Better Times Than These Read Online Free PDF

before he quieted them down again so he could say what he had known secretly since they had left the sand hills of North Carolina: that in fact there weren’t going to be enough bunks for each man to have his own, because Division wanted the whole Brigade to arrive at once, and since there wasn’t another transport available, these twenty-one hundred men were going to have to go over on a ship built to carry only fifteen hundred of them.
    “All right, shitheads, now you see what the problem is,” Trunk said, measuring his words slowly.
    “Don’t fret, girls,” Trunk said sweetly, his picket teeth gleaming in a Cheshire Cat grin, “everybody’s gonna get to sleep on this here little sail—you’re just gonna have to do it different times.” He explained how the rotation of sleeping shifts would work—one third of the men would have to be up on deck at all times. There was a predictable chorus of groans.
    “Knock it off, shitheads,” Trunk bellowed. “You’ll get used to it. Now, anybody without a bunk find one to share and stop bitchin’ like a bunch of goddamned women. This is just a little pleasure cruise, compared with what you’re in for when we get over there.”
    Slowly, the ones without bunks carried their gear to a bunk that was already occupied. This exercise took somewhat longer than it might have as the left-out men searched the faces of those already with a bunk for any sign of receptiveness and the ones who had already claimed bunks tried their best, without actually saying or doing anything outright, to look as unreceptive as they could.
    By 3 P.M. , the sun had burned off the remaining haze. The day had turned brilliant California blue, and a perky breeze had sprung up off the ocean. Most of the men were lounging outside on the cargo deck when the first tremor from the big engines shivered through the steel frame of the ship.
    DiGeorgio and Crump were leaning against the rail talking to Pfc. Spudhead Miter when they saw the cloud of dirty smoke belch from the forward stack. Moments later a similar cloud flew out of the stack behind it, blowing a gigantic smoke ring skyward.
    “Here we go,” Crump said, peeling a tangerine and looking helplessly down at the Navy dockhands casting off the thick braided mooring lines. “Here we go.”
    DiGeorgio’s beady little eyes danced wildly, looking up and down at Crump’s skinny frame slouched against the rail.
    “Goddamned right we do, you dumb ape. Whatja expect, they’d change their minds the last fuckin’ minute? You thought Trunk’s gonna come running out here and say, ‘Okay, shitheads, this here’s just a drill’? Jesus, Crump, you’re brilliant—fuckin’ brilliant!”
    “Why don’t you shut your mouth up, Dee-Gergio?” Crump said, hawking up a wad of phlegm and blowing it out with his tongue so that it arched in mortarlike trajectory into the boiling water in the fast-widening gap between ship and pier.
    Spudhead Miter’s big potato-shaped head followed Crump’s expectoration until it hit the water, and he gazed down for a while at the spot where the spittle had landed. None of them spoke as the ship shuddered under the strain of 28,000 horsepower, but each felt his own strong sensation. Finally Spudhead jammed his hands into his pockets and said with authority, “We’re really in the dogfuck now.”

5
    F irst Lieutenant Billy Kahn, Bravo Company’s Executive Officer, was stowing away the last of eight precious bottles of Cutty Sark he had smuggled into his duffel bag in North Carolina after learning that the Navy didn’t allow whiskey drinking on its ships at sea. When the engine tremor reached his cabin, Kahn stopped for a moment and for no reason he could think of glanced at his watch—it was 3:10 P.M. —then finished tucking the bottle gently in with the rest, cushioning it among a dozen or so pairs of olive-drab underwear so that it wouldn’t break if the ship started to rock or pound. When he finished, he stepped