carefully. And I’m gonna have to take your pistol and turn it in to Sergeant Pender to be turned in to the supply room.
“I hate to have to do it, Mast,” he said, “and I know you’ll think it’s chicken. But my conscience just won’t let me do anything else. It’s my responsibility as a noncom. Maybe this way someday it’ll get back to its rightful owner,” he said piously.
Mast stared at him in silence with narrowed eyes, his mind casting frantically about this way and that to try and find some escape. There wasn’t any. Whatever else, Winstock was a corporal with authority. All he had to do if Mast refused was go to Sergeant Pender anyway. Whatever old Sergeant Pender thought, he would always back up a corporal against a private. Slowly he took off his rifle cartridge belt and unhooked the pistol from it and passed it over.
“I’ll take the extra clips, too,” Winstock said.
Mast passed them over.
“I’m sure sorry. Mast,” Winstock said, squinting his face up apologetically.
“’Sall right,” Mast said.
He stood and stared after the wiry little corporal as he made his way down toward the number one CP hole with the stuff. The man, all unwitting, because of some impractical, obscure, personal moral point, was carrying off Mast’s hope, more than his hope: his faith; and Mast could have, and would have, easily killed him, had there been any way at all of getting by with it.
Mast had passed one day of horrible anxiety, and was to pass a number more of almost suicidal depression. When you take away a man’s chance of being saved, Mast asked himself over and over as the little movie of the Jap major splitting him in twain like a melon returned to plague him day after day, when you do that to a man, what is there left?
But the one day of horrible anxiety, and the number more of near suicidal depression, were as nothing to what Mast felt just one week later when, going out on another detail after Winstock’s wire-repair detail had been disbanded, Mast saw Corporal Winstock wearing on his own rifle belt Mast’s pistol.
Six
W HAT HAD CAUSED WINSTOCK to do it, to come parading out in the open with the pistol so soon after he had won it, was something that would probably never be known. Certainly at the time Mast was in no state to speculate on it.
In any case Winstock, after forcing himself (with who knew what monumental efforts of will power) to wait a whole week, apparently could stand it no longer and finally had had to begin wearing it. And who knew what anguished arguments with himself he may have gone through in making his decision?
Mast of course was thinking, and indeed was concerned with, none of these things. Such spasms of outrage, fury and hate flamed and exploded and smouldered all through him that his psyche, had it been visible, might have resembled an artillery barrage seen at night, and Mast himself swore he could smell the odor of ozone in his nostrils. He had not been put today on the same detail with Winstock, who had been given charge of a smaller detail to police the edge of the highway outside the wire, so all Mast really got was a glimpse as his own detail was marched out through the gate of wire which the sentry closed after them. But the glimpse was enough. There wasn’t, of course, anything he could do about it then. Mast was not all sure there was anything he could do about it ever.
The new detail Mast had been assigned to was not a permanent, or even a semi-permanent one, but was a one shot, a one day’s job.
Back in October and November, when Mast’s company had been building the pillboxes they now manned, across the highway from them a little farther down an engineer company had been blasting and digging a cave in the cliff. This cliff, of black volcanic rock, ran straight up ninety or a hundred feet, and was the shoulder of the mountain range behind it. At one time the mountain shoulder must have descended at this point to the sea, but now a shelf had been
“I hate to have to do it, Mast,” he said, “and I know you’ll think it’s chicken. But my conscience just won’t let me do anything else. It’s my responsibility as a noncom. Maybe this way someday it’ll get back to its rightful owner,” he said piously.
Mast stared at him in silence with narrowed eyes, his mind casting frantically about this way and that to try and find some escape. There wasn’t any. Whatever else, Winstock was a corporal with authority. All he had to do if Mast refused was go to Sergeant Pender anyway. Whatever old Sergeant Pender thought, he would always back up a corporal against a private. Slowly he took off his rifle cartridge belt and unhooked the pistol from it and passed it over.
“I’ll take the extra clips, too,” Winstock said.
Mast passed them over.
“I’m sure sorry. Mast,” Winstock said, squinting his face up apologetically.
“’Sall right,” Mast said.
He stood and stared after the wiry little corporal as he made his way down toward the number one CP hole with the stuff. The man, all unwitting, because of some impractical, obscure, personal moral point, was carrying off Mast’s hope, more than his hope: his faith; and Mast could have, and would have, easily killed him, had there been any way at all of getting by with it.
Mast had passed one day of horrible anxiety, and was to pass a number more of almost suicidal depression. When you take away a man’s chance of being saved, Mast asked himself over and over as the little movie of the Jap major splitting him in twain like a melon returned to plague him day after day, when you do that to a man, what is there left?
But the one day of horrible anxiety, and the number more of near suicidal depression, were as nothing to what Mast felt just one week later when, going out on another detail after Winstock’s wire-repair detail had been disbanded, Mast saw Corporal Winstock wearing on his own rifle belt Mast’s pistol.
Six
W HAT HAD CAUSED WINSTOCK to do it, to come parading out in the open with the pistol so soon after he had won it, was something that would probably never be known. Certainly at the time Mast was in no state to speculate on it.
In any case Winstock, after forcing himself (with who knew what monumental efforts of will power) to wait a whole week, apparently could stand it no longer and finally had had to begin wearing it. And who knew what anguished arguments with himself he may have gone through in making his decision?
Mast of course was thinking, and indeed was concerned with, none of these things. Such spasms of outrage, fury and hate flamed and exploded and smouldered all through him that his psyche, had it been visible, might have resembled an artillery barrage seen at night, and Mast himself swore he could smell the odor of ozone in his nostrils. He had not been put today on the same detail with Winstock, who had been given charge of a smaller detail to police the edge of the highway outside the wire, so all Mast really got was a glimpse as his own detail was marched out through the gate of wire which the sentry closed after them. But the glimpse was enough. There wasn’t, of course, anything he could do about it then. Mast was not all sure there was anything he could do about it ever.
The new detail Mast had been assigned to was not a permanent, or even a semi-permanent one, but was a one shot, a one day’s job.
Back in October and November, when Mast’s company had been building the pillboxes they now manned, across the highway from them a little farther down an engineer company had been blasting and digging a cave in the cliff. This cliff, of black volcanic rock, ran straight up ninety or a hundred feet, and was the shoulder of the mountain range behind it. At one time the mountain shoulder must have descended at this point to the sea, but now a shelf had been
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