PART TWO

In complete contrast to Part One, Part Two is to be as literally
factual and material as possible. If it goes into the minds of
characters, it does so for the physical perceptions alone, such as
fear, pain, hunger, thirst, etc. It attempts to make no general-
ities. It is as factual a record of combat and associated actions
as I can make it.

In it are characters already known, and they progress to their
individual destinies and attitudes of mind physically, without
much introspection, under the stimulus of combat.

Characters with whom the reader has lived for a couple of years
are suddenly thrown into this world where death is at the elbow,
and their reactions, psychologically individual, must carry over to
the reader with the impact of life in persons they have known.

(See notes on combat novel and notebook from 'Canal.')

The reader sees people with whom he has lived die matter of
factly without much building and emotion. The whole idea is re-
straint, of emotion, of thought, and thru this restraint to enhance
the terrible qualities of combat on individuals.

List:

Pruitt

Warden

Friday Clark

Andy

Greene CROWNE

Bloom

Wilson & Henderson

Sladé

Choate

Capt Rosen

Lt Crane

Karelsen

Stark

McGoultty

Fraser

Flannery

Thornhill

Chester

Crowley

SYNOPSIS

Robert Lee Prewitt is trfd, at his own request, from the Regtal
drum and bugle corps atchd to A Co. He request this trfd because
of argument with chief buglar: Prewitt is indignant because the
Chief Buglar let another man play the Taps for a military funeral
in the Post Graveyard because of friendship and Regtal politics.
(Bring in Prewitt's thots on the funeral and graveyard for RA men
without families, a fitting military tribute to them. Prewitt
expects to be buried in the same way.) Prewitt is easily the best
buglar in the Regt, having played Taps at Arlington, and it is un-
fair that he did not get the Taps. Typically, he at once refuses
to be in the Corps any more, altho he loves bugling, and requests
transfer. He doesn't ask for a particular Co, and is trfd into
G Co, rifle co, whose commander is Capt Dana W Holmes (Regt boxing
coach, called "Dynamite" and whose 1st/sgt is Milton Anthbny

Warden. Prewitt's reputation as a belligerent hardhead haspreceded
into G Co: Warden knows him, having been a s/sgt in A Co.

OPENING SCENE: where Prewitt reports to G Co and is inter-
viewed by Capt Holmes, as is customary, in presense of Warden.
And after Prewitt is dismissed, Warden and Holmes discuss him as
an addition to G Co.

Prewitt is thus set against the authority of G Co from the
start, personified by Capt Holmes, who has no individuality and only
attempts to live up to the role he sees himself in as Co Cmdr--
which of course brings insincerity and hypocracy. And also Prewitt
is set against Warden, who as a topkick wants his co to run smooth-
ly mm because that gives him less work: Court martial papers are
hard to make out. After this scene is introduced the regular Co
Clerk to show Warden's personality: Warden jumps all over him for
some minor infraction, chuckling to himself the while. The clerk

3/Synopsis

as the regular Co Buglar, Clark as the apprentice. Both are
leery of Prewitt, who is the best buglar in the Regt, and who, if
he wished, could easily get Anderson's job as Co Buglar, thus mak-
ing Anderson the apprentice and forcing Clark back to Straight
duty.

They don't show their antagonism because of Prewitt's rep as a
fighter: they are afraid of him. And Prewitt ignores their antag-
onism, altho he must know it it, and talks to them some about the
Buglar Crum Corps and the guys in it. Thus their attitude is
shortly overcome, and both Andy and Clark become friends of Prewitt.
Prewitt's great honesty, and unfailing loyalty to any one who is
his friend attracts them. He has much personal strength and they,
who have it not, admire it greatly. They become more or less his
stooges and satelites. Clark acquires his nickname "Friday" from
Prewitt, being known as Prewitt's man Friday.

Prewitt desires to go to Haliewa less and less. He is tiring
of the girl. Her parents bother him by their silent wornness.
Finally he has a scene with her, gets angry, tells her he is not
coming back. He returns to Schofield fully intending not to re-
turn.

Prewitt hangs around with Friday and Andy, without associat-
ing much with the rest of G Co. Andy is quite a good guitar play-
er and owns a fairly good guitar. Friday has bought himself a
battered second hand one on the strength of Andy's promise to
teach him how to play. These two men, being on SD, do not go out
with the Co, and so are thrown more or less upon their own
association. They are excused from fatigue duty in the after-
noon by being on SD, and they spend the afternoons alone in the
big dim barracks practicing on the guitars. Friday particularly

5/Synopsis

WHO SERVED UNDER HOLMES

who is always drunk and setting his mess suffer because of his addiction to lemon extract. Stark sees the score: that Warden is the real boss of the Co, and falls in line. Heworks well in the kitchen and pulls Warden's duty when Warden is drunk--making out menus, supervising preparation. It is not long till Preem is trafd without grade and Stark is made mess/sgt--a buck sgt's rating at that time. Stark works well with Warden; they understand each other.

Prewitt sees what is happening to Preem, and watches the progress of this politics. It is so adroitly arranged, that when Holmes has Preem transferred, and puts Stark in his place, that Holmes believes he has done something for the company, has executed a piece of good management, and at the same time kept his vague promise to Stark--all by himself. Warden and Stark get drunk and laugh over Holmes.

Prewitt sees that Warden is the power behind Holmes' throne. He dislikes Warden more because of his politicking and easing Preem out. Yet Prew has no sympathy for Preem. He admires both Warden and Stark for their handling of it, and for their competency. Preem is incompetent and deserves what he gets. It is the manner of Warden in doing it that Prew dislikes so much. Yet at the same time he realizes that Warden loves the Co as most men love a woman; it is his pride and joy, his reason for living, and he keeps it spic and apan, in spite of the pompous blundering vague Holmes. This he likes in Warden. And it becomes evident that he really underneath admires and likes Warden, but that he will not show it because of his pride.

It is here that Prew finally breaks off with his Haliewa shack job, feels remorse--and indignation, and finally learns she has really shacked up with a guy from E Co and had her baby.

After breaking off with her, Prew spends his passes with Friday and Andy. When they go to town the three of them go alone. One

6/Synopsis

night they happen to wander into the "Blue Anchor" and find Warden sitting there alone, talking to the Portagee waitress, one of three. Warden has been coming there alone. Warden and Prewitt get into an argument on the subject of Prewitt's foolishness to let his personal pride cut him out of a soft deal: he could fight or be Co Buglar and so get out of straight duty, but it is evident that Warden, who is athletic, will have nothing to do with Regt athletics. Prewitt mentions this, and Warden does with his being a top kick. Prewitt mentions topkick of D Co who is football star; Warden snorts.

At first, seeing them, Warden ignores them, looking down from his height of 12 yrs and 12 yrs serv. Prewitt's one previous enlistment means nothing to Warden, who has twelve years. But gradually Warden's own inherent lack of snobbishness makes him talk to Prewitt--he explains this to himself by thinking he is trying to help the punk (condescendingly.)

Their argument becomes heated, and it looks as if they will fight. Warden is as big as three of Prewitt. Later in the evening, a soldier who is shacked up with the Portagee waitress accosts Warden who is obviously making a pass at her. The man is a s/sgt from another Regt. Warden tells him to go fuck himself, and the result is a fight. The s/sgt's buddies are all present, and they join in the fight against Warden. Prewitt then jumps in to help Warden, altho both Friday and Andy remain out. Prewitt and Warden give a good account of themselves and manage to lay a number low before somebody yells that the MPs are coming, and the place clears in a fraction of a second. Warden is a wild and excellent fighter, and it's apparent he's done some ring fighting.

7/Synopsis

In fact, few things ever come up that Warden has not done. He seems to have done everything and been everywhere.

Back at the barracks Prewitt rages at both Friday and Andy for not helping him. They are apologetic and will not meet his gaze. He tells them off, and refuses to speak to them any more. They are both unhappy about this.

Warden makes no mention of this help given him by Prewitt. If anything, he is harder on Prew because he now feels he owes him something, which is unfair for Prewitt to trade on. The fact that Prew doesn't trade on it at all, but leans the other way, does not change Warden's idea any. He is still contemptuous of Prewitt for being a troublemaker. Prewitt expects no favors or friendship, and indicates he would reject it if offered. But Warden never even sees this. Prew stares at Warden with the same apathy and belligerence as before, altho in his mind he admires Warden's fighting. Most humans would think this fighting side by side would have deepened their relationship, but it doesn't work that way. With them, it works just the opposite.

A few nights later Warden goes back to the "Blue Anchor" again. It is obvious that the Blue Anchor has become the and hangout stamping ground/for the Company to which the s/sgt belonged.

After Warden arrives alone, a few men from G Co gradually insinuate themselves into the place, which is run by a fat-faced frightened Chinese, who worries about breakage, because he sees what is coming. The men from G Co are: Wilson ' Henderson, Stark, Choate, Crowley, Pop Karelsen--who has come mainly to see the fun, and several others. Ahosrtly after Warden enters the S/Sgt sneeringly accosts him again, and Warden grins his sly

8/Synopsis

pixy grin, and without a word knocks the s/sgt down. The others
rush him, and then the men from G Co jump in, and the battle starts
all over again, but this time with more even sides and less danger
to Warden. Before the MPs can be called, it is obvious that the
Blue Anchor is no longer the undisputed province of the s/sgt's
Co. The MPs warn the Chink that any more disturbances will make
them put his place off limits, and the Chink wails. But the fight is
over, and G Co has taken possession. After the fight, the Blue
Shanker gradually becomes the hangout for G Co while on pass in
Honolulu. They can almost always be sure of finding somebody from
the Co there and ready for a sortie of any kind. Warden character-
istically no longer goes there. He has shacked up with the
Portagee in a small shack in Waikiki, and she quits her job, and
Warden, his pbjective gained, lets the Blue Shanker go to hell.

(In the big fight, it must be brought out that while there is
a Co spirit in the men that makes them take the part of any one of
them who is being discriminated against, still the main objective for
following Warden has very little sententality in it. They are
just spoiling for a fight, for some excitement, for anything to
break the monotony. They have no great love for Warden.)

The fighting season is at full tilt now, and Wilson is the local
hero. He is the last year's Hawaiian Dept champion in the 135 lb
class, and it is expected he will again win this year. He takes
all this in his characteristic sullenness, without display or
enjoyment. His buddy, Henderson, laughs at the Co appreciation of
Wilson, but at the same time it's apparent that he basks a little
in reflected glory, and is jealous of Wilson's associating with any-
body else.

