Battle Cry by Leon Uris Read Free Book Online Page B

deducted from the first pay call. Regulation purchases were required. A bucket soon carried a scrub brush, laundry soap, shaving gear, and a battle pin—an item once known merely as a collar clasp. Then came steel wool, Blitz cloth, seabag lock, toothbrush, cigarettes, steel mirror, shine kit, a tin of Kiwi polish and finally a blue volume labeled The Marine’s Handbook. Then they ran home with buckets swinging.
    After chow the whistle shrilled. “All right, you people. The uniform of the day from now on will be: boondockers, green trousers, khaki shirts, field scarf and battle pin—and pith helmet. There are a couple of goddam irons in the pressing tent and you bastards make use of them. When you fall in tomorrow I want you looking like something. Get into uniform and pack your civilian gear…two minutes to dress and a minute to weep over your civvies…fall out!”
    A headlong dive into the seabags and they emerged, their attire a long way from a recruiting poster. Overlooked tags, iron-stiff shoes, uniforms too long or too short, too loose or too tight. Canvas belts large enough to encompass a baby elephant. The pith helmets either perched high or fell over the eyes.
    Whitlock looked at them. He lifted his eyes skyward. “Gawd!” he cried in anguish. “Gawd!” he cried again. “Square away that helmet!” His fist smashed the sun hat down over O’Hearne’s ears and eyes from its jaunty angle. Throughout the ranks there was a quick movement to adjust them.
    “Gawd!”
    After bidding adieu to their civvies they drew stencils and the remainder of the first momentous day was spent marking every belonging.
     
    “I’ll give you crapheads till eighteen hundred to square away your uniform of the day. Fall out!”
    “I never sewed in my life,” moaned L.Q., running a needle into his finger.
    “Sure could use my mother now,” Ski added.
    “Ya know, I don’t know just why I feel this way. But I got a sneaking suspicion that I’m not going to like this place.”
    “Christ—two and a half months.”
    “How about that Texan?”
    “Oh, he’s a great kid. I remember where I saw him. It was his picture hanging in a post office. Where does the Marine Corps find these gems?”
    “Goddammit!”
    “What happened?”
    “I stuck myself again.”
    “I wonder what that quartermaster was thinking of?” Ski buttoned his trousers and looked down at the bottoms which draped over his shoes and onto the floor for a full ten inches.
    “I guess I’m squared away,” Danny said, wiping his battle pin clean with the Blitz cloth. “Better get in line for that iron.”
    The whistle blew. “Fall in. Bring your topcoats! All right, line up and dress down. Cover down—try to make it look like a formation. We’re going to the movies.”
    “Corporal Whitlock…sir.”
    The long Texan strode to Jones. “Sir, Private Jones requests permission to speak with the drill instructor,” he hissed, smashing the helmet over L.Q.’s eyes.
    “S…sir, Private Jones requests permission to speak with the drill instructor, your majesty.”
    “You don’t talk in ranks, craphead, but what is it?”
    “Sir, did I understand you to say we are going to the movies?”
    “Correct.”
    “Well sir. Is it all right if you want to stay in the tent, sir?”
    “You got to have entertainment,” he explained to the men, who could think of nothing more entertaining than to lay their weary bodies on a cot. “It’s good for your morale. However, Private Jones, if you’d rather stay in, that’s O.K. with me.”
    “Oh…thank you sir, thank you sir.”
    “Sergeant Beller,” the D.I. called. Beller, built low to the ground and solid as a tank, rumbled from his tent. “Sergeant, Private Jones doesn’t want to go to the movies.”
    “Is that correct, Private Jones?”
    “Oh no sir. Not at all sir. I think movies will be just double peachy.”
    “Are you calling me a liar?” Whitlock spat.
    “Oh no sir. The fact is that I didn’t want to