Authors: Leon Uris
Well, they turned out to be a bitter disappointment. The task that lay ahead of us old-timers seemed impossible. There they were, poor excuses for Marines, much less for radiomen. The whole gang couldn’t send or receive with my speed, and I’m not good any more.
What did we get? A drawling Texan, a big Swede, the Forrester kid, the Feathermerchant, L.Q. the Clown, Marion Hodgkiss with his fancy music, Seabags the farmer, and that Injun. What a bunch! Burnside stayed drunk for a week. Gunner Keats tried to get a transfer. Sam Huxley groaned openly when the first field problems turned out to be a mess.
“You fellows are probably thinking the same as I am,” he said. “How the hell are we going to win the war with these eightballs?”
We murmured in agreement. “They don’t look like Marines, they don’t act like Marines.” We again agreed.
“But remember this, men. They are here because they want to be here, the same as you and me. The Corps, as we once knew it, is gone forever. We might as well reconcile ourselves to that fact. It’s getting big, bigger every minute. I visualize three, maybe four divisions of Marines before this war is over.”
The estimate seemed impossible. Why, that would be over a hundred thousand men!
“I know what we are up against, we have a lot of work to do. You men know me well enough to understand that when I say work, I mean work. You old-timers have to help me. Curse at them, take them to a saloon, show them what the inside of a whorehouse looks like. Make Marines out of them!
“We all had buddies on Wake, the Philippines, in Shanghai. We don’t like what happened to the Corps. We don’t like losing. So remember, men, it is going to be a long road back and we can’t get back without these kids. Er…er, one more thing. You staff NCOs, Mac, Burnside, McQuade, Paris and the rest of you—What I want to say now isn’t for publication. We’re liable to be getting some officers, too, that, well, may be a little green. Help them along.”
IT DIDN’T
take me long to discover that Spanish Joe Gomez was the biggest thief, liar, and goldbricker in the Marine Corps. We had a hot potato on our hands. He had a mean streak in him, a mile wide. The first time we realized how ornery he was came shortly after he joined the outfit at Eliot.
We were on liberty, making a round of the slopshutes in Dago and had just entered the Porthole. I was half tanked and trying to make time with a barfly when Gomez poked me in the ribs and said, “I’m gonna have me some fun, Mac. Pick out the biggest swab jockey in the joint.” I pointed to a two-hundred-and-twenty-pound sailor bending over a beer a few feet away. Spanish Joe edged his way next to him. “Got a match, mate?”
The unconcerned and unsuspecting victim slid a light down the bar. Joe lit up and put the lighter into his pocket.
“Hey, my lighter.”
Joe looked amazed. “What lighter?”
“I said give back my lighter.”
“I ain’t got no lighter of yours. You accusing me of stealing?”
“You looking for a beef, Marine?”
Gomez was aghast, then sheepish. He fumbled through his pockets and handed the lighter over.
“I oughta bust you one in the teeth,” the sailor sneered.
“Gee…I…I’m sorry, mate. I ain’t looking for no trouble.”
“I oughta bust you in the teeth,” he repeated loudly.
Three bouncers moved up quickly to the scene of trouble.
“This here swab jockey accused me of stealing his lighter,” Joe pleaded.
“I oughta…” The sailor cocked his fist. A flying squad caught him quickly and moved him toward the door. Spanish Joe shoved his way through the drinking mob after him. Outside, he approached the very irked gob.
“Say, deck ape. I’m really sorry….”
The sailor turned purple. “I ain’t looking for no fight,” Joe begged, backing away. The gob wound up and let a right hand fly from the boondocks. Joe deftly dodged the punch a quarter inch from his jaw, the momentum of the swing sending the man in blue whirling to the deck. Gomez bent over and assisted him to his feet, brushing him off. “I ain’t looking for no fight.”
Enraged, the sailor lurched out again, missing again, again falling down. Joe picked up the man’s little white hat. “Gee, you’ll get it all dirty.”
Again and again he swung, each time catching nothing more solid than the evening air, after coming tantalizingly close to his tormentor’s jaw. At last he gave up. “Let’s shake, mate, so’s there ain’t no hard feelings,” Joe offered. Realizing the futility of his attempts, the bewildered sailor extended his hand.
At this point Spanish Joe unleashed a lightning pair of punches, knocking the man senseless to the sidewalk. “Imagine the nerve of that guy—accusing me of stealing his lighter. Just for that I’m going to take it.” And he did.