9/Synopsis

After Wilson wins the Gumb Schofield championship, Holmes' wife sitting ringside kisses him on the mouth as he leaves the ring. She picks Wilson up in her car now and then, and sometimes comes over to the Co barracks for her old man. Warden, who knows her slightly, starts talking to her politely, instead of being short and sarcastic with her. She is hotly thrilled over this. Warden, the dominator, is her kind of man. Warden knows she has been sleeping with Wilson, and he sardonically decides to get some of it, just as a gesture against Holmes, whom Warden attemptlessly hates.

At the same time Wilson begins hanging around young Alan Chester. Henderson threatens to knife Chester if he doesn't stay away from Wilson.

O'Hayer, the supply sgt and fighter, appears occasionally here and there in the company's life. O'Hayer is only a figurehead as the supply/sgt. He is one Holmes fighters, and served with Holmes before, consequently Holmes is partial to him, and gave him the supply sgt's rating. All O'Hayer does is initial or sign the reports; all his work is done for him by his supply clerk who has a 1st/4th rating. O'Hayer is a thorn in the side of Warden, who doesn't mind a man getting by with something, as long as he does his work properly. O'Hayer doesn't do any work at all. Warden would dearly love getting O'Hayer out of his job and out of the company as he did Preem. But this is one angle that Warden even Warden can't work; O'Hayer is too cool, and too close to Holmes.

The situation between them is a sort of cold armed truce. Warden, the emotional flyer-off-the-hand, never says a word out of the way to O'Hayer. O'Hayer never does anything wrong; he's a cool sister. O'Hayer knows Warden is out to get him, or would be if he could, but O'Hayer knows he can't and so does not worry about him.

10/Synopsis

O'Hayer is one of the few men who really make the army pay off. Unlike Warden's ambivalence, O'Hayer would be the same in any situation:cold, calculating, dapper, and taking whatever the situation would offer him. Warden respects this attitude, but still would like to get O'Hayer out, but O'Hayer's pull is stronger than Warden's brains. So Warden is leery of him, and they treat each other with the standard informal politeness--at the same time keeping a weather-eye of respect upon each other.

The whole Co usually divides its gambling time between O'Hayer's shed and the shed of Turp Turner, whummummm Turp's shed doesn't make near the money O'Hayer's does, but he makes a good bit. Turp also is a 20% man, making loans to guys who are caught with their pants down and have to have money. O'Hayer loans no money at all. The big game of monthly winners is always in O'Hayer's shed, and often as not Warden is in it. Warden usually makes a small wad and gets out quick. Prewitt also gambles in this game when he has the money, but drawing a pvt's pay, Prew doesn't often have the money. When he does have it, he more than holds his own in the game.

The dapper O'Hayer doesn't like Prewitt, just as he doesn't like Warden, but Warden has more pull and power than Prewitt, so O'Hayer doesn't cross Warden. But he does indicate, in subtle ways, to Prewitt that he doesn't think much of him. Prewitt realizes O'Hayer as flat-eyed, but he is not frightened of him; he is only cautious.

O'Hayer never spends any time in the Co. He is rich and always hanging out either in his expensive apartment or downtown where the swells hang out. He is almost never in the supply room except for a few minutes every day to sign reports, and he is no

12/Synopsis

making. Warden gets a great excited laugh out of this. He knows
that the woman would have only to holler rape, and it would get
him twenty years (Witness to the case of the raped Hawaiian man.)

After this initial move, Warden pends some time with Holmes'
wife, meeting her secretly off the post. To do this he has to
neglect his shackjob, who is getting firily jealous. Stark warns
Warden about this, Stark being smart enough to see thru it all--
and having slept with her in Texas, and knows that Henderson did so
too. Warden indignantly tells him to mind his own business, and
Stark shrugs.

All this time Prewitt has been gradually absorbed into the Co
life. He is no longer a trfd man but a member of G Co, with that
subtle distinction the Co has. He has been going to the Blue
Shanker with the boys, and has been going also to the New Congress
Hotel, a whorehouse a few doors from the Blue Shanker, which has
also become moreor less a hangout for the G Co boys. Prewitt who
now frequents both G/ Co stamping grounds, meets and sleeps with
Lorane, one of the New Congress girls, whose real name is Alma
Johnson. He is impressed by her and likes her commonsense atti-
tude, her sweetness, and her lack of bitterness that most of the
girls have, understandably enough.

The boxing season is nearly over, but Capt Holmes has lost a
featherweight (126 lb class) and he tries to get Prewitt to come
out, get in shape, and replace the man, a shorttimer. Prewitt
obstinently refuses. He has always fought 118, and is too small
for 126, altho he now weighs 128 lbs. In addition, he insists
that he will go his own way: the Co can take care of itself, and
he will take care of himself. His talents he persists in hiding in
the dust of straight duty. Holmes, thru the willing Warden, puts

13/Synopsis

the pressure on Prewitt by giving Warden instructions to saddle
Prewitt with extra duties, harder fatigue details. Warden does
this joyously, quite sure that his prediction is going to come true,
as it obviously will when Prewitt is discriminated against. Instead
of forcing Prewitt to be sensible and go out for the team, this per-
secution has just the opposite effect: it makes Prew all the more
obstinate, and he swears they will not break him to the boxing squad.

Pruitt finally talks back to Warden on a detail of cleaning
barrack walls, and is ordered to hike to Kole Kole pass with full
field pack. A noncom on a bike is sent along to watch him. When
Prewitt comes back, Warden asks if he's changed his mind. Prewitt
covered with sweat, laconically says no. He is ordered to hike to
Kole Kole Pass again. The nonecom on his bike is apologetic, and
tries to tell Prewitt to have some sense, but Prewitt tells him to
go to hell. Prewitt returns the second time, but Warden is on-
spicuously absent. Later Prewitt is called in by Holmes and in-
formed that his name was up for PFC, but that it is now taken off
the list. Warden, present in the office, grins his pixy grin, and
afterwards discusses Prewitt's troublemaking potentialities with
Capt Holmes, thus swinging that ignorant and impressionable man more
toward a badoutlook of Prewitt.

After this altercation, Stark takes Prewitt's side, but Warden
tells him angrily to mind his own business, that he's getting too
big for his britches. Stark is not scared, because he knows Warden
loves competence above everything; he is in no danger as long as he
is a first rate mess sgt, which he is. Stark and Warden discuss
a former cook who is disgustedly pulling straight duty; Stark wants
him back in the kitchen, saying he can make a good co ok out of him.
Warden refuses on the grounds of the man being a fuckup, but it is

14/Synopsis

obvious he does it maliciously. He warns Stark that the man is
a pure fuckup and that he will eventually get in the Stockade. Stark
drops it.

Prewitt, finally, to evade this persecution gets hold of an angle
from a guy he knows, and puts in for SD as a waiter at the officers'
club. He is accepted, and moves completely from the company. While
he is not under the jurisdiction of the Co any more, he is still
a member of the Co, and when he leaves SD he will have to return to
G Co. The truth is, that in spite of the persecution, Prewitt has
come to look at G Co as his home, as he once looked at the Bugle
Corps. And only the worst indignity can drive him from it. He
has very good friends in Friday and Andy, and they sing and play
together a great deal. And he also likes Warden, altho he will
admit it to no one but himself. He holds no personal ill will
against Warden for this persecution (and neither does Warden hold
ill will for Prewitt) This is just the way the army works, and both
accept it. At the same time Prewitt is made at Warden, generally.
He admires Warden as a first class 1st/sgt, and yet he hated Warden's
guts for persecuting him unjustly, and yet he likes Warden for his
own urage, which he has seen, and for his sense of humour. Has
ambivalence for the figure of Warden is almost identical with Wardens
for the army, which he hates and loves.

So Prewitt is whisked away from under Warden's nose to the
officers' club. He goes back to the Co often, and openly taunts
Warden because Warden can do nothing to him now. Also, Friday and
Andy come up to the officers' club and relay to Prew all the news
of the Co.

They inform him that Warden is having his trouble with the Co.

15/Synopsis

First, O'Hayer's supply clerk has got himself trfd because he has an offer to work in another supply room with the immediate prospect of getting the supply sergeantcy because the current supply sgt is a short ti mer. O'Hayer's clerk is an excellent supply man and really deserved the rating in G Co, except for O'Hayer's pull with Holmes. Consequently, Warden is stuck for a supply man to do O'Hayer's work for him. He has had to relieve Sgt Pop Karelsen from his straight duty job, where he is needed, to take over the supply work, because Karelsen is the only man with experience, and O'Hayer doesn't even know supply work. At the same time, he can't bust O'Hayer, or have him trfd because of Holmes' favoritism. So he has an extra sgt in the Co who is doing absolutely nothing. Second, he has lost an unusual amount of noncoms in the short-timer turnover, and has had to make a lot of men who are not competent--or so Warden feels. Most of the men who were pvts with Prew (except Friday and Andy who are still bugling) are now noncoms or PFCs and acting noncoms. Also he's gotten in a new batch of recruits and he's having trouble getting them trained. "Three weeks recruit trng.) Among these recruits is McGourty, the "Joe College" dresser, with whom Warden is disgusted.

In the meantime, Prewitt is having his own troubles at the Officers' Club. He is hard y there a month until he is at odds with the headwaiter, Barny (Barnébus) Porchenick, who goes by the title of Charles to all the officers and their wives. The nervous fly off the handle Porchenick, a former pro fighter, drives his waiters unmercifully. He is not intelligent, but with a kind of shrewdness that pays him off better, perhaps. He is a real tyrant, unlike Warden with his extenuating characteristics. He is a handsome Polack and quite a ladies man with the officers' wives. He

16/Synopsis

has been a waiter and (he says) headwaiter on the outside. Most of his crew are young fellows in the army a short time; Prew is about the only old soldier, outside of two of the cooks and the pastry man in the kitchen, which is not under Porchenick's thumb, who have been there for several years.

Prew has a varied experience here which serves to enlighten him a great deal, and make him even more bitter about officers: such as the party where Holmes discusses the similarity of EM and mules with the Col commanding the Regt; and the afternoons when the wives and daughters take their hula lessons from a Hawaiian man imported from Honolulu. And young Culpepper's wit and dru kenness, uselessness as an officer.

