The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [43]
COOK: You looking for more meat? You won't get it. They ain't no meat.
BROWN: You're the worst guy in the outfit.
COOK: (turning to the serving line) Sergeant Brown is now passing in review.
BROWN: As you were, men. Carry on, pip, pip. (Brown moves by.)
WILSON: Ah swear, don't you ration destroyers know another way to fug up this stew?
COOK: "When it's smokin', it's cookin'; when it's burnin', it's done." That's our motto.
WILSON: (chuckling) Ah figgered you all had a system.
COOK: Take a bite on this.
WILSON: You got to wait your turn, boy. They's five men in recon is ahead of ya.
COOK: For you, I'll wait. Move on, move on. Who're you to block traffic?
(The soldiers file by.)
4
By the end of the first month of the campaign, the front-line troops had advanced to the base of the peninsula. Beyond it the island extended on either side, and about five miles from the junction of the peninsula with the mainland, the mountains of the Watamai Range ran along parallel to the sea. The Toyaku Line was drawn up to the left of the peninsula on a fairly straight line running from the cliffs of the mountain range to the ocean. As the General expressed it to his staff, he had "to make a left turn off the avenue of the peninsula into a narrow street which has figuratively a factory wall on its right, a ditch on its left [the sea], and Toyaku in front of us."
He conducted the pivoting operation with brilliance. There were many problems involved. He had to move his front line, stabilized at last, through a ninety-degree arc to the left, and it meant that, while the flank companies on the left who could anchor themselves by the sea would have to move only a half mile or so, the companies on the right would be obliged to wheel through a six-mile arc of jungle, and would be exposed through every hour of their march.
He had two alternatives. The safer plan was to have the battalion on his right flank drive straight inland until it reached the mountains. A temporary line could then be drawn up on a diagonal, and slowly he could have the right wing turn and drive along parallel to the mountains until his lines faced Toyaku. But that would take several days, possibly a week, and there might be a great deal of resistance. The other project, far more dangerous, was to move his right flank in a direct thrust to the mountain cliffs which abutted the Toyaku Line. That way, the entire front could be pivoted in a day.
But it was very dangerous. Toyaku undoubtedly would have a striking force ready to knife around the edge of the advancing troops, and turn their flank. During the entire day he would be pivoting his troops, the General would have an undefended right flank. He took the chance, and turned it into an advantage. On the day of the operation he withdrew a battalion from the road and kept them in reserve. He gave instructions to the commanders of the companies on the right flank to advance through the jungle without concerning themselves with their flank or rear. Their mission was merely to make the six-mile march through no man's land, and establish a defense position by that night at the mountain cliffs a mile away from the outposts of the Toyaku Line.
The General guessed correctly. Toyaku sneaked a company of Japanese troops around the flank while the movement was in progress, but the General met them with his reserve battalion, and encircled them almost completely. For several days an extremely confused battle went on in the jungle behind the division's new lines, but by the end of that time, all but a few stragglers of the company Toyaku had dispatched into the division's rear had been killed. There were more snipers behind the lines, and once or twice a pack train was ambushed, but these were minor incidents. The General did not concern himself with that. After the pivoting operation he was far too busy establishing his new line. In the first two days the men on the front hacked out new trails, and laid barbed wire, cut fields of fire through the jungle, and established