@@@@@Conn's eyes met Hearn's for a moment and
@@@@@Conn's eyes met Hearn's for a moment and they both looked away in embarrassmentAfter a minute or so, Hearn slid off the bench, and strolled outsideHis clothing was completely wet, the air caressing against it like cool water
He lit a cigarette and strolled irritably through the bivouac, halting when he reached the barbed wire, and then pacing back underneath the coconut trees, staring morosely at the scattered clusters of dark-green pup tentsWhen he had completed the circuit, he clambered down the bluff that led to the beach, and walked along through the sand, kicking abstractedly at pieces of discarded equipment still left from invasion dayA few trucks motored by, and a detail of men shuffled in file through the sand carrying shovels against their shouldersOut in the water a few freighters were anchored, yawing lazily in the midday heatOver to his left a landing craft was approaching a supply dump
Hearn finished the cigarette and nodded curtly to an officer passing byThe nod was returned, but after a doubtful pauseHe was going to be in for it now, there was no getting away from thatConn was a bloody fool, but he had been a bigger assIt was the old pattern; when he could take something no longer he flared up, but that was weakness in itselfAnd yet he could not bear this continual paradox in which he and the other officers livedIt had been different in the States; the messes were separate, the living quarters were separate, and if you made a mistake it didn't countBut out here, they slept in cots a few feet away from men who slept on the ground; they were served meals, bad enough in themselves, but nevertheless served on plates while the others ate on their haunches after standing in line in the sunIt was even more than that; ten miles away men were being killed, and that had different moral demands than when men were killed three thousand miles awayNo matter how many times he might walk through the bivouac area, the feeling was thereThe ugly green of the jungle beginning just a few yards beyond the barbed wire, the delicate traceries of the coconut trees against the sky, the sick yellow pulpy look of everything; all of them combined to feed his disgustHe trudged up the bluff again, and stood looking about the area at the scattered array of big tents and little ones, at the trucks and jeeps clustered together in the motor pool, the file of soldiers in green sloppy fatigues still filing through for chowMen had had time to clear the ground of the worst bushes and roots, to establish a few grudged yards out of the appalling rifeness of the terrainBut up ahead, bedded down in the jungle, the front-line troops could not clear it away because they did not halt more than a day or two, and it would be dangerous to expose themselvesThey slept with mud and insects and worms while the officers bitched because there were no paper napkins and the chow could stand improvement
There was a kind of guilt in being an officerThey had all felt it in the beginning; out of OCS the privileges had been uncomfortable at first, but it was a convenient thing to forget, and there were always the good textbook reasons, good enough to convince yourself if you wanted to be quit of