The Thin Red Line by James Jones

great, vibrating belch of the klaxon horn which resounded through the clanging, overheated hold, deafening everybody. The immense sound caused everyone to jump, even Welsh.
    It was the signal for the inhabiters of this particular hold to prepare to disembark, and with its sounding everything that was taking place ceased to be important, or even to exist. The dice and poker games stopped in mid-play, everybody grabbing back his share of the pot, and a little extra if he could. Conversations died soundlessly in mid-word, their very subjects no longer remembered; and Welsh and Fife simply stared at each other without recalling that Welsh had just been insulting Fife to make him angry. After so much waiting of such high intensity, it was as if life itself had crossed a line with the sounding of the klaxon, and that whatever had happened or existed before had not and would never have, any connection with whatever would come after. Everybody had turned hastily to their equipment, and cries of “All right! Off and on!” and “Drop your cocks and grab your socks!” rose up from the throats of noncoms to bounce off the steel ceiling; and in the one moment of total, complete silence which had somehow got mixed in with this jumbled stew of noise and then emerged out of the middle of it, nobody would ever know how, could be heard one nameless man’s single voice, high and shrilling, and intensely elucidating some declaration of faith to a neighbor with the words: “I guaran-fucking-tee you!” Then the noise closed back over as everybody went on struggling into their equipment.
    Bulging in all directions under full field equipment, they found the narrow steel stairs difficult to navigate; and after three nervous flights of them each man was winded. And as they emerged into the now hot, midmorning sunshine and fresh sea air on deck, Captain Bugger Stein their commander, standing by the hatch in musette bag, map case, glasses, carbine, pistol and canteens, stared into each of their helmet-shadowed, intense faces and chokingly felt tears rising up in him, tears which of course as an officer and commander he must hold back and never show above a stiff upper lip. His sense of responsibility was monumental, a near holy thing. He treasured it. Not only that, he was very pleased with himself that he felt it. If the old man could only see him now!
    And beside him stood his first sergeant, no longer looking like Welsh an individual, now that he was in full gear and had his helmet on. He too watched the faces, but in a different way: in a sly, cunning, calculating way, as if he knew something none of the rest of them knew.
    By squads and by platoon they went over the side and clambered down the four-storey-high side of the ship on the nets and into the endless chain of LCIs still shuttling back and forth from shore. Only one man fell, and he got no more than a slightly wrenched back because he lit on two other men already in the barge, all three crashing to the steel floor in full equipment with loud grunts and curses. But they heard from the barge pilots that the list of injured, for this ship, had already reached fifteen: par for the course, the barge pilots, who had the experience, said with dry, cheerful cynicism. C-for-Charlie heard this news with the awed realization that these injured were first casualties: the division’s first casualties in a combat zone. They had expected at least bombs, or machineguns, to account for that. But to fall into a barge? By standing up, while digesting this, they could see the shore and the sand beach and cocopalms gradually coming closer, and closer, to them. As they got closer to it, they could see where the tops of a number of the coconut trees had been shot away.
    In the barge in which Doll’s squad found itself the assistant pilot, who was Army Transport Corps like all the others, quipped grinning, in best Naval officer style: “Glad to have you aboard, gentlemen!” then added with matter-of-fact