| "It ain't as if tomorrow is gonna be so bad although they'll have recon working its ass off, but a little work ain't gonna kill us"Hell, if General Cummings was to come up to me tomorrow and say, 'Brown, I'm putting you on unloading detail for the duration,' you think I'd bitch? In the pig's hole I wouldI've seen enough combat to last ten men, and I'll tell you this invasion tomorrow if we was to be shelled from the ship to the beach and back couldn't begin to equal MotomeThat was one day I knew I was gonna be deadI still don't see how I got through it
"What happened?" Stanley askedHe flexed his knees carefully to avoid kicking the man in the bunk above him, only a foot above his headThis story he had heard a dozen times when he was first assigned to recon, but he knew Brown liked to tell it
"Well, from the beginning when they assigned the platoon to Baker Company for that rubber boat deal, it was a cinch we were screwed, but what could you do?" He went on, telling a story of how they had set out in rubber boats from a destroyer several hours gucci backpack before the dawn, had been caught in an ebb tide and seen by the Japanese"Man," Brown said, "maybe you think I wasn't keeping a tight asshole when those Japs started firing at us with an AA batteryThere wasn't any of our boats that didn't get hit some and start sinking, and in the one next to us was the Company Commander, Billings was his name I think, and the poor bastard had just broken down completelyHe was crying and moaning and trying to fire off a flare so the destroyer would open up and give us some cover, but he was shaking so much he couldn't hold the flare gun in his hand
"And in the middle of all that, Croft stands up in their rubber boat, and he says, 'Why, you ornery sonofabitch, give me that gun' Billings gives it to him, and Croft stands up in plain sight of all those Japs on the beach, fires the gun twice, and then loads it
Stanley shook his head in commiseration"That Croft is quite a guy," he said
"Quite a guy! Listen, he's made of ironHe's the one man I'd never crossHe's probably the best platoon sergeant in the Army and the chanel classic handbag meanestHe just doesn't have any nerves," Brown said bitterly"Out of all the old guys in recon, there ain't one of us whose nerves ain't shotI tell ya, I'm scared all the time, and Red is tooAnd Gallagher, he's only been with us six months but he was in on the rubber boat deal and he counts too I suppose, he's scared, and Martinez is the best little scout you could ever want but he's even more scared than I am, and even Wilson although he don't let on much is none too happyBut Croft -- I tell you Croft loves combat, he loves itThere ain't a worse man you could be under or a better one, depending on how you look at itWe lost eleven guys out of seventeen in the platoon, counting the Lieutenant we had then, some of the best guys in the world and the rest of us weren't good for anything for a week, but Croft asked for a patrol the next day, and they assigned him to A Company on TDY until you and Ridges and Toglio came in as replacements and we had enough men to make up a squad
By now, Stanley was interested in only a facet of this"Do you think we'll get louis vuitton replica bags enough replacements to fill out the platoon?" he asked
"As far as I'm concerned," Brown said, "I hope we never get the replacementsUntil then, we're just an odd squad, but if we ever get up to T/O we'll still only be two squads of a lousy eight men apieceThat's the trouble with being in an I and R platoon, you're just those two undersize cavalry squads, and they send you out on missions where you really need an honest-to-God infantry platoon
"Yeah, and we get screwed on the ratings too," Stanley said"In any other platoon in the regiment you and Martinez would be staffs, and Croft would be a tech"I don't know, Stanley," he said, "if we get the replacements, there's still a corporal openYou wouldn't sneeze at that, now would you?"
Despite all his efforts, Stanley felt himself reddening"Ah, hell," he muttered, "who am I to be thinking of that?"
Brown laughed softly"Well, it's something to think about
Furiously, Stanley told himself that he would have to be more careful with Brown in the future
A psychologist in a famous experiment rang a louis vuitton diaper bags bell every time he gave food to a dogNaturally, the dog's saliva flowed at the sight of the food
After a time the psychologist took away the food, but continued to ring the bellThe dog kept on salivating to the sound of itThe psychologist went one step further: he took away the bell and substituted many kinds of loud noisesThe saliva continued to form in the dog's mouth
There was a soldier on the ship who was like the dogHe had been overseas for a long time, and he had seen a great deal of combatAt first the sound of a shell and the impact it made were very much connected to the fear he feltBut after many months, he had known too much terror, and by now any sudden sound would cause him panic
All this night he had been lying in his bunk and shuddering at the sound of quick loud voices, or at a change in the throbbing of the ship's engines, or at the noise of a piece of equipment when someone kicked it along the floorHis nerves were pitched tauter than he could ever remember, and he lay sweating in his bunk, thinking with dread of the morning to chanel shopping bags com |
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