He waits on table in the bachelor officers' mess for some time under Barny, always on the point of trouble. And finally he gets into a fight with Barny, who is going to show him who's boss. Barny uses his pro fighting as a club of fear over the heads of his crew. Prew is not frightened, and he dislikes Barny more because of his contempt for the "dumb ruck of RA EM." Barny is built like a coal-peculiar miner and has a/musclebound walk. Prew fights him and is terribly beaten up. Not knocked out, he is finally caught and held by several of the other waiters. He makes out well at first, closing one of Barny's eyes and cutting him up badly, but he is outweighed over fifty lbs. Prew's quickness and timing and footwork is contrasted with the bulky slow Barny. Prew is all right mm as long as he can keep Barny from hitting him, and his own punch is amazing for so small and light a man. Barny knows he's had a fight, and for a while even suspects with surprise he might lose. But Prew cannot keep Barny from hitting him forever, and once Barny with his musclebound tremendous/strength hits Prew, it's the beginning of the end.

17/Synopsis

Prew's nose is broken (again), and one os his eyelids is torn lose
so that it has to be stitched.

After the fight, Barny is a little scared of a man who won't
ever quit, and openly admiring. Prew is badly hurt, and Barny covers
for him and gives him a couple of days off to rest up. He tries
in his dumb ingenuous way to be friends with Prew once he's whipped
him; but Barny is surprised to find that Prew stares at him with
flat eyes, and will not even peak to him except in line of duty.

Prew repeatedly warns Barny that he will eventually even it up,
if he has to use a chair. Barny is frightened a little by this cold
combed hatred, but he has guts and offers to fight anytime with any
weapon.

It takes Prew some time to get over the fight. All the time he
getting over it he is working to get into the bar and out of the
mess. He has had previous experience tending bar on the bum, so he
is finally accepted. It is while working in the bar that he meets
and makes the Major's Wife. He also sees Holmes drunk all the
time and losing money at poker. Holmes is losing more money than
he makes, and Prew knows it's coming as a payoff from O'Hayer and
his gambling shed, altho it is common knowledge that O'Hayer has to
pay heavily at Regt Hq for the use of the shed. While Holmes is
drunk or playing poker in the game room, Holmes' wife is flitting
lightly from officer to officer. She sleeps with all of them, as do
most of the women. She should be made out as only a little more
abnormal than the average officer's wife.

Barny, the headwaiter, is mysteriously beaten up while down
town on a bat. He was drunk and was hit from behind and doesn't
know who got him. He suspects Prew, but nothing can be proved on
Prew, because the other barmen swear he was in the quinta qtrs and

19/Synopsis

Warden's prophesy comes true: Coming home from the beer garden one
night, Prewitt is accosted by an old man in the Co, a sgt,
named Gallowitz, who is drunk. Ike is a drone, completely ignor-
ant, but served with Holmes in Texas as a caretaker of the養mace
boiler. Holmes has made him a sgt. Ike, very drunk, stops
Prew and attempts in his broken English to tell him what's wrong
with him, i.e., he's too stubborn. Prew tries to make his way
past Ike on the walk, but Ike pushes him, gets very angry at
Prew for bothering the OldMan, whom Ike thinks is wonderful, nat-
urally. Prewitt gets mad and tells Ike to get out of the fuckin
way or he'll knock him on his ass. Ike draws a knife. Prew really
gets made then, knocks Ike 15 ft back against the wall, and Ike
sinks down to a sitting position, out. Prewitt is thrown in the
guardhouse next morning. He is tried and sentenced to three
months at hard labor in the Post Stockade, for using abusive lang-
age to a superior noncom, and for assaulting him. He stabsly
makes no defense and

stare obdurately at Holmes who will not meet
his eyes. Warden chortles over this turn of affairs, and cusses
Stark out for trying to tell him Prew was a goodman. Stark knows
the score, and knows Warden knows, walks disgustedly away. Warden
grins his pizy grin of slyness. He even struts his brains a little
because his prophesy has come true.

Prewitt is taken into the Stockade, and the scene shifts away
from the company with him to this new environment, its frictions,
friendships, background. The company is left by the reader for
the stockade.

(See scenes)

A number of things happen to Prewitt in the Stockade; he meets
there the cook Stark tried to get back in the kitchen and who went
over the hill, is doing six months. Prewitt makes one friend, a

20/Synopsis

big rough soft-voiced Irishman named O'Malley who has a will and
personal pride as inflexible as Prewitt's. When the prisoners play
the game of beating each other against a matress hung on the wall,
Prewitt is the only man besides O'Malley who can take it without
having to drop, and Prew is the smallest man there. O'Malley is
used to show how a fine man (See Jake Openheimer in THE STAR ROVER)
a potential good citizen, can be made into the toughest kind of
criminal, like Pretty Boy Floyd or John Dillinger. He and Prewitt
discuss this aspect often, and O'Malley is responsible for Prewitt
keeping out of real trouble, and any trouble in the Schofield
Stockade is real trouble. Without O'Malley to soften Prewitt's
own pride by his advice, Prewitt would have ended up by staying
five or ten years because of the indignities he is forced to suffer.
But O'Malley talks him out of fighting back, at the same time doing
what he tells Prew not to do. O'Malley spends a graphic week in
the Black Hole, which is described for the reader. (See Whitlock's
THE TURN OF THE BALANCE.) He recounts the familiar legend of
Dillinger, and says he is going to go the same way. He means to
get even. These men have a curious faculty of standing alone on
their unshakeable physical resoluteness, unsupported by anything
mental or spiritual. It's the hardest kind of courage for a man to
acquire. They are denied a belief in that from having had no edu-
cation, and they are denied a belief in God by the church of their
society--and are without the depth of thought to figure out a private
ridicule for themselves. So they have nothing to stand on but their
individuality and intense personal pride, and their unshakeable
physical courage that makes them fear nothing, forces them to fear
nothing. Both Warden and Prewitt are of this type, but they are not
so placed by circumstances that they become criminal--altho Prew

23/Synposis

down this wire, living in pup tents and having their chow run in,
cold of course, on a truck from the CP. Big Chief Choate is in
charge of this position; he's now a Sgt. Also Friday, the
apprentice buglar, who pulls field duty when not in garrison, is on
Choate's position, and Friday has his guitar. Andy is stationed, as
the buglar, with the CP where Warden is. Andy, who is also a truck
driver, often drives Warden down to Choate's position for an in-
spection. They come almost every night, the real reason being that
Warden and Choate, who served together in PI, get drunk and talk
over old times. Once in a while Stark or/and Pop Karelsen come
with them. When they come, Andy brings his guitar also, and the
men on the position have a song session.

About a hundred yards to the rear of their position is a macadem
road that runs parallel with their wire, and the main road. This
road runs to a sand and earth and gravel dump. Along the back side
of the road is an old scrap iron dump. Hickam field has a guard
retreat from Newmarket to Reverele on this scrap dump, patrolling up and
down the road. One of the men on this duty is John Slade, who has
gate
just recently been relieved from the Main/Guard, cherished post of
the Hickam guard, by S/Sgt Fioretti, sgt of the guard. Slade meets
a few of the Infantrymen in the field uniforms while they're sta-
tioned there. He walks his lonely post and hears their voices from
across the road, and hears the music when they're playing.

After a while he takes to going over to their camp when he is
relieved, altho it will mean walking two miles back to the
barracks. And now and then he crosses over while he is on duty
for a gab fest, altho if he was caught, Firoetti would surely get
him three to six months.

Slade is impressed greatly by these rough and ready Infantrymen

24/Synopsis

happy-gp-lucky, always laughing and singing. The man who walks
post nearest him, about twenty yards--whoever he is, always has
a bottle and is free with offering it to him. Slade is afflicted
with a very romantic picture of the easy co mradeship, "All for one,
one for all," the ignoring of rank--which is true, to a certain
extent, a picture that does not nearly fit the facts. He sees their
life as vastly preferable to his own life at Hickam.

He spends a deal of time in their bivouac, and gets acquainted
somewhat. It makes a strong impression on him, who is at present
suffering the oppression of sgt Finnetti. He becomes a pretty
good friend of Friday, whom he classes with the rest of all hell-
for-leather Infantrymen. Friday is falttered and pleased, and his
own likeable personality makes him befriend Slade. Slade sees
Warden only from a distance, and says hello to him a couple of
times after he has become more acquainted with G Co. Warden doesn't
ignore him, but is preoccupied and very short. To Warden this
is only another punk soldier. This attitude only enhances Slade's
picture of Warden as a more or less heroic figure of a tough,
competent hard-drinking old timer, still young. Beau Geste pic-
ture. Slade looks at Warden with more or less adoring eyes. Thus
is the minor character of Slade introduced.

G Co does its two weeks and goes back into garrison. And Warden
picks up the strings of his life which Michi where he left them. One
night she jumps him when he comes home late, drunk, and tries to
gouge his eyes out in a rage. Warden laughs and throws her off him.
It is obvious that the rift between them over the tourist women and
their money is becoming wider. Warden has no shining film
obscuring his acute perception of the tourist world and its richness,
and he knows most of the women are only middle class wives, getting

25/Synopsis

dispairing
along in years and having a/fling for the ormance they've always
wanted but never found. Warden capitalizes on this. He knows that
they're not rich, as Michi thinks, but they've still got more money
than a RA 1st/sgt. He's making more money from them, at the least
not having to spend his own money to have a good time. That's the
way it is, and he'd be a fool to throw it up for Michi. Michi can
take it or leave it. Michi submissively takes it, but it's apparat
that it's only for the present.

Warden gets a job three nights a week working on one of the tourist "Moonlight Cruise" boats. He's owned a small sail boat in FI, and knows how to handle the job. He meets more tourist women this way, and they have a more romantic picture of him than if he Also the artist in him loves these moonlight trips, their beauty. only tells them he's on the beach./ On the cruise he meets one dame who is really rich. She invites him to her suite in the Royal. He goes, of course, but when he gets there, he finds that the woman won't lay, but that she wants him to go down on her. (This must be handled delicately, but not so delicately that the implication can be mistaken by the reader.) He almost hits her, walks out. It's used to show depravity of the idle bored rich.

On the cruise he also meets Rudolph Robertson, well-known captain of the Oscar Tibring, a hand built Norwegian boat that Robertson has sailed around the world several times. Later, Robertson advertizes for crew members, and Warden goes to see him. He pictures himself as a seafearing man, forever traveling over the waters of the earth, a life he'd like. Robertson agrees to take him on, and get him to Australia, but Warden will lose his citizenship, won't be able to return to the States without a passport, at least not permanently. Warden agrees to go, not caring about the citizenship side of it: The United States has never done anything for him.

