Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific (17 page)

We considered all this food ours. We considered it ours whether it resided within the barbed-wire enclosure of the food dump or in the store tents of the rear echelons. We would get it by stealth, by guile, or by force: we would steal it, we would beg for it, we would lie for it.

At first, when Chuckler and I would drop off the tailgate of the truck on which we had hitched a ride, we would approach the heavily guarded food dump by crawling on our bellies. Once close to the fence—out of sight by the army guards who sat atop the piles of cases, rifles over their knees—we would scoop out the dirt under the fence and squirm under.

Stacks of crates and cartons gave us cover while we crept quietly along, searching for canned fruit, baked beans, spaghetti, Vienna sausage—even, prize of all prizes, Spam! Yes, Spam! Perhaps the processed pork that everyone called Spam was the bane of the Stateside mess halls, but on Guadalcanal, Spam was a distinct delicacy. Often we would risk a bullet in the back for Spam, softly looting a case of it at the foot of the very stack upon which the sentry sat, like mice filching cheese from between the paws of a sleeping cat.

Soon we had no need of stealth. The food dump had become the most popular place on the island. The roads became clogged with plunderers like ourselves, pistols swinging at their hips or rifles slung over shoulders, converging outside the fence like a holiday crowd outside of Yankee Stadium. There were now so many holes dug beneath the fence that one might gain entry at any point. Inside, bearded, gaunt, raggedy-assed marines roved boldly over the premises, attacking the cases with gusto, tearing them open to seize what they wanted, leaving the rejected articles exposed to wind and sun with the indifference of pack rats. When a man’s bag was full, he sauntered off—contemptuous of challenge from the guards.

Inevitably, such a swarm of thieves depleted the dump and thus brought on more stringent security. We shifted to the ships. Friendly vessels riding at anchor had become a common sight in our channel since the naval battle.

We hoped to exchange that marine commodity—taletelling—for cups of delicious navy coffee, and perhaps even for candy bars!

We would wait until a boat had been emptied, before approaching its coxswain.

“Hey, sailor, how about a ride out to your ship?”

No insolence, here. We played the childlike warrior begging a simple pleasure, the poor little match girl outside the candy shop on Christmas Eve. We played on the sailors’ sympathy, inducing them to overlook the very plain law forbidding marines to visit the ships. We cared for no law ourselves (what could the punishment be?) but the sailors had to be persuaded, as did the Officers of the Deck once the landing craft swung under the ship’s beam and we called up our request to come aboard. Often he shouted down in anger.

“No! Coxswain, take those marines back to the beach. You know it’s against regulations to bring troops aboard. Shove off, y’hear me?”

“But, sir, I just wanted to come aboard to see a friend of mine. From my home town. Wouldn’t it be okay if my buddy and me came aboard to see my friend? We lived next door to each other. He’s my best friend and I haven’t seen him since the war started. He was with my grandmother when she died.”

All depended now on the officer’s acumen, or his willingness to be taken in. Should he ask for the friend’s name, all was lost. Should he be stupid and believe us, or should he fall into the spirit of the thing and grin at our obvious fabrication, we would grasp the rope ladder and climb aboard.

Once gaining the run of the ship, we would trade our tales for coffee, our souvenirs for food and candy. A coterie forms quickly about us in the galley. We are the cynosure.

“Y’mean them Japs really was hopped up when they charged you?” a sailor asks, refilling outstretched coffee mugs.

“Sure,” comes the answer. “We found dope on them. They all had needles and packages of dope. They’d hop themselves up before the charge and then they’d come at you banzai-ing.” (No drugs were found on the Japanese.)

“Did the marines really cut off their ears?”

“Oh, hell, yes! I knew one fellow had a collection of them. Got most of them at the Battle of Hell’s Point—the Tenaru, y’know. He hung them out on a line to dry out, the dope, and the rain rotted them all away. It rained like hell one night and ruined the whole bunch.”

“You wouldn’t believe it, but half of them Japs can speak English. We was hollering into the jungle one night things like ‘Tojo eat garbage’ and ‘Hirohito’s a son-of-a-bitch’—when all of a sudden this Jap voice comes floating up to us, an’ whaddya think the bastard said?—‘T’hell with Babe Ruth!’”

We bask in their laughter and extend our cups for more coffee.

