"Where goddam battlefield?" he asked
"Jus' at... "Where goddam battlefield?" he asked
"Jus' at the end of the trail," Wilson saidHe remembered the fourth canteen of whisky, which he had hidden, and he began to giggle again"Jus' a little while," he told themThey stumbled along the trail for a hundred and fifty yards before it debouched into a narrow road"This's Jap road," Wilson said
"Where's the fuggin Japs?" Gallagher asked
"Oh, they's miles away," Wilson assured him"This yere's where we pushed them back"I can smell them already," he announced
"Oh, yeah," Wilson said"I hear they's lots of them round here
The road passed through a coconut grove and then extended into a field of kunai grassGradually, as they walked they had become aware of a familiar stench rising from the plain on either side of themIt was a smell of decay not exactly sweet but a good deal like ordure leavened with garbage and the foul odor of a
chanel white purse swampThe smell varied in intensity and quality; sometimes it struck their noses with the acute loathsome scent of rotting potatoes, and sometimes it was more like the lair of a skunkHe stepped around the dead body of a Japanese soldier that lay crushed on the road
In the coconut groves at the edge of the field, the trees were stripped of leaves and their trunks appeared black or brown as if they had withered from droughtMost of them had their branches sheared away, and they stood solitary and naked like a row of pilings on a sand flat when the tide is outThere was nothing green left in the groves
All over the landscape were the black silhouettes of burnt tanks; somehow they blended into the wreckage of trees and the circles of black charred grass so that they were camouflaged as in the child's picture-game where the faces of famous men are concealed in the leaves of treesA
omega geneve automatic litter of wreckage lay all over the fieldThere were the dead bodies of Japanese soldiers everywhere, and in one place on a small ridge, where the Japanese had entrenched themselves for a few hours, the artillery had torn great crumpled holes in the earth
The men wandered through the field, which was perhaps a quarter mile longIn the grass they could see the twisted bodies of a few dead men, and they lay very far from repose, their bodies frozen in the midst of an intense contortionThey skirted around them, and continued to stroll down the roadA few yards away a destroyed Japanese half-track and an American tank had careened on their sides, leaning against each other like old houses ready to totterThey had burned together, and they looked black and crippledThe bodies of the Japanese had not been carried away, and the driver of the halftrack had almost fallen out of his
mulberry leather seatHis head was crushed from his ear to his jaw and it lay sodden on the runningboard of the vehicle as if it were a beanbagOne of his legs was thrust tensely through the shattered glass of the windshield and the other one, which had been lopped off at the thigh, lay at right angles to his headIt seemed to have a separate existence from him
Another Japanese lay on his back a short distance awayHe had a great hole in his intestines, which bunched out in a thick white cluster like the congested petals of a sea flowerThe flesh of his belly was very red and his hands in their death throe had encircled the woundHe looked as if he were calling attention to itHe had an anonymous pleasant face with small snubbed features, and he seemed quite rested in deathHis legs and buttocks had swollen so that they stretched his pants until they were the skin-tight trousers of a Napoleonic
jumbo chanel flap bag dandySomehow he looked like a doll whose stuffing had broken forth
At an angle to him lay a third soldier, who had received a terrible wound in his chestHis thighs and torso had been burned in escaping from the half-track, and he was stretched out on his back with his legs separated and his knees raisedThe singed cloth of his uniform had rotted away and it exposed his scorched genitalsThey had burned down to tiny stumps but the ash of his pubic hair still remained like a tight clump of steel wool
Wilson poked about the wreckage, and then sighed"They done stripped 'em all of souvenirs," he said
Gallagher swayed back and forth drunkenly"Who did? Who the fug did? Wilson, you're a goddam liarYou stole all the souvenirs
Wilson ignored him"It's a damn shame's all Ah can say when a bunch of men like us is risking our ass for a whole goddam week, and they ain't even any souvenirs
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