26/Synopsis

But his own cynicism defeats him, and he snorts disgustedly at himself, as he snorts at everything else. He decides to stay in the army and not go, ever. The army is his only place. Afterwards, he learns that Robertson's brother in 'Frisco has decided to sell the boat, and that Robertson has to take it back to 'Frisco. Warden snorts again at his own romantic illusions, and the fact that he can't go, even though he's decided not to, the mere fact that it was all a pipedream enlarges and enhances his already great cynicism.

The scene shifts back to Slade, introduced before, who still is at Hickam. He, mostly on the strength of the G Co sabotage guard and partly because of Capps, transfers to G Co, to the Infantry from the Air Corps, an astoundingly foolish thing in army eyes.

Slade has just been relieved from the guard. Guard duty at Hickam is run by four month terms--when a man has done his four months, he is thru for the rest of his two years. Slade elected to remain on guard duty permanently, which is optional, because he enjoyed the military side of it; spit and polish, snappy salutes, romantic, etc. But he was caught in a minor infraction by Sgt Fioretti, who dislikes him. He is now doing fatigue duty; cleaning officers' qtrs on the trash detail (particularly unpleasant because the officers' wives always throw their menstruation cloths in the trash cans. This, along with his persecution by Fioretti, makes Slade indignantly angry. Also he works with lawn mower and grass clippers on the boulevards of Hickam, which is being groomed for its title: "the showplace of the Islands." All the movie stars visit it while vacationing in Hawaii, and it gets a write up in all the Honolulu papers, and a good number of papers in the States.

On this fatigue duty Slade has met a pvt Capps, a RA soldier of 10 yrs serv from Ft Benning, who enlisted in the Air Corps because

28/Synopsis

the distant horizon: the training program is becoming exhilarated, and Warden is correspondingly having more troubles. The class of recruits coming from boat to boat is gradually changing. There are less of the "bums" and "drifters" and jobless, like Prewitt, more men like Slade and McGourty, guys from a little better environment, guys who have a home on the outside, perhaps even had jobs. Orders have come out that they are to handle these recruits with gloves, make it less hard on them than before. (Before, a recruit is not even allowed to associate with straight duty men until he had been thru recruit drill. Recruits are kept segregated on one section of the barracks. They are allowed no passes, and even have to sign out to go to the PX. They are inspected daily by their noncoms, who are tough on them. All this is changed by the orders.) Warden snorts at this advent. Orders have also come out to replace the EM OD garrison caps with CKC overseas caps for dress uniforms. This is of course an order for things like parades, but the men ignore it for dress on pass. They still wear the garrison caps. Nothing is done about it, because they've been wearing them for so long. But the recruits and new men are no longer issued garrison caps, and they are no longer issued campaign hats for drill and fatigue duty. But the old men still wear their campaign hats for drill, and so of course the new men buy them at cleaners and hat blockers.

Slade makes his transfer--we see him only coming in. He has been in G Co only a few days when Prewitt comes back to duty from the Stockade. Prew is changed, a little harder, more wild, less tolerant in general. He is more like Warden. Slade has heard all about Prewitt from a number of the men in Go Co, to whom Prew is become a sort of mythical figure, not because of being in jail, which is more or less normal, but because he is so inflexible, the admirable

29/Synopsis

with unshakeable courage, which makes the other men who admire him
dislike him and fear him even more because he makes them ashamed of
their own lack of guts. Slade hears about Prew principally from
Friday and Andy, with whom he has become friends. They are young
mentally like himself, and somewhat naive and simple like himself,
and he spends most of his time with them, listening to the guitar
and singing. This is a romantic picture to Slade.

Slade is self-conscious with Prew, from having heard so many
tales of his toughness, and the first evening when Prew is straight-
ening his stuff makes his acquaintance with conversational reluc-
tance. After so many blood curdling tales, he is quite surprised
to find Prew friendly and warm. What he does not see, that Prew
and Warden both see, is that such a figure as he has of both of them
can't possibly be true. They've lived the adventurous life and
found it doesn't exist. Prew is amused by Slade's attitude. Slade
questions Prew's use of jeweler's rouge and Prew explains why he
uses it instead of blitz rag. This, to Slade, is an indication of
superior experience, connected with having lived adventure and learnt
its details. Slade buys some jeweler's rouge that night.

Prewitt is broke, and will be till next payday, when he receives
only a small pay because of his two-thirds fine. But Friday and
Andy have a little dough which they were saving for a payment on the
electric guitar, and Prewitt borrows it. Prewitt secretly wants to
see Lorene, at the New Congress. It has been three months since
he's had a woman, or even seen one except at a distance. He thinks
about guys like O'Malley, who spend years in jail, and a great rage
and indignation courses thru him. He goes to Lorene's room with her.
After she lays him, they sit in the room and talk, and he tells her
all about his being in the clink. Alma is sympathetic, but she has

29/Synopsis

30/Synopsis

to call a halt because of the time; she's allowed only so long with
each man in the room. She can stay if Prewitt wants to pay again, and
go to bed--or talk if he wishes. Prewitt refuses, pridefully,
partly because he hasn't enuf money, partly because he feels she
should take the time. Alma says he can talk to her outside, until
another man calls for her. He agrees to this, but they are only
outside a short while when another doggie calls for Lorene. Prewitt
leaves, dissatisfied. He wandersaround town, drinks a few beers,
all his small amount of money will buy, and saves out just enuf
for taxi fare back to Schofield. He takes a bus out to Waikiki
and sees the tourists cavorting in dinner clothes. He is envious,
but not bitter. He is accosted byna queer, but refrains from hit-
ting him, because of just being out of jail. Walking the beach,
he runs into Warden and his shakjob. Warden is friendly, but
Prewitt cuts him. Warden is indignant. Next day is rides Prewitt,
in an impersonal military way.

The next day at drill, Tup Thornhill gives a lecture on fire
power. Slade, still new to this Beau Geste world, is joyously
enthusiastic. He envisions Tup as a real soldier, competent, hard.
Prewitt, first day's drill after stockade, views the lecture with
cynical eyes, knowing Turp for the incompetent he is is, always
acting like a soldier but incapable of being one.

A few days after, the Co pulls a fire power problem on the
combat, a false front village in an open field next the rifle
range. Slade, who can't even load a rifle, is taken in hand by
Prewitt who shows him how to load, how to fire, a few pointers.
Bloom is laughingly sarcastic, the rest of the men disgusted at
Slade. Prewitt tells Bloom off, and thus begins his championing
of Slade.

30/Synopsis

The next day at drill, Turp Thornhill gives a lecture on fire
power. Slade, still new to this Beau Geste world, is joyously
enthusiastic. He envisions Turp as a real soldier, competent, hard.
Prewitt, first day's drill after stockade, views the lecture with
cynical eyes, knowing Turp for the incompetent he is, always
acting like a soldier but incapable of being one.

31/Synopsis

Then there comes a three day field problem, which entails a great deal of marching--hiking. Slade poops out and is bulling along on guts, and Prewitt explains the relaxed technique of hiking to him. Slade is overjoyed at the romance of this, while Prew's attitude is purely practical. Slade practices the technique räig-iously, and by the end of the präblem has become a fair hiker.

Prewitt who is sensitive about his lack of education, which takes the form of sneering usually, is a little awed by Slade's college. He admires Slade's accumulated store of education, like history for example, which Slade tells him some stories of it, and he asks for book titles to read. Slade explains that history taught in schools is dry, not the truth, not all it's cracked up to be.

During the summer, O'Hayer puts in for a reenlistment furlough, and while they are not the style any more, due to the new draftee one-year army, the Regt Cmdr gives O'Hayer not only 30 days, but the old time 90 days, even when O'Hayer has had other furloughs, comprising his allotted 30 days a year during his present enlistment. Holmes helps to engineer this deal for O'Hayer. Warden is indig-nant at the thing: O'Hayer's pull, etc. After learning this, the naive Slade puts in for a 30 day furlough to attend the Univ of Hawaii for the summer session. Holmes tells him he will back it, that he is all for a man bettering himself, but Holmes, for some reason, is unable to get the furlough thru the Col, who turns it down--on the heels of O'Hayer's 90 days. Holmes is very sörry to Slade, tells him that with the new preparedness it is impossible, disregarding O'Hayer. Warden snorts contemptuous at Slade's dmb-ness, and at Holmes' hypocracy, equally.

Prewitt has watched this situation, tells Slade he knew it would happen. He takes Slade down to the New Congress to celebrate.

32/Synopsis

While going down to the Univ to see about admission, Slade has met a girl who is going to school there, Betty Temple. He has several dates with her, even though he is a common soldier, and she is leery of common soldiers. He gets the dates, because the naive Betty is hipped on the church and on morality, and is seeking to reform him so that he can use his time in the army to better himself. Slade has explained his rejection of furlough by the Col, and rather enjoys giving in detail to Betty his lurid drunken orgies, which are far from orgies, but he likes for her to try to reform him.

Thru one of their arguments about the EM in the RA, he brings Prew down to meet her. Prew's hardness, inflexibility, wildness, the only things that have saved him in his type of life, all these both repel and fascinate Betty, who has lived so far from reality for so long that she fears it when she meets it. In her conception of society such men as Prewitt don't exist; she fails to take into account the forces that made him, having never met them or even seen them except in the far distance.

Prew doesn't like her any better than she likes him, informs Slade that what she needs is for some guy to get her down and fuck her. Slade laughingly agrees, but says he can't do it; she won't let him. Prew says he didn't say let him, he said do it. Slade shrugs, says you can't do things like that.

Later Slade arranges a double date with Prew and Alma. Alma is all for this, since Betty is a respectable girl. Betty likes Alma much better than Prew. She thinks Alma is a "nice girl." Afterwards, Slade tells her that Alma is a whores at the New Congress. Betty is shocked, even though she believes.

Slade has met a woman of middle class in Honolulu thru letters

BREATH HOME

33/Synopsis

from back home. She is elderly, and likes Slade and keeps inviting him to her home. She is mild and also a little reforming, and Slade is from her own class, and not to hard for her to stomach. She is from Kentucky and her maiden name was Pruitt. When Slade tells her about Prew, she asks him to invite Prew up with him.

Slade is a little leery and tries to explain to her that Prew is not a Kentucky aristocrat. She persists however, and Slade does invite Prewitt, but Prew disgustedly refuses to go--but his disgust is a cover for self-consciousness. Later, he explains his position in society, although he has no knowledge of that force, to Slade, who cannot understand why it should be like that. Prew laughs and then consents to go to Mrs (nee Pruitt)'s home. He deliberately gets drunk, makes an ass of himself. Slade realizes what he's doing and jumps him for it afterwards. Prewitt tells him to go fuck himself, not to speak to him any more. He cuts Slade for a while, but Slade is not afflicted with this pride so much, and he makes amends which satisfy Prew. Then takes him to see Betty with him.

