Hold Back the Night

Chapter Fourteen

DOG COMPANY NOW had more of everything than it needed. It had more than it could comfortably carry, but Ekland insisted they carry it all. He insisted they bring the litters with them, and he insisted they load the litters with the extra magazines of ammunition, and extra cartons of food. He allowed them to eat all the combat rations they wanted, or all they could chip from the cartons with their bayonets, but then Ekland got tough.

He ordered them on, immediately. They no longer had fuel, so it was necessary they keep moving.

With a fresh magazine in his BAR, and his stomach growling at its work, John Ekland felt better. He walked at the head of the column, as Mackenzie had. He had unloaded his pack on one of the litters; and over his shoulder, now, he carried the musette bag with the company records. Under his arm was the bottle guard, as Mackenzie had carried it.

He counted his men, altogether there were now fourteen. It was awful. It was worse than Iwo. But so far as Ekland could figure out, it was still an intact command, and he was at the head of it.

If necessary, Ekland knew, Dog Company could fight again. Back there at the crossroads they had had a small victory, although they had lost the captain. A victory was the richest and most stimulating food you could put in their stomachs.

Then Ekland saw a line of skirmishers coming towards him, backed by armor, hopelessly out-numbering him. Dog Company was cut off from the friendly sea. “Hit the ditch!” he yelled behind him. “Ostergaard, bring up the bazook! Who’s got the bazook rockets? Bring up those damn rockets!”

Then, over the sights of his BAR, he examined the people coming towards him, and something in the way they moved, their steady and yet almost careless progress, heedless of ambush in the ground or enemies in the sky, told him they were friendly. He dropped the BAR, rose, and began to wave his arms. He didn’t know it, but he was weeping.

“We heard noises up here,” said the lieutenant from the Third Division, “so we came up to see what it was all about. Who are you people?” This lieutenant peered at them closely, as if they looked peculiar.

“Marines,” said Sergeant Ekland. “We’re from the First Marine Division.”

The lieutenant seemed surprised. “Is that so? We didn’t think anything would be coming down this road except gooks. That’s the way I was briefed. That’s what intelligence told us.”

“Well, we’re Marines, and we’re poohed.”

“You’re being evacuated, you know. Your whole division is being evacuated. They’re putting ’em on the ships right now. There’s a rear guard, and a beachmaster, to take care of the stragglers.”

The sergeant straightened. “These are not stragglers,” he said loud and clear. “This is a company. This is Dog Company!”

The lieutenant looked them over. “A company?”

“Yes, bud, a company!”

And the lieutenant looked them over again, and he saw that as individuals they might all be casualties, but together they were still a fighting team. And the lieutenant realized that what this sergeant had said was true. They were a company. “I have transportation around the bend,” the lieutenant said. “If your men can’t make it, I’ll order my vehicles up here to pick them up.”

“My men can make it,” Ekland said. This was the first time, he realized, that he had called them “my men.” With the bottle still under his arm, he led them out.

Since they were the last out, they were the last aboard, which was only proper, and Ekland reported to the lieutenant-colonel commanding Battalion, and was told to get the company records in some sort of shape, if he could, because the Graves Registration people would be wanting to talk to him, and so would the new company commander. It was two days before he mustered them all together on the LST, purring out through the Japan Sea. “Well,” he said, “we’ve still got the captain’s bottle.” And he held it up, so they all could see. “So maybe it’s time to open it.” He ripped open the zipper of the leather guard, and brought out the Scotch. “What’d you say, men?”

Kato said, “I don’t want a drink. I’m so full of rations I could bust. All I want is some more sleep.”

Heinzerling said, “I don’t want a drink, not now, on account of I’m going down and get a shower. They’ve got a bath service on this boat, an honest-to-God bath service, with hot water.”

“Me too,” said Vermillion.

Petrucci sauntered across the deck to where they were passing out free cigarettes.

And they all of them left, for one reason or another, and finally there was no one but Ekland and Beany Smith and Ostergaard. Ostergaard scuffed his boot on the steel deck. “Count me out, sarge. I’m superstitious.”

“Well, Smith,” said Ekland, “the captain promised it to us, and that leaves nobody but you and me, and I guess that leaves you alone, and you can have a hell of a toot for yourself, because personally, Smith, I don’t feel like drinking it.”

Beany Smith took the bottle, and examined it closely. He rubbed it against his freshly shaven cheek, and looked back at the bleak hills. “Me, I don’t want it either,” he said. “This is our luck. We may need it again. We may need it right here. I wouldn’t drink it for nothin’.” He returned it to Ekland.

A regimental sergeant saw Ekland and said he had been looking for him, because the battalion commander and Colonel Grimm wanted to see him. They were waiting for him in the wardroom. The wardroom table was deep in papers. “All day,” said Grimm, “people have been looking all over this ship for you. Where’ve you been?”

“Between decks, mostly,” said Sergeant Ekland, “working on these papers here.” He asked the question he wanted to ask. “Sir, have you heard anything about Captain Mackenzie?”

“He ought to be just about landing in Hawaii now,” the colonel said. “And tomorrow, if my times are figured right, he ought to be just about in a hospital in San Francisco.”

“But, sir—”

“They don’t lose many wounded, once you get ’em in a sick bay,” said the colonel. “I’m glad they didn’t lose Mackenzie.” The colonel smiled, and it was so unusual for the colonel to smile, that all those in the wardroom, the staff officers and the communicators and the clerks, they all noticed it. “But that isn’t why I’ve been looking for you, Ekland. I’m making you.”

“Sir?”

“There aren’t any officers left in your company, and we want to keep it on the rolls. I’m giving you the brevet rank of first lieutenant, effective when Mackenzie first recommended it. We’ll just skip the second grade. Know what that means?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re acting commander of Dog Company from here in.” He looked around him at his staff. “One of these gentlemen will dig you up a couple of silver bars. We’ve got plenty of them left over.”

Ekland wondered whether it was expected that he should say something, but when he looked at the colonel’s face he saw that it was not expected.

The colonel said something, “What’s that you’ve got under your arm?”

“Why, that’s a bottle of Scotch, sir!”

“A bottle of Scotch!” He sounded just as surprised, and incredulous, as had Dog Company when the captain had first brought out the bottle. “Well, if that’s a bottle of Scotch, don’t you want to celebrate?”

“Well, yes, sir, but not with this bottle of Scotch. It doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to Captain Mackenzie.”

The colonel looked at it, and Lieutenant Ekland could see that the colonel, himself, would very much like a drink of Scotch. “Mackenzie’ll never miss it. He’ll have Scotch by the bucket in a week or so.”

“Oh, yes he would miss it, sir,” said Ekland, “and if I opened it now, and drank it, I wouldn’t have a company.”

“Okay,” said Colonel Grimm. A colonel usually thought he knew a good deal about his command, that is, if he was really a good colonel, an old colonel. And then every once in a while he discovered he didn’t know anything at all.

Ekland said, “If you’ll pardon me, sir—”

“Have to leave, lieutenant? Don’t you want to mess with us?”

“I want to tell my men, sir,” said Ekland. “And I have work to do and I might as well get started. I’ve got a lot of letters to write.”

He saluted, and he left.