Before lights-out I lie on my bunk and listen to the talk about girls, families, Mom’s home cooking, what Dad did in the war, high school proms where everyone got laid, what we’re gonna do when we get out of the goddam army, how we can’t wait till we get to Debbie or Sue or Cathy and how we’re gonna screw ourselves blue, shit, man, I won’t wear my goddam clothes for a month, get into that goddam bed with my girl, my brother’s girl, any girl, and I won’t come up for air, and when I get discharged get me a job, start a business, live out on Long Island, come home every night an’ tell the wife, drop them panties, babe, I’m ready for action, have kids, yeah.
Awright, you guys, shut your miserable asses, lights-out, not a goddam sound or I’ll have you on KP quicker’n a whore’s fart.
And when the corporal leaves it starts again, the talk, oh, that first weekend pass after five weeks of basic training, into the city, into Debbie, Sue, Cathy, anyone.
I wish I could say something like I’m going into New York on my first weekend pass to get laid. I wish I could say something that would make everyone smile, even nod their heads to show I’m one of them. But I know if I open my mouth they’ll say, Yeah, get a load of the Irishman talking about girls, or one of them, Thompson, will start singing, “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling,” and they’ll all laugh because they know my eyes.
In a way I don’t mind because I can lie here on the bunk all clean and comfortable after the evening shower, tired from the day of marching and running with my sixty-pound backpack the corporals say is heavier than the packs carried in the French Foreign Legion, a day of training in weapons, taking them apart, reassembling, firing on ranges, crawling under barbed wire with machine guns clattering over my head, climbing ropes, trees, walls, charging at bags with fixed bayonets and screaming, fuckin’ gook, the way the corporals tell me, wrestling in woods with men from other companies wearing blue helmets to show they’re the enemy, running up hills with fifty-caliber machine gun barrels over my shoulder, scrambling through mud, swimming with my sixty-pound backpack, sleeping all night in the woods with backpack for pillow and mosquitoes feasting on my face.
When we’re not out in the field we’re in large rooms listening to lectures on how dangerous and sneaky the Koreans are, the North Koreans, and the Chinese who are even worse. The whole world knows what sneaky bastards the Chinks are and if there’s anyone in this outfit who’s Chinese tough shit but that’s the way it is, my father was German, men, and he had to put up with a lotta shit during World War II when sauerkraut was liberty cabbage, that’s the way it was. This is war, men, and when I look at you specimens my heart sinks thinking of the future of America.
There are films about what a glorious army this is, the U.S. Army, that fought the English, the French, the Indians, the Mexicans, the Spanish, the Germans, the Japs, and now the goddam gooks and Chinks, and never lost a war, never. Remember that men, never lost a goddam war.
There are films about weapons and tactics and syphilis. The one about syphilis is called The Silver Bullet and shows men losing their voices and dying and telling the world how sorry they are, how foolish they were to go with diseased women in foreign places and now their penises are falling off and there’s nothing they can do about it but ask God’s forgiveness and the forgiveness of their families back home, Mom and Dad sipping lemonade on the porch, Sis laughing on a backyard swing pushed by Chuck the quarterback home from college.
The men in my platoon lie on their bunks and talk about The Silver Bullet. Thompson says that was a stupid fuckin’ movie, you’d have to be a real horse’s ass to get syphed up like that and what the hell do we have rubbers for, right, Di Angelo, you went to college?
Di Angelo says you have to be careful.
Thompson says, What the hell do you know, goddam spaghetti-eating guinea?
Di Angelo says, Say that again, Thompson, and I’ll have to ask you to step outside.
Thompson laughs, Yeah, yeah.
Go ahead, Thompson, say it again.
Nah, you probably got a knife there. All you guineas got knives.
No knife, Thompson, just me.
Don’t trust you, Di Angelo.
No knife, Thompson.
Yeah.
The whole platoon is quiet and I wonder why people like Thompson have to talk to other people like that. It shows you’re always something else in this country. You can’t just be an American.
There’s an old regular army corporal, Dunphy, who works in weapons, issuing and repairing, and smelling always of whiskey. Everyone knows he should have been kicked out of the army long ago but Master Sergeant Tole takes care of him. Tole is a huge black man with a belly so great it takes two cartridge belts to go around him. He’s so fat he can’t go anywhere without a jeep and he roars at us all the time that he can’t stand the sight of us, we’re the laziest lumps it has ever been his misfortune to see. He tells us and the whole regiment that if anyone bothers Corporal Dunphy he’ll break their backs with his bare hands, that the corporal was killing Krauts at Monte Cassino when we were just starting to beat our meat.
The corporal sees me one night pushing a cleaning rod up and down in my rifle barrel. He snatches the rifle from me and tells me follow him to the latrine. He breaks down the rifle and plunges the barrel into hot soapy water and I want to tell him how we were warned by all the cadre corporals never never use water on your piece, use linseed oil, because water causes rust and the next thing is your piece is rotting and jamming in your hands and how the hell are you gonna defend yourself against a million Chinks swarming over a mountain.
The corporal says, Bullshit, dries the barrel with a rag on the end of the cleaning rod and peers down the barrel to the reflection of his thumbnail. He hands the barrel to me and I’m dazzled by the shine inside and I don’t know what to say to him. I don’t know why he’s helping me and all I can say is, Thanks, Corporal. He tells me I’m a nice kid and not only that he’s going to let me read his favorite book.
It’s The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan by James T. Farrell, a paperback, falling apart. The corporal tells me I’m to guard this book with my life, that he reads it all the time, that James T. Farrell is the greatest writer that ever lived in the U.S.A., a writer that understands you an’ me, kid, not like those blue-ass bullshit artists they have in New England. He says I can have this book till I finish basic training and then I have to get my own copy.
Next day is colonel’s inspection and we’re confined to barracks after chow time to clean and scrub and shine. Before lights-out we have to stand by our bunks for closer inspection by Master Sergeant Tole and two regular army sergeants who stick their noses into everything. If they find anything wrong we have to do fifty push-ups with Tole resting his foot on our backs and humming “Swing low, sweet chariot, comin’ for to carry me home.”
The colonel doesn’t check every rifle but when he looks down my barrel he steps back, stares at me and says to Sergeant Tole, This is a hell of a clean rifle, Sergeant, and asks me, Who’s the Vice President of the United States, soldier?
Alben Barkley, sir.
Good. Name the city where the second atomic bomb was dropped.
Nagasaki, sir.
Okay, Sergeant, this is our man. And that’s a hell of a clean rifle, soldier.
After formation a corporal tells me I’m to be colonel’s orderly next day, all day, riding in his car with the driver, opening his door, saluting, closing the door, waiting, saluting, opening the door again, saluting, closing the door.