"He knows his stuff, boy," Chief Durkin said.
"I know that, Chief," Williams said.
Mollified by Williams' understanding, Chief Durkin said, "It's been hard for him. It's hard on a man to be let down like he was."
Instantly, Williams' interest was aroused. Here, for the first time, was a man who might possibly throw some light on Bullitt's character and his curious behavior. "Let down, Chief?" Williams asked.
At that moment a very young, very new hospital apprentice came in, carrying his hat under his arm. He put a paper down in front of Chief Durkin, who examined it and spoke to Williams without raising his head. "Oh, you know. He was Activity Zebra."
Williams knew that name all right. Everyone in the Hospital Corps knew that name. Activity Zebra was the code designation that had been given to the great Navy medical organization which, trained as a combat unit, had gone on to the Pacific to take part in the historic landings, and had there covered itself with glory. Activity Zebra was one of the great names inscribed forever in the Valhalla of the Navy Medical Corps. The fatality rate of that unit was higher than that of any other combat medical unit in the Navy, for the Japanese snipers had used them as targets, picking out the Red Cross of the arm brassard, or mimicking the cries of wounded American Marines, calling out "Corpsman! Corpsman!" and shooting them as they ran into the open to give aid.
"Yes," Chief Durkin said, looking up at Williams now, the young hospital apprentice having made his nervous exit. "I thought you'd know that Bullitt was old Doc Brainard's boy. I suppose he doesn't want to talk about it. Admiral Brainard organized Activity Zebra, you know, and Bullitt was his right-hand man. Bullitt knows more about requisitioning and supply than any other man in the corps. It was Bullitt who did the requisitioning for Activity Zebra. It was Bullitt who set the standard. But when the unit was all ready to go, when they were all packed, with their gear on the dock, Brainard cut Bullitt's name off the draft."
"Why?" Williams asked.
Chief Durkin was silent for a moment. He rolled the cigar in the corner of his mouth, as if turning over with it the memory of the old injustice. "Nobody ever knew why," he said at last. "I don't think even Bullitt knew why. And after that," he went on, with his customary brusqueness, "Bullitt pulled temporary duty at the dispensary at Charleston while he waited for the orders that took him to the Ajax. Can you imagine a guy like Bullitt with dispensary duty? Taking cinders out of eyes? Bandaging fingers?"
Williams was silent. He thought he understood a great deal now that he had not understood before. This could explain the compulsion in Bullitt, the need to justify himself, the stubborn refusal, even in the face of active dislike, to request transfer from the Ajax. It might even explain the bitter cynicism which made him so disliked.
Williams was depressed, for himself as well as Bullitt. It had been a source of great satisfaction to him to have been, at last, accepted by McNulty and, through him, by the crew; to feel that he had gained their confidence and approval had given him new confidence in himself, and had lessened his sense of loneliness. He had learned how difficult It was for a man to live alone in this world where no man could act alone. But though it was a new world he found himself in, he would have to live there by the standards that he had brought from his own world. He could not betray his self-respect merely to gain the liking of others. He would have to tell McNulty again that he could not let Bullitt down.
Bullitt was more than usually disagreeable that day. From the medical-stores warehouse he managed to wheedle only a small supply of two- and three-inch bandage, and several odd bottles of iodine and aspirin, failing to get the additional blood plasma and morphine he wanted, and the surgical towels for use in making up more operating packs. He was allowed, after some argument, to have a twenty-five yard bolt of unbleached cotton cloth to make up into towels, and this Williams carried back to the Ajax, under one arm, with a carton of bandage in the other.
"They must think we have the women's sewing circle on board," Bullitt said, struggling along with the other boxes. "Do you think we might invite the admiral's wife m for tea?"
They spent the rest of the afternoon working on the twenty-five yards of cotton cloth. They tore it into one-yard lengths, tearing it to avoid a cut edge, which might fray. Then each edge was stitched with a double-fold hem, as an added precaution to avert the possibility of any frayed end or loose thread finding its way into a wound.
Williams found this highly improbable task interesting and amusing, as they sat facing each other in the sick bay, working with the needles and thread, looking, in their uniforms, like a parody of a scene from Jane Austen. In the days before, they had already made operating masks of gauze, with strips of tape sewed on, to be tied behind the head. They had made muslin cases to hold rubber gloves, the gloves carefully powdered with talc so that the fingers would not stick together in the heat of the sterilizing process. And they had prepared "C" sheets from ordinary bed sheets, with a double-fold hemmed incision in the center, so that a sterile field might be made around a flesh wound when the sheet was placed over a man, with the wound accessible through the slit. These "C" sheets, along with the gloves in their muslin cases, the gauze masks, and a certain number of towels, folded so that they would fall open when grasped by one corner, were placed in the packs for major operations, along with retractors, scalpels, needles and sutures in sterile capsules. The packs for minor surgery, which Bullitt prepared in far greater number, contained only a towel or two, gauze squares, bandages, and a needle and suture. The packs, both large and small, were then wrapped separately in muslin, and sterilized under pressure in the autoclave.
At last, as a result of requisitions that Bullitt had filed all the way from Norfolk to Newfoundland, they had their own autoclave — that gleaming, cylindrical steam chamber, which now sat in the corner of the sick bay facing the small sink. In the days before the autoclave arrived, Williams, if they were in port, had been sent with a great pile of carefully prepared operating packs to the nearest port dispensary or hospital, to have the packs sterilized there; or, with those prepared at sea, they had further wrapped each pack in layers of newspaper, and baked them in the galley oven, over the protests of the cook, who complained that the stench of singeing newsprint nauseated him. "But," as Bullitt said briskly, "since the smell of your cooking has the same effect on me, I think we will just ignore your pitiful cries."
Now, with the autoclave operating, Bullitt was like a housewife with a new machine. Everything in the sick bay had been sterilized at least once, and if he could have done Williams in sections, as Bullitt explained, he would have had him in there too.
That afternoon, as they sat sewing in the sick bay, the ship gently rocking at the dock, the shouts of the working parties coming to them distantly from the deck, a curious conversation took place.
"They want me to leave the ship." Bullitt said suddenly, without looking up from his needle. "Did you know that'"
"Know what. Chief?" Williams asked vacuously, stalling for time. How did Bullitt know? From someone goaded into anger, perhaps, or from the drunken revelations in some bar.
"Oh, cut It out," Bullitt said, folding a hem, and compressing it with wetted fingers. "I want to know this: are you in on it, too?"
"No," Williams said. "No, I am not." And what could he add to that? That justice meant more to him than his own feelings, his own likes or dislikes? Better to say no more.
"Your kind comes a dime a dozen," Bullitt said. "You know that, don't you? There are better corpsmen than you in any dispensary ashore. I could get you transferred like that," he said, with a snap of his fingers.