It is said that on a good night, Spanish Joe left a trail of ten or perhaps a round dozen prostrate bodies of sailors and dogfaces littered about San Diego.
We were catching up on sack drill and letter writing after evening chow, having knocked off a stiff ten-mile hike with full combat pack. To my surprise, not one of the squad had fallen flat on his face.
In a far corner, by himself, Marion Hodgkiss lay on his sack engrossed in a book by some fellow called Plato. Speedy Gray, the Texan, slowly shined up his battle pin with a blitz cloth and mournfully sang:
“Send me a letter
Send it by mail,
Send it in care of,
The Birmingham jail.”
Now this Hodgkiss fellow was one for the books. I had never quite met a guy like him in four hitches in this lash-up. He did his work well, but he was the only Marine in captivity who neither smoked, drank, gambled, cursed, or chased the broads. On liberty call, when the rest were champing at the bit, Hodgkiss just lay there poring through those books and listening to classical music on his record player. In a gang of sex-mad gyrenes, it isn’t easy to stick to stuff like that. But they all had to admire Marion. When the nightly arguments came and bets were on the table, Marion proved himself to be a walking encyclopedia. He was final authority on whatever subject we happened to differ about—the population of Kalamazoo in 1896, or the number of hairs on the human head. Marion knew everything. And he was sweet, polite, and as decent as Spanish Joe Gomez wasn’t.
Joe, having stolen a skivvy shirt from L.Q. Jones and given it to someone else for getting his shoes shined, sauntered up to Marion with trouble brewing in his gait.
“Hey, you.”
Marion did not look up from his book.
“Hey, I’m talking to you, Sister Mary.”
“What do you want?”
“I hear you used to box in school.”
“A little.”
“Well, I’m learning to box and I’d like a couple of pointers. Let’s step out to the ring and spar a few rounds.”
“The hike tired me out, I’d rather not.”
“You aren’t chicken, are you, Sister Mary?”
Marion carefully marked his book, placed it in his seabag, took off his glasses and set them carefully in his breast pocket. “Let’s go,” he said.
Spanish Joe winked to us and followed him to the door. We all dropped our business and poured out after them.
The gloves were laced on Sister Mary and I whispered in his ear, “This guy fought professional. Why don’t you just fall down after the first time he hits you? Nobody will think you’re chicken.” Marion gazed at the ring mat, deaf to my plea. We all saw, though, that he had some muscles of his own, with shoulders like a medium tank.
“Take it easy on me, Sister Mary,” Gomez called across the ring.
“The bastard,” I sneered between my teeth.
We gathered close about the apron of the ring as L.Q. called “Time!” This was going to be awful. It was. Spanish Joe was the two-round world’s champ light heavyweight. His rapier left jab flicked out at Marion a hundred times from a hundred different angles. The broad-shouldered book reader moved after him with the grace of a pregnant elephant. His wild blows never even dented Joe’s shadowy form. He backed Joe into a corner, Joe spun him around and clobbered him. Hooks, jabs, uppercuts, but Marion kept coming on. His ribs were red and his face starting to look like a hunk of raw liver. I said a Hail Mary, wondering what was holding him up. Toward the end of the round Joe’s left came in slower and Marion’s punches got closer.
The content of an entire gin mill was finding its way through Spanish Joe’s pores.
“Time!”
I wiped the blood from Marion’s face. He sat there staring at the deck. Joe leaned on the ropes breathing heavily. “I guess that’s about it for today, huh kid. Unlace my gloves, Danny.”
Marion Hodgkiss arose and walked over to Gomez. “I’m just getting warmed up, let’s go.”
A smile lit up Joe’s face. “O.K., the joke’s over, I don’t want to hurt you. That’s enough.”
“Yellow?” Sister Mary asked softly.
Gomez looked stunned. He gazed from the corner of his eyes at the men gathered around the ring. He rolled his tongue about the top of his sweat-beaded lip. “O.K., kid,” he said viciously, “let’s go.”
We clung to the bottom strand of the ropes. “Time,” Jones croaked.
Spanish Joe moved slowly to the center of the ring, the sweat making him shine like a panther stalking for the kill. He mustered every ounce of his whisky-soaked strength and lashed out with a right hand. It caught Sister Mary in the mouth with a sharp snapping echo. Joe dropped his hands, his face wreathed in a victor’s smile, and stepped back to make room for Marion to fall.