A particularly receptive ship might even unlock the ship’s store in our honor, and we would return to the Ridge, packs filled with candy bars, razor blades, bars of soap, toothbrushes and sundry trophies of the hunt. Let it be admitted that we were not unselfish in division of the candy bars; for these we considered rightful tribute of the forager. We kept them to ourselves.

One day, hearing that the Eighth Marine Regiment—the “Hollywood Marines”—had reached our shores, and that they had brought with them a PX, Chuckler and I girded for our greatest foray.

There were two tents and there were two sentries—each standing with rifle and fixed bayonet in front of a tent. Behind was thickest jungle. Oh, unguarded rear! Oh, defenseless rump! Did they think the jungle impenetrable! Did they count themselves safe, with this paper posterior of theirs?

Astonished, Chuckler and I withdrew to the nearby battery of Long Toms to take counsel. We looked at each other and exploded in delighted anticipation of the discomfiture of the Eighth Marines.

We made our plan: I was to enter the jungle to cut my way up to the rear of the bigger tent. I would have both of our packs. After fifteen minutes, Chuckler was to stroll back to the PX clearing to engage the guards in conversation. The moment I heard voices, I was to cut my way into the tent, fill the packs and carry them back into the jungle.

The cool murk of the jungle was to my liking, as I began to creep toward the tent. My stiletto was very sharp and I had no difficulty sawing through the lianas and creepers blocking my path. It was the necessity for extreme caution that made my progress slow. I had to be careful not to disturb the birds or the crawling things, for fear they might betray me. I was sweating when I reached the rear of the tent; the handle of my knife was slippery. I heard voices and realized that I had been longer than had been anticipated.

A thrill shot through me at the touch of the hot coarse canvas. My stiletto slid through the drum-tight façade with an almost sensual glide, and in a moment I had cut an opening. It was close within the tent and the odor of creosote filled my nostrils. I had to widen the opening to let in light and air.

Cartons were stacked one upon another. I peered at the letters on their sides; they were mostly cigarettes; it was a joke, there were plenty of cigarettes on Guadalcanal. But there were other boxes and soon my sweat-soaked eyes fell upon a carton of filled cookies. Without another glance at the remaining cases, spurred by the rising and falling voices of Chuckler and the sentry, I bent to the task of transferring the contents of one carton into the packs.

Even as I worked I had to quell the greed rising within me: “Go on,” it said, “take more. Carry it out into the jungle by the boxful.” I hesitated, but then I decided to fit my larceny to my needs and resumed my work.

When I had filled one pack, I rose to draw a cautious breath and to listen for the voices. Chuckler’s deep laugh came floating through the canvas walls. I bent to the other pack, reassured. My eye fell upon a partially opened carton.

It contained boxes of cigars!

If cookies were worth their weight in gold on Guadalcanal, then cigars were worth theirs in platinum. In value, cigars could be surpassed only by whiskey, and there was no whiskey on Guadalcanal. Neither had there been cigars, until now. I had stumbled on what was probably the only store of them on the island!

I was for emptying my pack of the cookies, until I saw that there were but five boxes of cigars, which would just fit into the other pack. Quickly, I stuffed them in, and then, arranging one pack on my back and holding the other before me, I slipped from the heat and smell and tension of the tent into the cool and murk and relief of the jungle.

Covering the packs with branches, I rejoined Chuckler.

He grinned with delight when he saw me approaching.

“Hey, what the hell you doing down here,” he shouted. “I’ll bet you’re up to no good.” He nudged the sentry. “Better watch him. He’s one of them dead-end kids from Jersey. He’ll steal you blind.”

He grinned at me again and I could see the rash devil dancing in his eyes. But the guard thought it not hilarious and a certain nervous tightening of both mouth and rifle hand gave warning. That Chuckler! It was not enough that we should put our heads in the lion’s mouth, but we must tickle his throat as well!

My answering chuckle was a hollow thing, and after a few moments I had him by the arm and was leading him away.

“You crazy bastard,” I whispered, when we had got a safe distance from the sentry. “You want to tip him off?”

I shrugged hopelessly and we departed, to return softly about two hours later to retrieve our loot.

We came back to bask in the adulation of the Ridge. We shared the cookies with our buddies and kept the cigars for ourselves. For days afterward, our pits were visited by a stream of officers—and once even a major from the Marine air units—all seeking cigars; all smiling, now, at the jolly enlisted men; all full of fake camaraderie and falser promises.

