Better Times Than These Read Online Free PDF Page A

Cavalry.
    And one of the first things Custer did when he became Commander in eighteen sixty-six was to form his own little band, “from the musicians of the Regiment”—despite the fact that a band was not authorized for regiments then any more than it was for battalions now. But that, by God, was Patch’s idea of innovation.
    “Is it going smoothly, Jason?” General Butterworth asked. “Are there any hang-ups?”
    “We’re right on it, sir,” Patch said, smoothing his blond moustache with a finger.
    “Good, good—Second Battalion’s coming up next, and we’re still going off at oh eleven hundred if this goddamned fog breaks. Navy says it will, but they don’t want to get mixed up in the soup with a bunch of freighters coming down the bay, so you let me know if there are problems getting your people squared away,” The general’s face screwed into a wrinkled smile.
    “I don’t think we’ll have any problems, sir,” Patch replied.
    “Good—that’s good, Jason. Of course, you’ll keep me posted,” the general said.
    The wax-faced aide nodded at Patch. “Colonel,” he said, then moved off at the general’s heels.
    Shitass, Patch said silently, watching the young aide walk away. Just one more regulation-bound school-solution shitass.
    Patch had seen his kind before—smug-looking. At The Point, they were the ones who studied day and night, the darlings of the instructors, parroting back exactly what the instructors told them, always giving “the school solution”—as though there weren’t ten, or twenty, or a hundred ways of doing something in the Army. The kind of officer Patch liked was a man who would hunker down by the ground and work out a problem by drawing in the sand with a stick.
    Not this kid, though. Patch sneered at the stiffness of his gait as the aide walked away. He’s going to muddle through a career hiding behind regs and being a general’s aide and that kind of crap until he gets a star, and then they’re going to cram him behind a desk somewhere so he can screw things up for the Infantry.
    Patch had seen his kind before: the anonymous signatures at the bottom of some stupid buck-back form, or a self-important voice at the other end of a phone, saying why this or that couldn’t be done or couldn’t be done this or that way.
    Shitass, Patch said to himself again, turning away from the wax-faced general’s aide, whose name was C. Francis Holden and who, before he joined the Army, had been the number-one-ranking tennis player at Princeton University and who had absolutely no intention on earth of making the military his career and who, sensing Patch’s animosity toward him, was at that very moment thinking that Patch was an asshole.

4
    I n the enlisted men’s quarters on the troop deck, there was grand confusion. Bravo Company was led into a large gray-painted room that smelled of dampness and the sea, with row upon row of quadruple-decked bunks, where it was to live for the next twenty-five days. The room was so full of people it reminded Pfc. Crump of the crowds inside the freak tent at the little carnival shows that brought to Tupelo, Mississippi, such interesting exhibits as the hermaphrodite human and the woman with three tits.
    Alpha Company was in the sleeping room already, and part of Charlie Company was backed up at the companionway door—five hundred jammed-up bodies waiting for someone to tell them what to do next. Since that had not happened, Bravo Company put down its gear and milled around with the rest until Sergeant Trunk shoved his way through the door and quieted everybody down.
    “Stand by a bunk,” Trunk roared, and again there was a great milling around as everyone pressed to find a bed. When it became apparent that there were not nearly enough bunks to go around, the noise and the cursing grew louder as men who were left out scrambled up one aisle and down the next, hoping to find a niche of their own.
    Trunk let this continue for a few minutes