Not only was Marion Hodgkiss upright, but he uncorked a right uppercut from the top of his boondockers, powerful enough to sink the U.S.S.
Pennsylvania.
Gomez, caught flush on the button, was lifted six inches off the deck and landed in a crumpled heap. We all jumped into the ring, showering hugs and kisses on Marion’s swollen face and lovingly escorted him back to the barracks. We just let Spanish Joe lay there.
Fifteen minutes later, Gomez had rejoined the living. We were still gathered about his sack; Marion playing coy, engrossed in his Plato. We eyed Spanish Joe stalking into the barracks and cleared a path. Sister Mary turned a page and adjusted his glasses.
“Hey, kid.” No answer. “Hey kid, that was a lucky punch, you know that!” Marion withdrew a handkerchief and blew his nose. “To show you there ain’t no hard feelings, let’s shake hands.”
Sister Mary again lay his book down and arose. Spanish Joe extended his hand. Marion let fly a punch sinking almost elbow deep into Joe’s guts. Gomez groaned, clutched his belly and sank to the deck.
“Now what the hell did you do that for?” he cried.
Marion bent over and assisted him to his wobbly feet. “I’m sorry, Gomez, but I don’t go around shaking hands with rattlesnakes until I’m sure all the poison has been removed.”
Gomez scratched his head in an attempt to digest the remark. Mary went back to his book as Joe slipped onto the edge of the sack.
“What you reading?”
“Plato.”
“You mean they wrote a whole book like that about Mickey Mouse’s dog, huh?” The white teeth of Gomez showed themselves in a smile. “Hey kid, I like you. What you think of Spanish Joe?”
“I think you are the most obnoxious person I’ve ever met.”
“What’s this ‘obnoxious’?”
“You stink.”
Spanish Joe Gomez threw his arms about Marion. “Hey kid, you sure got guts to talk to ole Joe that way. Me and you is going to be buddy-buddies.”
Sister Mary turned the page.
Politics and war make strange bedfellows. That’s how it began. The buddy-buddy relationship of the most one-way bastard in creation and the guy who was most likely to win sainthood. We all liked this friendship because Marion kept Joe in line and out of our seabags. Hodgkiss took over Gomez’s money at pay call and squared away his accumulated debts. The two went on liberty call together, Joe tanking up, Mary usually in an empty booth pouring down the classics of literature. When Joe got boisterous, Marion stepped in, averted the clash and moved him on. More than once we saw Joe trudge home dejected, head bowed and hands in pockets.
“What’s the scoop, Joe?”
“I got my ass in a sling,” he’d answer sheepishly.
“Why?”
“I borrowed an overseas cap from the Indian and forgot to return it, and Marion caught me.” It was hard to keep from laughing. “Mary read the Rocks and Shoals to me, he really give me the word. No liberty for a week and I got to go to church Sunday.”
“Maybe I’d better tell him about the way you doped off on that ditch digging detail yesterday.”
“You wouldn’t rat on me, Mac, would you, buddy? I can’t stand another lecture today.”
“We’ll see.”
“Jesus H. Christ on a crutch. I’m a bad hombre, I’m just a bad hombre.”
I had finished guard rounds with Gunner Keats and returned to the S.G. tent. Sister Mary, on Corporal of the Guard, was on the edge of his sack, crouched close to the dim light in the center of the tent, reading the
Saturday Review of Literature.
“All the planes tucked in safe?” he greeted me.
“Where the hell did they dig up this crap detail, guarding them goddam egg crates. Haven’t they ever heard of communicators in this goddam outfit? Why, in the old Corps, Marion…”
“Only four more days.” He laughed at my anger.
“Gets colder than a well digger’s ass out on this prairie,” I said, blowing into my hands, kneeling and turning up the kerosene stove.
“There’s some hot coffee there, Mac.”
I tilted my canteen cup, took a long swig, and smacked my lips. “Say, Mary, it’s three o’clock. You’d better get some sack drill.”
He flipped the magazine to the deck, yawned, and took the cup from me. “I didn’t realize it was so late.”
“Marion.”
“Yes, Mac.”
“It isn’t any of my business, but could you tell me something?”
“If I can.”
“Well, er, what about all those books?”