partially discounted any patrol information he received, he had nevertheless given it some weight. The information here had been worthless.
He had never quite freed himself of the shock Major Dalleson's victory had given him. To leave his battle front on a quiet morning and return the next day to find the campaign virtually over was a little like the disbelief with which a man would come home to find his house burned down. Certainly he had handled the mopping up with brilliance. The Japanese, once staggered, had been given no opportunity to regroup but that was a hollow triumph, the salvaging of a few sticks of furniture. It enraged him secretly that Dalleson's blundering should have exploded the campaign; the collapse of the Japanese had been due to his efforts, and he should have had the pleasure of detonating the fuse. What irritated him most of all was that he must congratulate Dalleson, perhaps even promote him. To snub Dalleson now would be too patent.
But this frustration was replaced by another. What if he had been present, had directed the climactic day himself? What really would it have meant? The Japanese had been worn down to the point where any concerted tactic no matter how rudimentary would have been enough to collapse their lines. It was impossible to shake the idea that anyone could have won this campaign, and it had consisted of only patience and sandpaper.
For a moment he almost admitted that he had had very little or perhaps nothing at all to do with this victory, or indeed any victory -- it had been accomplished by a random play of vulgar good luck larded into a causal net of factors too large, too vague, for him to comprehend. He allowed himself this thought, brought it almost to the point of words and then forced it back. But it caused him a deep depression.
If only he had conceived that patrol a little earlier in the campaign, had had time to work it out more completely. It had been a botch, and Hearn was dead.
Well, one could not really call it a shock. Still, for a little while, Hearn had been the only man in the division who was capable of understanding his more ambitious plans, capable even of understanding him. But Hearn had not been big enough. He had looked, become frightened, and crawled away, throwing mud.
He knew why he had punished him, he knew it was not accidental that he had assigned Hearn to recon. And his end had not been unforeseen. Cummings had extracted at first a fragile grain of pleasure from it.
Only. . . for an instant when he first heard the news of Hearn's death, it had hurt him, wrenched