From Here to Eternity (Penguin Modern Classics) by James Jones

Author:James Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2013-09-04T18:30:00+00:00

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It was while they were at Hickam Field on this problem that they wrote the Re-enlistment Blues.

It was to be the original, the real, the one and only, Army blues; when they got it written. They had talked about it a long time. They had never done it. Probably they never would have. But with Bloom gone to NCO School and Maggio in the Stockade and no chance for Prew to go to Maunalani Heights, he and Anderson and Friday Clark suddenly found themselves thrown back together for a little while with nothing else to do. The Re-enlistment Blues came out of that.

They had moved in and made their bivouac at the foot of an old abandoned railroad embankment that jutted up nudely out of the scrubby liana and keawe jungle a couple of hundred yards inside the fence. It was on the Field side, hidden from the Pearl Harbor-Hickam Highway, in a low grove in the tangle where the ground was open and thickdusty smooth as if once occupied by feeding cattle, under the gnarled close-fitting branches that had kept the undergrowth from growing back and provided cover. Then they had strung three hundred yards of double apron wire and laid out a chain of staggered interlocking posts founded on the Hickam Main Gate to the north, and they were home. It was a fine place except for the mosquitoes. They settled into the regulated ebb and flow of two hours on and four hours off around the clock.

Only two-thirds of the Company was here. The other third was over on Kamehameha Highway five miles east, guarding an electric substation from sabotage as the two-thirds here were guarding planes from sabotage. It was strictly a sabotage problem. Over there they were even using ready-rolled accordion wire instead of double apron. The boxing squad had stayed in Schofield, to train for Company Smokers.

Capt. Holmes had set up his CP over there, where the mosquitoes were not so bad. Stark set up his kitchen here, where the most men were. Stark had been willing to let Capt. Holmes have two cooks and one of his field stoves, if he would furnish his own KPs, but that had been as far as Stark would budge. It worked out fine, for the men on post at Hickam. They did not mind having the mosquitoes. Stark always had one cook or KP up all night with hot coffee and hot sandwiches for them. Andy, who as company bugler had to go with the CP, would ride over every night with his guitar from the CP in the light truck that brought the lieutenant to inspect the posts. The lieutenant always made a beeline for the kitchen. Andy did most of his eating then. The cooks would always feed him if he was with the lieutenant. Stark would always feed anybody anytime. Then while Lt Culpepper was off on foot with Old Ike and the corporal on duty, checking the posts, they would climb to

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