From Here to Eternity Read Online Free PDF Page B
Author: James Jones
ashamed. It was then they really began not to let him alone. And it was then he transferred. He transferred to this other regiment because it had the best Bugle Corps in the Lower Post. He did not have any trouble. As soon as they heard him play they got him transferred quick. They had really, truly, wanted a good bugler there.
CHAPTER 3
AT EIGHT O'CLOCK that same morning, when Prewitt was still packing, First Sergeant Milton Anthony Warden came out from the Orderly Room of G Company. The Orderly Room opened onto a well-waxed corridor that ran from the porch inside the quad to the Dayroom that was on the outside street. Warden stopped in the corridor doorway and leaned against the jamb, smoking, his hands jammed deep in his pockets, watching the Company lining up for drill with rifles and web belts in the dustless early morning. He stood a moment in the sun rays slanting in on him from the east, and feeling the coolness that was already seeping away from what would be a hot day again. The spring rainy season would be breaking soon now, but until it did it would be hot and parched in February, just as it was hot and parched in December, and then when the rainy season broke it would be very damp, and chill in the night, and the saddlesoap would be out and fighting desperately against the mould on all the leather. He had just finished the Sickbook and the Morning Report, and sent them out and now he was smoking a cigaret in laziness, watching the Company go out because he was glad he did not go out, before he went into the Supply Room to work hard again, this time at work that was not his. He threw the cigaret in the flat iron pot painted red and black, the Regimental colors, and watched the tail end of the Company move out the truck entrance and out of sight, then stepped down onto the slick concrete of the porch and walked along it to the Supply Room's open door. Milton Anthony Warden was thirty-four years old. In the eight months he had been topkicker of G Company he had wrapped that outfit around his waist like a money belt and buttoned his shirt over it. At intervals he liked to remind himself of this proud fact. He was a veritable demon for work; he liked to remind himself of that, too. He had also pulled this slovenly organization out of the pitfalls of lax administration. In fact, when he thought about it, and he often did, he had never met a man who was as amazingly adept at anything he put his hand to as was Milton Anthony Warden. "The monk in his cell," he taunted, entering the open one of the double doors. After the brilliant sunlight he had to pause and let his eyes adjust to the windowless Supply Room where two electric bulbs like burning tears dangling from the ends of chains increased the gloom. Ceiling-high cupboards, shelves and stacks of crates closed in heavily on the homemade desk where First-Fourth Leva, wry and bloodless as if the perpetual gloom of his castle had been transfused into his. veins, sat, his thin nose greasy in a pool of light from the desk lamp, laboriously typing with two fingers. "With a suit of sackcloth and a tub of ashes," said Warden, whom a fond mother had named for St. Anthony, "you could get yourself canonized tomorrow, Niccolo." "Go to hell," said Leva, not looking up or stopping. "Has that new transfer showed up yet?" "Saint Niccolo of Wahiawa," Warden plagued him. "Dont you ever get tired of this life? I bet you got leather mould all over your balls." "Has he showed? or not?" Leva said. "I got his papers ready." "Not yet," Warden leaned his elbows on the counter, "and for my dough I hope he never does." "Why not?" Leva asked, innocently. "I hear he's a damn good soldier." "He's a hardhead," Warden said, amiably. "I know him. A goddam hardhead. Have you been over to Wahiawa to Big Sue's lately? Her girls will fix that mould up for you. They got good saddlesoap, homemade." "How can I?" Leva said. "On what you people pay me? I hear that this Prewitt is quite a fighter," he teased,
CHAPTER 3
AT EIGHT O'CLOCK that same morning, when Prewitt was still packing, First Sergeant Milton Anthony Warden came out from the Orderly Room of G Company. The Orderly Room opened onto a well-waxed corridor that ran from the porch inside the quad to the Dayroom that was on the outside street. Warden stopped in the corridor doorway and leaned against the jamb, smoking, his hands jammed deep in his pockets, watching the Company lining up for drill with rifles and web belts in the dustless early morning. He stood a moment in the sun rays slanting in on him from the east, and feeling the coolness that was already seeping away from what would be a hot day again. The spring rainy season would be breaking soon now, but until it did it would be hot and parched in February, just as it was hot and parched in December, and then when the rainy season broke it would be very damp, and chill in the night, and the saddlesoap would be out and fighting desperately against the mould on all the leather. He had just finished the Sickbook and the Morning Report, and sent them out and now he was smoking a cigaret in laziness, watching the Company go out because he was glad he did not go out, before he went into the Supply Room to work hard again, this time at work that was not his. He threw the cigaret in the flat iron pot painted red and black, the Regimental colors, and watched the tail end of the Company move out the truck entrance and out of sight, then stepped down onto the slick concrete of the porch and walked along it to the Supply Room's open door. Milton Anthony Warden was thirty-four years old. In the eight months he had been topkicker of G Company he had wrapped that outfit around his waist like a money belt and buttoned his shirt over it. At intervals he liked to remind himself of this proud fact. He was a veritable demon for work; he liked to remind himself of that, too. He had also pulled this slovenly organization out of the pitfalls of lax administration. In fact, when he thought about it, and he often did, he had never met a man who was as amazingly adept at anything he put his hand to as was Milton Anthony Warden. "The monk in his cell," he taunted, entering the open one of the double doors. After the brilliant sunlight he had to pause and let his eyes adjust to the windowless Supply Room where two electric bulbs like burning tears dangling from the ends of chains increased the gloom. Ceiling-high cupboards, shelves and stacks of crates closed in heavily on the homemade desk where First-Fourth Leva, wry and bloodless as if the perpetual gloom of his castle had been transfused into his. veins, sat, his thin nose greasy in a pool of light from the desk lamp, laboriously typing with two fingers. "With a suit of sackcloth and a tub of ashes," said Warden, whom a fond mother had named for St. Anthony, "you could get yourself canonized tomorrow, Niccolo." "Go to hell," said Leva, not looking up or stopping. "Has that new transfer showed up yet?" "Saint Niccolo of Wahiawa," Warden plagued him. "Dont you ever get tired of this life? I bet you got leather mould all over your balls." "Has he showed? or not?" Leva said. "I got his papers ready." "Not yet," Warden leaned his elbows on the counter, "and for my dough I hope he never does." "Why not?" Leva asked, innocently. "I hear he's a damn good soldier." "He's a hardhead," Warden said, amiably. "I know him. A goddam hardhead. Have you been over to Wahiawa to Big Sue's lately? Her girls will fix that mould up for you. They got good saddlesoap, homemade." "How can I?" Leva said. "On what you people pay me? I hear that this Prewitt is quite a fighter," he teased,