After a long while, Red got tired of lying in his... After a long while, Red got tired of lying in his bunk and sneaked past the guard to go up topOn deck, the air seemed chill after being so long in the holdRed breathed it deeply, and moved about cautiously for a few seconds in the darkness until the outline of the ship formed for himThe moon was out, limning the deck-housings and equipment with a quiet silver sheenHe stared about him, aware now of the muted wash of the propellers, the slow contained roll of the ship which he had felt down below in the vibration of his bunkHe felt at once much better, for the deck was almost desertedThere was a sailor on watch at the nearest gun but in comparison to the hold this was isolation
Red walked over to the rail and looked out to seaThe ship was hardly moving now, and all the convoy seemed to be pausing and nosing its way through the water like a hound uncertain of the scentFar off against the
chanel earrings stud horizon the ridge line of an island rose steeply, formed a mountain, and fell away again in one descending hill after anotherThat was Anopopei, he decided, and shruggedWhat difference did it make? All islands looked the same
Blankly, without any anticipation, he thought of the week aheadTomorrow, when they landed, their feet would get wet and their shoes would fill with sandThere would be one landing boat after another to be unloaded, crate after crate to be toted a few yards up the beach and dropped in a pileIf they were lucky there would be no Jap artillery, and not too many snipers leftHe felt a tired dreadThere would be this campaign and then another and another, and there would never be an end to itHe massaged his neck, looking dourly at the water, his long thin body sagging at every jointIt was about one o'clock nowIn three hours the guns would start and the men would bolt a hot nauseating
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There was nothing to do but to go from one day into the nextThe platoon was lucky, for tomorrow anywayThey'd have recon working on the beach detail for a week probably, and the first patrols where all the trails were strange would be made already, and the campaign would have dropped into a familiar and bearable rutHe spat again, kneading with his blunt scarred fingers the knurled swollen knuckles of his other hand
In silhouette against the rail, his profile consisted almost entirely of a large blob of a nose and a long low-slung jaw, but in the moonlight this was misleading for it did not show the redness of his skin and hairHis face always seemed boiled and angry except for his eyes, which were quiet, a pale blue, marooned by themselves in a web of wrinkles and frecklesWhen he laughed his teeth showed, big and yellow and crooked, his rough voice braying out with a contemptuous
prada clutch inviolate mirthEverything about him was bony and knobbed, and although he was more than six feet tall, it was unlikely that he weighed one hundred and fifty pounds
His hand scratched his stomach, explored about for a moment or two and then haltedHe had forgotten his life beltAutomatically he thought of going back to the hold for it, and was angered at himself"Goddam Army gets you so you're afraid to turn around"You waste half your time trying to remember what they told you to do Still he debated for a moment whether he should fetch it, and then grinned"Aaah, you can only get killed once
He had told that to Hennessey, a kid who had joined recon only a few weeks before the division's task force had loaded ship for this invasion"A life belt, that's something for Hennessey to worry about, a life belt," he said to himself now
They had been up on deck together one night when an air raid sounded, and they
white ceramic chanel watch had squatted under a life raft, watching the ships in convoy lashing through the black water, the crew at the nearest gun standing tensely by the breechA Zero had attacked and a dozen searchlights had tried to focus on itHundreds of tracer arcs had lined red patterns through the airIt had all been very different from the combat he had previously seen, without heat, without fatigue, beautiful and unreal like a technicolor movie or a calendar pictureHe had watched in absorption, not even ducking when a bomb had exploded in a livid yellow fan over a ship a few hundred yards away
Then Hennessey had destroyed his mood"Jesus, I just remembered," he had said
"What?"
"I ain't got any air cartridges in my life beltWhen the ship goes down, you just ride a nice fat rat to shore
"No, this is seriousJeez, I better blow it up And in the darkness he had fumbled for the tube, found it, and inflated the
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