Slade gets drunk in a bar, which they persuade Betty to visit, and Prew takes Betty home. On the way home Prew, who really drank more than Slade, but holds his liquor better, tries to make Betty. She tries to fight him off, thinking it's the same thing as it was with Slade. But it isn't. Prew holds her, kisses her, fondles her breasts, while she is powerless. It makes her excited sexually, but when Prew sees she is excited, he withdraws and laughs at her.

Will not touch her. It is subtle, because of course Betty will not admit it, or say anything about it. But from that time on, her faith is shaken. And when she is forced to deliberately reaffirm it, she becomes hypocritical, where before she was simply naive.
This affair makes her stuck on Prewitt, who pays no more attention

35/Synopsis

staff, thus leaving open the staff sergeantcy vacated by O'Hayer. Rosen is all for making Karelsen's Platoon Guide, a buck sgt, into a Staff/sgt to replace Karelsen in the weapons platoon. Warden blows his top, and finally intimidates Rosen into letting him run it, even threatening to turn in his stripes. Rosen submits. Warden doesn't explain why to Rosen, but just makes him sit. The truth is, Pop is too valuable a man as a weapons/p/sgt to stick into the supply room, even though supply is important. Pop has taken a liking to young McGourty, who is smarter than hell, and Warden consents to put McGourty in supply as Pop's specialist, with the idea that after Pop has taught Mac to run the supply, Pop will go back to his weapons platoon and McGourty will give the s/s/sgt rating for supply. Thus is that taken care of.

Also, the new organization of the Regt transfers all the Co Clerks to Regt Personnel Section to work under the Regt Sgt/Major. Warden loses his clerk. He put a notice on the bulletin board for a clerk to work in the Orderly Room, while the regular is clerk is gone--which is permanently. Prewitt, who is by this time sick of straight duty, finds this as a way out of his position without sacrificing his pride. (In the great burst of new ratings, Prew has been completely overlooked.) His pride would not let him bugle or fight for Holmes. But now that Holmes is gone, he feels he could clerk without jeapordizing his pride. He volunteers for the job, and Warden laughs at him; but when Warden gives him a stiff a verbel exam as he can think up, Prew passes it easily. It comes out that he has had previous clerical experience. Warden gets mad as hell at him for having kept it a secret, when Warden was in need of a clerk. Prewitt gets the job.

37/Synopsis

from the rifle racks. He will kill them both he says indignant ly,
if they move any further. If they want to fight, go outside on
the green. They go outside. Everybody in the Regt comes running
from the barracks with calls of "Fight!" "Fight!"

Prew is outweighed almost a hundred lbs, but Bloom is basically
yellow. And his reflexes are so slowed by his own fear of getting
hit that he isn't fast enough to hit the flashing Prewitt. Every time
Prew feints with his right, Bloom bends from the waist, ducking down.
Prew sees this, takes advantage of it, to feint with his right and
then upcut Bloom as he ducks. Prew tries this four or fives times
before he connects. While he is missing Bloom lands one on him, and
he lights on the back of his neck. Bloom hits that hard, and
Prew is very light. But finally he connects with his left upcut,
meeting Bloom as he ducks, thus giving even more force to the blow.
It knocks Bloom down and dazes him. He gets up and comes back, and
Prew pulls it again. He downs Bloom six or eight times before Bloom
grudgingly admits he has enough. As Prew turns to walk away, Bloom
hits him from behind at the base of the skull. Prew drops like a
poleaxed steer. Bloom starts to jump on his with both feet, but
somebody grabs him in a tackle. By the time Bloom is up again,
Prew has come to and is up also. He goes for Bloom in a rage, and
feints with his right, upcuts with his left as Bloom ducks. As
the punch straightens Bloom before he falls, Prew lands a helluva a
punch with his right. Bloom goes down hard, and Prew goes down on
him, punching away with both hands until somebody drags him off. In
the dragging off, he hits somebody else and knocks them down. Bloom
gets up cursing, saying he's had enough, but Prew makes him fight,
and keeps after him until Bloom is finally unconscious.

Prew is still showing the effects of the fight when he meets

39/Synopsis

After the regular maneuvers are over, the Co gets a surprise job of building emplacements on all their beach positions. They work at Makapuu Head in rock, using Barco drills two air drills, dging emplacements and concreting them, cutting their own beams from a wood up around Kuhuku, which some plantation owner wants cleared, and gets it done free with army labor.

They go back to Schofield in garrison after finishing them, mak-
ing a "spectacular" 38 mile hike. In the latter part of Nov/41

Soon after, they are alerted, but only the 1st bat goes out--on
sabotage guard.

And then comes Dec 7, and Pearl Harbor.

March 20, 1951

TITLE: FROM HERE TO ETERNITY

FORM: Novel (860 pp) pub. Scribners
1951

AUTHOR: JAMES JONES

READ BY: Kenneth Evans

Even in February Hawaii gasps defenselessly in the morn-
ing sun, like an exhausted fighter. The vast expanse of Schofield
Barracks comes alive slowly after the cool night, rattling awake
with the men's muffled griping at the prospect of facing another
day of soldiering in a peacetime army. Today is going to be just
like yesterday.. it always is. The same fatigue details, same
dust, same heat. A couple of minutes in that blinding sun, and
morning fresh khaki begins showing dark with sweat under the arms
and down the back and in the crotch of tight-fitting pants.
Nothing to do but work all day and think about night coming around
again, when you can grab a couple of beers at Choy's restaurant on
the post -- IF you've got a buck or two left over from payday or
your last poker session at one of the gambling sheds...

On this particular February morning in 1941, Private
ROBERT E. LEE PREWITT looks grim and thoughtful, and his decep-
tively slim body is tense in the starched khaki he wears. He's got
a lot to think about, because he's making a big change in his life.
At the age of twenty-one, after four years of army life, he's
transferring out of the Bugle Corps and going across the street as
a straight duty man with a rifle company -- G Company of the --th
Regiment.

He knows the other men in the corps call him obstinate,
and think he's transferring out just because his goddam pride got
in the way. But he doesn't give a damn what they think. He knows
he's transferring out because there's a principle involved. Every-
body at Schofield knows he's the best bugler in the whole army--

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY -- 2

why, he even played Taps at a military funeral in Arlington, while
he was stationed at Fort Myer -- and he isn't going to stand for
some First Sergeant making someone else First Bugler over him.
Rather than let this happen, he'll give up his Pfc stripe and
specialist rating and go on straight duty. It's the principle of
the thing.

Prewitt is no dumb short-timer who doesn't know what
he's getting into. Ever since his parents died in Harlan County,
Kentucky, and he went on the bum as a kid, he has known the U. S.
Army was going to be his life. At heart, even when he was battling
his way through the hobo jungles back home, he has always known he
was a Thirty Year Man. He's a Thirty Year Man now, a wise one,
and he knows he's going to get the Treatment over in G Company.

G Company is a jockstrap company - out to win every
athletic trophy in the Islands - and its tough CO, Captain
DANA E. HOLMES, is the Regimental boxing coach. Like most officers
from West Point, Holmes is both smart and ambitious. Captain
Holmes's theory is that it isn't the individual soldier's sense of
self-survival that makes for victory, but it is concern for the
other guys on the right and left of him. He believes that in an
Army it is essential that men have the strongest feeling of com-
radeship, kinship, and mutually protective feelings as against
animal instincts of self-survival; that battles are won because of
that spiritual cement between the men. He believes that the tech-
nique to be found for building up within the regiment a feeling of
loyalty and pride is COMPETITIVENESS. Therefore, his enthusiasm
and his activity in boxing is not solely an instrument of his ambi-
tion, but carries out his philosophy and belief.

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY -- 3

Holmes heard Prewitt was welterweight champ at Myer and wants to add him to his stable of fighters. What he doesn't know, nor does anyone else, is that Prewitt is never going to climb into a ring again, not after his last U. S. fight when he blinded a man. Everybody at Fort Myers said it wasn't his fault; it could happen to anyone. But Prewitt said he was through with boxing, and no one was going to talk him into putting on another pair of gloves. The regiment is going to try to force him into it with their "Treatment," but Prewitt isn't going to break even if he gets the Book thrown at him.

Just as he expected, Captain Dana 'Dynamite' Holmes is primed for him when he enters the stifling orderly room of G Company, salutes, and reports for duty. The captain is smiling handsomely, and his First Sergeant, MILTON WARDEN, is lounging nearby with a savage grin on his face. Warden is another Thirty Year Man - and a madman at that, some of his dogfaces say: tough, hard as nails, not giving a damn about anything, and just about the smartest topkick you'll find anywhere. He's the real CO of G Company, but he's too sharp to let Holmes know it.

Warden watches and listens sardonically as the captain shows Prewitt about what a damned fine outfit he's coming into, and then tries to ease him into fighting welterweight in the Division championships. Prewitt's jaw hardens as he says no; and Warden's savage grin widens, because he knew it would be this way. He understands a man like Prewitt, and Holmes doesn't. The captain just sits there, getting madder by the minute, but holding on to his temper like they told him at the Point.

"It looks to me," he finally says with a show of

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY -- 4

indifference, "as if you were fast acquiring a reputation as a
bolshevik, Prewitt. Bolsheviks never get anywhere in the Army.
You'll find that straight duty here is considerably tougher than
SD in the Bugle Corps."

It is his way of warning Prewitt about The Treatment,
and it's his final word. He stamps from the orderly room, leaving
Warden to fill in the details.

Prewitt and the First Sergeant stare at each other
levelly, with no dislike showing in their faces, but with a show
of cold inherent antagonism.

"You haven't changed a bit, have you, Prewitt?" Warden
says sarcastically. "All a man has to do is to leave it up to you
and you'll put your head in a noose for him. That's what you did
just now when you turned down Dynamite's Boxing Squad. You won't
like straight duty in my company."

"I can soljer with any man," Prewitt says. "I'll take
my chances."