We gave them none.

We knew that we were winning. We knew it from the moment the P-38’s—the Lightning fighters—appeared in our skies. They came in one day as we crouched in the ravine at chow. Pistol Pete had crashed his desultory shells not far from us, only a few minutes before. All of us braced for flight when we heard the roar of their motors and, looking up, saw the gladsome sight of their twin tails streaking over the jungle roof. We cheered wildly, and when Pistol Pete’s shells came screaming in again, we cursed him good-humoredly out of hope renewed.

Going back to the Ridge—where the others waited to be relieved for their turn at chow—it was necessary to pass the stream which served as our washtub. Two men—Souvenirs and his scouting partner, the red-beard who looked like hell’s Santa Claus—were washing there. They shouted at each other as they scrubbed their bodies. We stopped to listen, and Chuckler asked, “What the hell’s going on?”

Red Beard replied, “This simple tool thinks we’ve had it tougher here than the marines on Wake Island.” He glanced contemptuously at Souvenirs and then appealed to us—“How stupid can you get?”

“Whaddya mean stupid?” yelled Souvenirs. “Trouble with you old salts you figure nobody’s any good who came into the Corps after Pearl Harbor. How do you know about Wake, anyway? You weren’t there—and I still say it was a picnic compared to this place.”

Red Beard was aghast. Even as he turned to let Souvenirs soap his back, he shrieked at him in fury. “Picnic! Don’t talk like a man with a paper ass!”

“Aw, blow it … I’ll bet the newspapers say this place was twice as bad as Wake. How many times they get bombed there?”

“Who cares? How many of them are left?”

“They didn’t all get killed. Most of ‘em was taken prisoner. Did we ever surrender? Huh? How about that?”

Red Beard turned again, automatically reclaiming his soap from Souvenirs, hardly pausing to launch his counterattack.

“Don’t give me ’at bull about quitting. That’s all I ever hear you boots whining about. At Wake they said, ‘Send us more Japs.’ But you guys say, ‘When do we go home?’” His lip curled over his beard, and he raised his voice mockingly, “When does Mama’s boy go home to show the girls his pwitty boo uniform?”

So the battle raged, so it ended, as it always does, unresolved. The Marine Corps is a fermenter; it is divided into two distinct camps—the Old Salts and the Boots—who are forever warring: the Old Salt defending his past and his traditions against the furious assault of the Boot who is striving to exalt the Present at the expense of the Past, seeking to deflate the aplomb of the Old Salt by collapsing this puffed-up Past upon which it reposes. But the Boot will forever feel inferior to the Old Salt; he must always attack, for he has not the confidence of defense. The moment he ceases to slash at Tradition with the bright saber of present deeds, the instant he restrains that impetuous sword hand, trusting instead to the calm eye of appraisal—upon that change he passes over to the ranks of the Old Salts and ceases to be a Boot forever. Youth rebels and age conserves; between them, they advance. The Marines will cease to win battles the moment either camp achieves clear-cut ascendancy.

Awareness of this began to dawn upon me as we trudged back up the hill. I was grateful to Red Beard for having reminded us of the men at Wake, and I was confident that he, upon reflection, would lose some of his contempt for us.

We were back at the pits when Hoosier broke the silence: “You think Souvenirs was right—what he said about the papers? About Guadalcanal being famous?”

“Hell no!” Chuckler laughed. “I’ll bet we ain’t even made the papers.”

“Ah dunno, Chuckler,” the Hoosier said thoughtfully. “Ah kinda think he was right, m’self.” He turned to me. “Hey, Lucky—you think mebbe they’d give us a parade in New York?”

The answer came quickly from Chuckler, his eyes glittering at the thought of it. “Saay! Wouldn’t that be something? That’s not a bad idea, Hoosier. Think of all them babes lining the street.” He paused, and the familiar expression of good-natured disdain returned. “Aw, forget it! You know they ain’t gonna give us no parade. They don’t even know we’re alive. Who the hell ever heard of Guadalcanal, anyway!”

“Ah’ll bet they have,” Hoosier returned, his calm bordering on the smug. “Ah’ll bet you we’re famous back home.”

“Well, I’ll bet you ain’t getting to parade in New York,” Chuckler came back. “If we’re that famous, if we’re that good—they’ll be using us for the next one. We’ll get to parade all right—right up Main Street, Rabaul!”