His mind is made up and he's ready for anything they
hand him. And they hand him plenty in the weeks that follow. He
plows ahead doggedly with his fatigue details - The Treatment.
With his jaw hard and his mouth tight, ignoring Warden's gibes,
he empties the trash cans of the officers' wives, manicures the
lawns of the officers' homes, and totes around freshly cut sides
of beef until his fatigues, immaculate that morning, are stiff
with dried blood. He keeps thinking about the weekends. But there
aren't any weekends for a month, because his Saturdays are spent
doing KP, and his Sundays are taken up with duty in the orderly
room. No passes for Prewitt. Orders purportedly of Captain

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY -- 5

Dynamite Holmes, executed by savagely grinning First Sergeant Warden.

And Prewitt's jaw hardens all the more.

G Company is a bad outfit for a man who isn't a jockstrap. Most of them are jockstraps, like Corporal CHIEF CHOATE, the huge lumbering Choctaw Indian who looks asleep on his feet but is the fastest first baseman in the Division. Chief was once the heavyweight champ of the Regiment, but the newcomer is Private BLUE, a big iron-headed guy who is the most unpopular man in the company. None of the dogfaces care about him. They just don't like the way he throws his weight around, shooting off his big mouth because he's next in line for a promotion.

He's first man on Prewitt's black list, and first with Prewitt's best friend, ANGELO MAGGIO, a tough, wiry little soldier from New York. Maggio is nineteen, and to hear him tell it with that tight grin on his mouth, on his first and last hitch in the Army. He's no Thirty Year Man himself, but he understands why his buddy is, and respects him for it. Prewitt loves the Army, but Maggio is nothing but a goldbrick counting the days until he gets out of uniform and goes back to a clerk's job in Gimbel's basement. Not that there's any future in that, but anything is better than the Army.

Together Maggio and Prewitt sweat out payday, the most important day in the month. That night the men line up three deep at the bars at Wu Fat's or at the Blue Anchor. It's a wild night with the streets swarming with tough MPs who swing their clubs in the middle of a brawl. A rough night, but every dogface thinks it's worth it... until the next morning, when he wakes up broke, hung-over, and feeling miserable.

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY -- 6

Prewitt feels pretty down at the mouth with only a few cents in his pocket. Another month without a woman and he'll blow his lid.

Fortunately, he has another friend in the company, a strange man who usually keeps to himself and shows about as much emotion as the mess of frankfurters he serves up for chow.
MAYLON STARK is the Mess Sergeant, one of the men who used to serve with Captain Holmes at Fort Bliss. He's a husky man, as quiet drunk as he is sober, and the best goddam mess sergeant at Schofield, if not in the whole division.

Usually he pays strict attention to business, and you'd think he didn't care about anything but his pots and pans and his ration list. But somehow he seems to feel about Prewitt the way Maggio does, and when he notices Prewitt kicking around the company area one night after payday, he offers to stand him to a trip to Honolulu and a session of dancing at the New Congress.
The New Congress is a dime-a-dance palace, boasting of some fifty or sixty girls whose sole occupation is to provide the weary soldiers with a more wearisome four minutes of dancing to an overly-worked, five-piece band. Some of the girls have been known to make dates with the soldiers when their session at the New Congress is over at two a.m., but most of the soldiers don't get anywhere with these girls. The girls know all the answers.

Prewitt and Stark prime themselves for the evening with a load of drinks at Wu Fat's bar in town, and then cross the street to the dance hall. MRS. KIPFER, the owner of the New Congress, is a distinguished looking woman, usually dressed in an expensive evening gown, who looks and acts like the house mother of a

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY -- 7

fraternity. But at heart she's a hard business-woman who
tolerates no nonsense from the trade.

It's been so long since Prewitt has been near a girl
that he feels wild and excited inside, as if he wants to smash
something in his happiness. But when he bounces into Mrs. Kipfer's
cocktail parlor and glances swiftly over the girls, his eye
fastens on a special one -- and the breath goes out of him,
leaving him shaking with a strange feeling of humility.

LORENE is her name, and although she is dressed like
the other girls, she is not at all like the rest. She is a
Princess, with a beautiful, tragic face and a look of absolute
serenity.

She even talks like a tart, Prewitt realizes, but still
there is something different about her, something that causes the
thickness of feeling to rise in his throat, but in a different
way than with other girls. More like love, the way he always
imagined he would find it.

In the hour before they close, he finds himself getting
jealous of the soldiers and sailors who come in for a quick dance
with her. He tries to remind himself that she's only another
girl, like every other one he's ever had. But walking home with
her, he knows there's no use kidding himself any longer. Being
with Lorene makes him feel like he's married and in bed with his
wife. There's no doubt about it. He's in love.

Prewitt finds that love has its drawbacks. He hasn't
enough money to see Lorene often, and the days and nights drag
along slowly at Schofield, filling him with a rage that makes him
feel as though he's going to bust wide open. When he does get into

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY -- 8

town, she's usually booked solid through the evening. And the
one night he borrows $20 from a 20% interest man at Schofield,
she is taken up with a soldier from Hickam Field.

He runs into his friend, Maggio, who is quite drunk by
this time, and they get into a fight that Maggio, without reason,
picks with a lusty MP. The MP tries to get Maggio to go home, but
Maggio keeps insulting him so much that the MP is finally forced
to arrest him -- but only after Maggio puts up such a fight that
it's necessary to call for additional help. Prewitt begins to
understand how it all came about. Maggio is no Thirty Year Man,
and his drunkenness released the brakes and brought out all the
violence he feels against the Army. It's a goddam shame.

The Wop's list of offenses is as long as his arm, and
he is hauled before a Special Court Martial made up of the
officers who are his peers. The sentence, approved by Colonel
Delbert, CO of the --th Regiment and superior officer of Captain
Dana Holmes, CO of the jockstrap company, is: Six months at hard
labor in the Post Stockade, Schofield Barracks, T.H. and for-
feiture of all pay and allowances for a like period.

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY -- 9

Something changes in Prewitt after Maggio's one man revolution, something that The Treatment with all its refinements was never able to touch. It is as though somewhere deep inside him bone is rubbing against bone, changing gears.

Although things seem the same in G Company, especially with The Treatment still on, he senses a change in the air, like a tension that promises to explode into something big - or maybe it's all inside himself.

The company is called out for maneuvers right after the investigation, and for the first time in months, First Sergeant Warden eases up on The Treatment. Prewitt doesn't mind the heat and dust and swarming mosquitos at night. This is soldiering, this is the Army! It's enough to make him wish for a war, so he could throw himself into the middle of it. More than ever, he's proud of being a Thirty Year Man. So proud in fact that he is inspired one night to help his two guitar-playing pals write the Re-enlistment Blues - the song of the Thirty Year Man. His song...

Things have changed between him and Lorene by this time. By judicious saving and cautious gambling, he has managed to save enough to have quite a few dates with her. He really feels like a married man now, and she seems to feel the same way. She has told him all about herself: that her name is really ALMA SCHMIDT, and that she's from some small town in Oregon. She's had a tough life, and her big ambition is to make enough money in Honolulu to go back home stateside and set herself up respectable-like in some city, say San Francisco, and snare the first man who's rich enough to support her and respectable enough to keep her happy.

In the meantime, she's happy with Prewitt and even says

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY -- 13

she loves him! When his money gives out, she asks him to stay
with her after hours in the nice house she shares with GEORGETTE,
another dancer, in the upper middle class neighborhood of
Maunalani Heights. Prewitt has a key to the place now, and comes
and goes as he pleases, his pockets usually comfortably full of
money Lorene slips him from time to time.

He's in love all right, never been happier in his life--
if it weren't for the rubbing of the bones deep inside him. One
night, he even asks Lorene to marry him, all of a sudden, without
thinking about it. She listens quietly as he tells her how much
she means to him and what he's willing to do to get her to marry
him. He'll even become an officer, if she'll have him.

"Maybe I don't want to be the wife of a commissioned
officer of the US Army," she says.

"All right," he says. "That's the top that I could
ever do for you."

"You want to know the real reason why I can't marry
you?" she asks. "Income has nothing to do with it. I can't
marry you simply because you're not respectable enough."

Prewitt is convinced, and decides never to bring up the
subject of marriage any more. He's a dogface and Lorene's ambi-
tions are bigger than his. They drink on it, and after they get
very drunk, they cry in each other's arms because they can't get
married.

It's a wonderful life temporarily, and both of them en-
joy their husband-wife relationship. But the bones keep grinding
inside Prewitt ... and finally it happens...

It happens the day some dogfaces in G Company are

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY -- 11

teasing Pfc Blue's scrawny little mongrel. Prewitt doesn't say
anything for quite a while, because it's none of his business and
not his dog. But he's been nervous and tense all day, and some-
thing happens to him when the show goes on too long and most of
the soldiers begin pulling away looking shamefaced. He tells the
sergeant who started the thing - one of Captain Holmes' favorites
- to leave the goddam dog alone; and when the sergeant pulls a
knife on him, he says coldly,

"Don't ever pull that knife on me, or I'll kill you with
it."

He means it, too. He's spoiling for a fight.

Later, when Blue thanks him at chow for protecting his
dog, Prewitt says it's okay and lets it go at that. But Blue
can't let it go. He makes a big issue out of Prewitt being his
friend and saving his goddam dawg, and Prewitt can feel the
tension rise again. He doesn't like Blue simply because he's got
a big mouth and a big way about him.

"I don't want your appreciation, Blue," he says.

"Ha," Blue says, hurt. "If that ain't a laugh. Who the
hell are you? It's awys the poor white trash that runs us down."

"What're you tryin' to do?" Prewitt asks. "Insult me?"

He was just about to go scrape his plate into the trash
can, and put an end to the conversation. Instead, he throws his
heavy, handle-less coffee mug and hits Blue right in the center
of his forehead.

Mess Sergeant Stark is between them before they meet, and
orders them out on the company green if they want to play rough.
And both of them stalk out grimly, pulling off their shirts as

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY -- 12

they go, paying no attention to the crowd of soldiers that pushes out happily after them.

The fight lasts an hour and a half. As a boxer, Blue is in training for the Division fights; he's even due to fight a bout tonight at one of the post Smokers. Prewitt is out of training, and looks like a runt next to Blue's bulk. But he's fast on his feet, and cunning from years of fighting in the hobo jungles. Blue jars him to the teeth every time he lands a punch, but Prewitt comes back with a bounce: managing to break Blue's nose, and finally landing a hard blow on Blue's adam's apple, Blue goes down hawking and spitting - and the fight is over.

Most of the soldiers call it a fair fight, but some of the jockstraps are goddam sore about it, thinking Blue is sure to lose his bout at the Smoker. He wins it by a knockout in the first minute and a half, and Prewitt feels better. He's been over at Choy's restaurant, talking to Chief Choate and thinking about fighting and how he once blinded a man. When his mother was on her death-bed, she made Prewitt swear a sacred oath that he would never hurt anyone unless he absolutely had to. He's been thinking about this, too, and somehow he feels that he has to talk to Blue.

Once this decision is made, he feels better, almost happy as he walks to his barracks through the dark company streets. He passes IKE GALOVITCH, another jockstrap of G Company, on the way, and even though he hasn't any use for the brutal stupid Yugoslav, he calls out a happy hello.

Ike is stinking drunk and still sore about Prewitt's fight with Blue. He swears thickly, calling Prewitt a Communist

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY -- 13

and a traitor, and then he lunges at Prewitt with a drawn knife. Prewitt grins savagely as he blocks the knife and delivers a vicious punch that sends Ike sprawling unconscious among the trash cans and drippings of the mess hall porch. He snaps the blade of Ike's knife in a crack between two slabs of concrete, tosses the knife next to Ike's limp body, and then goes happily to his barracks.

He doesn't know that two other jockstraps watched his short fight, but even so it comes as no surprise to him when he is hauled out of his cot in the dead of night and placed under arrest for drunkenness, disorderly conduct, striking a NCO - the Book.

The Treatment failed, but the Special Court Martial doesn't. Prewitt refuses to say anything in his defense, and although he tells Warden about Ike pulling the knife on him, he refuses to give the story to his defense counsel. He knew this was coming on sometime or other, and at that, he thinks he got off with a light sentence: three months in the Post Stockade and forfeiture of two-thirds of his pay. Now he'll be able to see Maggio again...

* * *

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY -- 14

First Sergeant Milton Warden is just as proud of being a Thirty Year Man as Prewitt is, but unlike Prewitt, he's not a misfit. For one thing, he's spent more time in the Army - he's already in his early thirties - and he's had more opportunity to wise up to what you can and cannot get by with in the service. But the chief difference is that the Army is the love of Prewitt's life, and to Warden it's nothing more than a way of life. It's going to kill Prewitt in the end, but Warden is never going to die.

He knows he's the best goddam topkick in the Islands, and he takes a savage delight in running G Company with deadly efficiency and letting Dynamite Holmes think he's in the driver's seat.

Warden doesn't like the captain. He has no use for jockstraps like Bloom or Ike Galovitch or the rest of them.

Just about the time of Prewitt's transfer into G Company, Warden gets one of the crazy yens that come over him once in a while when a woman enters the picture. As a rule, he stays clear of women unless he's really hard up. He's the kind of man who falls in love with every woman he sleeps with, and over the years there have been four, maybe five, he's shacked up with faithfully for as long as the romance lasted. This latest is the craziest one of all. He hasn't had her yet, but he's going to for more than one reason. She happens to be KAREN HOLMES, the captain's tall, blonde, beautiful, sexy sister.

He wants her for more than sex, possibly because he knows she is off balance somehow.

Whatever it is, Warden gives in to the tremendous ache

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY -- 15

in his loins one day when Holmes is safely away in town. He has
an excuse all figured out, just in case Karen Holmes calls his
bluff, but he never has to use it.

She is in a halter and shorts when she answers his knock
at the door, and looking at her close for the first time, he
sees that she is more beautiful than he ever thought before. She
stalls along with him for a couple of minutes, a smile playing
over her lips as if she knows what he's after, and then says,

"What is it you want, Sergeant?"

"I want you," he says conversationally.

"All right," she says disinterestedly.

She doesn't really mean it at first, and just plays
him along as if she were toying with the idea in her mind. It is
almost as if she were fighting down a great bitterness, something
deep inside her that threatens to rise sourly in her mouth.

She breaks into tears at Warden's laughter, and in the
minutes it takes to soothe her again, he feels a great gentleness
in him, rising like a flood in a way he never thought it could.
Their lovemaking is like this, more satisfying than it ever was
for either of them before...

Now that he has made a beginning with Karen, Warden
finds he is thinking of her as more than just a girl. He shies
clear of the word 'love', but when the mess sergeant, Maylon Stark,
tells him he 'knew' Karen while the captain was stationed at
Fort Bliss, Warden has to fight down the blind jealousy that rises
in him, the impulse to punch Stark in his goddam mouth. He grins
savagely as Stark calls Karen a 'degenerate', and warns Warden to
steer clear of her.

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY -- 16

Warden reminds himself that there is no woman living who means anything to him. He's a tough hard Thirty Year Man married to the Army. But in the days before his next secret meeting with Karen -- this time in a hotel in town, where there is less chance of being caught - Stark's face floats before him, making his boast, mouthing his obscenities. And on the day he is to meet her, as he is drying his massive hairy body after a shower, Stark's image looms larger than ever, and in a crashing fit of anger, Warden drives his hand against the wall in a bone bruising punch.

He still refuses to admit that he is in love, however, yet when he and Karen are lying quietly on the beach, he slyly asks her about Stark. She admits knowing him, and when he persists with his questions, demands to know his reasons for asking them.

"He said he knew you," Warden says.

The word spreads out across the room like a shell burst - ugly, cruel, degrading. Karen recovers from it quickly, but Warden can't let the subject alone. He wants to know if Stark told the truth, and why it happened, how it happened. He torments her savagely until, with tears flowing and her face an ugly mass of wrinkles, she admits it. "It only happened once, and I loathed it."

Karen doesn't expect Warden to understand, but he does. The savageness has flowed out of him, and at last he is able to admit that he loves this woman.

Their affair is not a happy one always. Karen wants something - a kind of love that goes beyond sex - that he doesn't find it in his power to give. On their drives into the hills or

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY -- 17

to the beach, in the darkened hotel rooms, everywhere, he tries
to understand what it is she wants. When he asks her to marry
him, she points out how impossible it is unless he puts in an
application for officer training. Then they can be married and
go back to the States.

Warden is bewildered by the thought of giving up his
diamond and rockers to become a goddam 2nd looie. He tries to
weigh his power as a Thirty Year Man and topkick against his love
for Karen, and when an answer never comes up, he savagely agrees
to put in his application. He fills it out all right, and gets
Holmes to okay it, but he keeps it folded on his desk, delaying
the moment when it must be sent to Regimental Hq.

He argues that G Company needs him because it's getting
loused up. First Maggio going to the stockade, and then that poor
Prewitt, who is never going to learn that it isn't enough to love
the Army.

* * *

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY -- 18

The Post Stockade at Schofield Barracks, T.H. is proud
of its reputation for being the toughest jail in the U.S. Army.
Public Enemy #1 JOHN DILLINGER once served in it, and swore he
would get vengeance on the whole United States for what happened
to him there, even if it killed him. And it did.

Prewitt has been in jails before, and the way he looks
at it, three months isn't so goddam long. All he has to do is
mind his own business, do what he's told and keep from fucking up.
He'll be out in no time.

The first day of his confinement, he is marched before
MAJOR THOMPSON, commandant of the Stockade, a short barrel-chested
man, with close cropped gray hair, who peers at him myopically
from gold rimmed spectacles. He looks harmless enough, but the
NCO in charge of the Stockade is something else again. S/Sgt.
'FATSO' JUDSON sits at another desk in the room, ballooning with
fat over layers of muscle, looking like Porky Pig in the cartoons.
His face is coldly expressionless, and his eyes look like two
beads of caviar spaced far apart on a white plate.

Fatso, like all the MP's, carries the butt ends of hoe
handles as part of his uniform. Prewitt finds out that this is a
very useful weapon, because the MP standing at his side before the
Sergeant's desk jabs it into his kidney if he doesn't say yessir
fast enough or if he moves his head from the position of
attention. And the pain is sickening, causing a terrible nausea
to rise in his stomach.

Sergeant lays it on the line, proudly explaining the
rules of his stockade: The prisoner is henceforth to be known
as 'Prisoner' and nothing else until his release. No tailormade

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY -- 19

cigarettes - only the makings. All equipment to be lined up with
mathematical precision on the shelves in the barracks, and the
barracks kept spotlessly clean, so that no dust comes off on the
major's gloves when he makes his daily inspections.

Except for the hoe handles, Prewitt considers these
rules reasonable. And the rock pile below the golf course where
the officers and their wives disport themselves is exactly what
he expected -- take a big rock and use a sledgehammer to make it
many little ones. He can take it as he has always taken every-
thing in the Army. Best of all, he gets to see Maggio again.

Maggio is still the same little Wop, joking, laughing.
His grin is harder, however, frozen on his face like a scar. And
there are real scars on his forehead, still swollen and red, as
if he got them in the last week or so.

Maggio is overjoyed to see Prewitt; he's been expecting
him right along. He quickly explains that his buddy has to get
into Number Two Barracks as soon as possible. That's where the
tough prisoners, the incorrigibles, bunk, and their leader,
Maggio says proudly, is THE MALLOY -- JACK MALLOY, the smartest
goddam soldier in the Army, and the roughest. He knows all the
ropes, having spent most of his Army time in Stockades, and the
soljers look up to him as if he were a god. If he says it's all
right for Prewitt to come into Two, all Prewitt has to do is
gripe about the food during chow. A little gripe is enough,
because it'll bring the MPs running. They'll haul him to the
'Gym', work him over a little with their hoe handles, and then
throw him into the Hole for a few days. Nothing to it, and he's
in Two.

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY -- 20

While waiting to get the word from Malloy, who is work-
ing in the Stockade motor pool, Prewitt tries to adjust to his
new life. But it isn't easy. The rockpile doesn't bother him;
he can talk to Maggio then, if they whisper so the guards don't
hear. But he can feel the tension and nervousness rise in him
during the daily inspections. He's seen brutality before, but
his stomach churns when Fatso jabs his hoe handle into a
prisoner's gut for moving his eyes, or cracks another one across
the nose for having his towel out of line with the edge of the
shelf.

He's sort of glad to be going into Two, where he'll be
sharing with soljers he understands. And when Malloy gives the
word, and Prewitt makes his bitch about the chow, he feels a
great relief flow into him; but at the same time, his heart
constricts with fear of the unknown.

He finds it isn't too bad for a regular soldier like
himself. He is forced to eat two plates of food and swallow a
bottle of castor oil after it. And then the Hole - the part he
feared most. Locked in a dark box of a room with barely enough
space for even a small man like himself, with bread and water
three times a day and nothing to do but think.

It's no goddam vacation to have your mind get out of
control within the first few hours. To think of Lorene and try
not to think about her because of the ache in the center of you.
To have your brain go gummy with desire, and then not to have any
desire at all, because you begin wondering about the loneliness.
All dogfaces are alone and lonely, and aching. They try to make
the Army their love and their mistress, but although it keeps

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY -- 21

seducing them, it slips from their grasp, leaving them alone
again and wondering what the hell the job of soldiering is all
about.

Three days after he is thrown in the hole, Prewitt is
dragged out again and reassigned to Barracks Two. He has been
curious about Jack Malloy right along, and he feels no disap-
pointment when he meets the great man, for he would stand out
anywhere. Big, strong as an ox, fearless, savage, even
terrifying. But there is a strange gentleness in him, an under-
standing that goes beyond anything Prewitt has ever known in
anyone.

Malloy is a philosopher, a believer in following the
policy of passive resistance. He says it is the fate of the weak
to be oppressed by the strong - for instance, dogfaces versus
officers - and it is up to the weak to resist passively and cause
the strong to wear themselves out against a force that can't be
moved. Like water trying to wear away stone. This way, the weak
survive, but otherwise they kill themselves with rage, frustration
and despair.

Prewitt understands what Malloy means, but he knows
that he can never be passive and deny the tension and nervousness
in himself. It is stronger than he is, and he feels it rising
again.

For a month he lives in sort of a half world, hammering
at the rocks, staying clear of the MPs and Fatso, trying to lose
himself at night by playing The Game. The Game is Malloy's in-
vention and consists of one man standing against the wall and
letting every man in Barracks Two pound against his belly in a
wild body rush; and if the man survives the vicious lunges, he gets

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY -- 22

to pound the belly of every man who hit him. A goddam good game, even if it is a little rough.

And when the games get tiresome, everyone plots his own way of escape from the Stockade. Malloy says he's just going to walk out of the motor pool some day, and disappear. Maggio grins wickedly as he outlines his plan to attack one of the guards, making out like he's gone off his nut, and get discharged out of the Army with a Section Eight.

Prewitt is going to settle for the expiration of his term of confinement, because he doesn't hate the Army the way the others do. But he watches in admiration as Malloy pulls out one day, just as he said he would, and he swells with pride when Maggio throws his fit and is hauled kicking and fighting, the wicked grin still on his face, to the Gym. Fatso works him over, trying to make the Wop admit he's bluffing, but Maggio never gives. And he's dragged to the psychiatric ward of the post hospital.

Still the tension builds in Prewitt, and one day it hardens in a sour, bitter lump that is never to dissolve. He is out on the rockpile this particular day, when a dumb farm kid from Barracks Two decides he wants a couple three weeks rest in the hospital, and asks BERRY, another prisoner from Two, to break his arm with a sledgehammer. Everybody knows the farm boy has been off his head since Fatso beaned him with a hoe handle, but they never thought he was *that* crazy. He keeps insisting, however, and Berry finally consents to crack his arm midway between elbow and wrist. It's a nice clean fast-swelling break, and the kid is happy as a lark.

A guard up on the hill saw Berry swing his hammer, and reported him to the orderly room. But Fatso isn't satisfied with this. He wants Berry to admit that he did the job.

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY -- 23

Berry dies, and Major Thompson's eyes are opened by Fatso's treatment. The Major realizes he has been at fault in not properly supervising his Sergeant's activities, and reports himself to the high officials at the barracks -- at the same time saying that he believes not only should he be disciplined, but that his sadistic Sergeant should be relieved from this type of activity. (Throughout this whole stockade sequence it is the intention to show that the Army does not condone the particular treatment that Fatso has inaugurated here, and when it is brought to the Army's attention they immediately correct the situation and remove all of the responsible parties.) For the men in the stockade, the change in command and Fatso's impending court-martial is a welcome relief, but in Prewitt there is still a hard bitterness -- for an idea forms in his mind as if it had always been there. For Maggio, for Malloy and Berry, even for himself -- he has to kill Fatso!

He has had to do many things in his life, but nothing like this. He's no murderer. Yet killing Fatso is not like murder, but more like justice and kindness. He feels it strong within him, and he has to do it.

The balance of his days in the stockade becomes nothing more than a period of patient dogged waiting. And the day he is released, he reports back to G Company, and then goes immediately to town where he buys a knife with a spring blade. The dogfaces own thousands like it, and it will never be traced to him.

Prewitt knows where Fatso spends his evenings in town, and he waits patiently in the alley outside one of the taverns until the big man comes out at closing time. He grins at the

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY -- 24

sight of Prewitt and goes with him willingly down a dark deserted
alley. And his grin widens when Prewitt pulls out his knife and
snaps the blade open.

"I hate to take candy from babies," Fatso says, sizing
up the situation immediately.

Then he lunges forward swiftly, his own knife drawn and
flashing through the air. It makes an arc and bites into Prewitt's
side, ripping him open almost to the shoulder. Prewitt feels no
pain because his anger is still cold and deadly. He backs quickly,
then slips his knife through Fatso's defense and into his gut,
gashing it open, slicing it up to his ribs.

"Why'd you want to kill me," the big man asks with a
look of hurt surprise and wounded reproach. And then he drops to
the ground and dies.

Prewitt moves swiftly when he sees the job is done,
holding the gigantic flapping cut in his side closed with the
pressure of his elbow, walking stealthily through the night toward
Lorene on Manaulani Heights, thinking he is going to die, too.
It was not in his plans to be sliced open and have to go AWOL.
If he returns to G Company this way, they will pin Fatso's murder
on him. There is nothing for him to do but take his chances,
return when the woundheals, and face another court-martial and
maybe another stretch in the Stockade.

He falls through the door when he finally reaches
Lorene's house. She and her roommate, Georgette, take both the
murder and his wound as a matter of course -- something that was
done, and something that has to be done now. They bind him up
tightly to stop the flowing blood and close the gash, and then

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY -- 25

Lorene makes arrangements with Mrs. Kipfer to take a few days off from work.

The wound healing slowly and the days pass with a monotony that makes Army life seem very far away. Prewitt feels goddam sad about not being a Thirty Year Man any longer. He will never be able to go back now. Too many weeks have gone by, and he has finally come to understand one thing: He can never go back to the Stockade, Army or no Army. He toys with the idea of returning to the States with Lorene when she goes, but he knows this will never come about. During the hours he spends alone in the house on the Heights, he has felt time and again the love of the Army, the homesickness for it. It's his life, it's where he wants to be...

First Sergeant Milton Warden has discovered this for himself, too. His ten days furlough with Karen in the Kaneohe Valley was a frost. Neither of them knew what was wrong, but there was a difference. The old excitement was gone, and after the first two days, they both felt trapped within the eight walls of their expensive hotel suite. Maybe it was because Karen wanted a type of love he couldn't give -- the kind where sex wasn't everything, whatever the hell *that* means; and maybe it was because he kept thinking he didn't want to stop being a topkick to become an unimportant 2nd Looie.

All he really knows is he's glad to be back in the orderly room, facing the piled up work, grinning savagely at the new CO, LIEUTENANT ROSS, replacing Captain, now Major, Dynamite Holmes, who is up at Hq with his pal General Slater.

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY -- 26

Warden is not surprised to learn about Prewitt being AWOL, and he knows unerringly that Prewitt is the killer of Fatso Judson. The stupid guy! It was bound to happen, because Prewitt never learned the most important thing about the Army. If you love it, you work with it and don't try to change things. And that is the answer to survival. Prewitt felt he had to kill Fatso, but he didn't stop to think that there is maybe another Fatso, or someone worse, to take his place.

There is a savage pity in Warden's heart for the boy from Harlan County who loves the Army but doesn't understand its ways. He covers for Prewitt as long as he can on the morning reports, but when G Company goes out on its annual maneuvers on the beaches, he finally has to report him AWOL.

Prewitt shows up at this time, unable to resist a sneak return to his old company. Warden grins at him savagely when he appears, as if he hated him, and then asks him why the hell he waited so long to return. No one connects him with Fatso's death, and a couple of weeks ago, if he had put in an appearance then, he would have got no more than two weeks company duty for being AWOL, the way Warden had things fixed on the morning reports. But now it's too late.

"I wish I _could_ go back," Prew says. "I want to."

"The only way you'll ever go back without doing time," Warden says viciously, "is if the Japs or somebody bombs this island and they let all the prisoners out to go fight."

It is his final word, and it is prophetic.

The days plod slowly into December. For Warden, there is nothing but the same old Army; for Prewitt, the frustration of

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loving the Army, of loving Lorene and not loving her.

And then it is the morning of December 7, 1941. The first bomb sounds like battle practice out in the open. The second and third shake Schofield like an earthquake, and the soljers sit stunned, wondering what it's all about.

Then someone runs down the company streets, his eyes glaring whitely wide.

"The Japs is bombing Wheeler Field!" he hollers. "I seen the red circles on the wings."

Schofield comes alive on the instant, all its doors pouring out men carrying BARs and rifles. Overhead, the Jap bombers lumber dropping their heavy loads, and the fighters whine with their machine guns pouring out death. The soldiers are grimly determined, white-faced and afraid for the most part, but fighting hard with the few weapons at hand. And Warden grins savagely, for this is the Army and this is War -- all the things that ever gave meaning to his life. To hell with his application for officer training! He's going to be the best goddam topkick in the Pacific!

When Prewitt hears of the first attack, his first thought is to return to the barracks whether it means a prison sentence for him or not. He commandeers a car in front of the apartment house and careens at a maddening pace to the barracks. Here he performs heroic deeds, pulling wounded men out from underneath twisted wreckage. Although wounded four times, he even manages to save Sgt. Warden's life, but in so doing he meets his own death. It is not true that all men kill the things they

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY -- 28

love. What is true is that all things kill the men who love them.

* * *

Karen is sad the day her ship pulls out of Pearl for the States. And especially sad to listen to the pretty dark girl standing beside her at the rail, who tells her that she lost her fiance during the attack. Her name, she says, is Alma Schmidt, and she worked for a fruit company on the Island. Her fiance was a flyer, and was awarded the silver star posthumously. His name was Robert E. Lee Prewitt, the girl says proudly. And Karen looks away from her quickly, remembering that Warden had told her all about Lorene.

Warden is hitting his stride now the big show has started, acting like a topkick. But he still keeps a worn, much-read slip of paper that was found among Prewitt's belongings after his death. He used to keep it in his breast pocket all the time.

It is his copy of the Re-Enlistment Blues.

THE END