The Suicide Run: Five Tales of the Marine Corps by William Styron Page A
Authors: William Styron
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and as if by unspoken agreement tended to observe a good-natured social apartheid, as white folks and Negroes do in certain genteel towns of the South.
In addition to a philosophical opposition—anti-war in nature—that already existed among us, our civilian days had prevented most of us from having anything in common with the regulars. They were all wrapped up in their training manuals and tables of organization and their dreams of advancement. As for ourselves, it would have required an almost total absence of perception on the part of the career officers not to be aware of our half-buried rage and bitterness. So after five in the afternoon we drifted apart—they to their wives and their lawn sprinklers and their custom kitchens in the spruce bungalows off base, we to the seething barrios of our B.O.Q.s, where we could scheme and bitch to our hearts’ content.
For some reason—perhaps because of his longer, tougher experience in the Pacific, which gave him a little more sense of solidarity with the professionals—Lacy was one of the few reserves who seemed to be able to move at ease in either camp. Since I’d first met him, he had talked to me at length about the officer class newly emergent after World War II, which he saw as a sinister development in the national life. He confided to me that he was both fascinated and amused by these men—by their style and by their strangely oblique, arcane vocabulary, above all by their hectic ambition (though he was not so amused at this)—and he felt himself a spy among them, gathering notes on the genesis of some as yet dimly conceived apocalypse. At any rate, when he asked me to go along with him to the party for the newborn major I readily agreed, infected by his own spirit of research.
“The book reads wonderfully well so far,” Lacy said to me as we drove out to the officers’ club in his car, a low black Citroën he had brought back from France. It was that famous standard model from back in the 1930s, now defunct,with the long, arrogant hood and flaring fenders—the first one that I or, for that matter, practically anyone else in postwar America had ever seen—and its slinky Gallic panache here on the base among so many Fords and Oldsmobiles had caused more than one glance of suspicion. “I’m really impressed by the book, you know,” he went on. “When do I get to look at another installment?”
I had been receiving, piecemeal, galley proofs of my novel, which Lacy had asked to read. Save for Laurel, one or two friends in New York, and a few people at the publishing house, Lacy was the first to set eyes on my inaugural work. I had sensed in him by now an exceptional delicacy and discrimination in literary matters—also a winning honesty. I was eager for his praise, and when it came it warmed and touched me. I mumbled my appreciation.
“Say, incidentally, there’s someone else who wants to see the galleys, if you can manage it. Can I show them to him?” he said.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“My battalion commander, the new one I told you about. The one who replaced Boondock Ben Hudson. He just took over, though I’ve seen a lot of him before.”
“You must be kidding,” I said, looking at him. “A battalion commander? Reading my southern gothic romance? You’ve gone completely out of your mind.”
“No sir,” he replied with a smile. “It’s true, I mean it.” He paused, then added: “Well, you’ll see.”
Although we were late, the cocktail party was still in progress when we arrived at the officers’ club. With its sparkling swimming pool and canopied entrance, its restaurant, its elephantine bar, and its overall feeling of cateredleisure, the club was a place I had come to rather intensely dislike. I preferred by far the sensible, lumpen utility of the B.O.Q. bar (at least you could curse the Marine Corps there) to this vulgar hybrid—part country club, part luxury hotel—which seemed so cheap a simulacrum of a true elegance to
In addition to a philosophical opposition—anti-war in nature—that already existed among us, our civilian days had prevented most of us from having anything in common with the regulars. They were all wrapped up in their training manuals and tables of organization and their dreams of advancement. As for ourselves, it would have required an almost total absence of perception on the part of the career officers not to be aware of our half-buried rage and bitterness. So after five in the afternoon we drifted apart—they to their wives and their lawn sprinklers and their custom kitchens in the spruce bungalows off base, we to the seething barrios of our B.O.Q.s, where we could scheme and bitch to our hearts’ content.
For some reason—perhaps because of his longer, tougher experience in the Pacific, which gave him a little more sense of solidarity with the professionals—Lacy was one of the few reserves who seemed to be able to move at ease in either camp. Since I’d first met him, he had talked to me at length about the officer class newly emergent after World War II, which he saw as a sinister development in the national life. He confided to me that he was both fascinated and amused by these men—by their style and by their strangely oblique, arcane vocabulary, above all by their hectic ambition (though he was not so amused at this)—and he felt himself a spy among them, gathering notes on the genesis of some as yet dimly conceived apocalypse. At any rate, when he asked me to go along with him to the party for the newborn major I readily agreed, infected by his own spirit of research.
“The book reads wonderfully well so far,” Lacy said to me as we drove out to the officers’ club in his car, a low black Citroën he had brought back from France. It was that famous standard model from back in the 1930s, now defunct,with the long, arrogant hood and flaring fenders—the first one that I or, for that matter, practically anyone else in postwar America had ever seen—and its slinky Gallic panache here on the base among so many Fords and Oldsmobiles had caused more than one glance of suspicion. “I’m really impressed by the book, you know,” he went on. “When do I get to look at another installment?”
I had been receiving, piecemeal, galley proofs of my novel, which Lacy had asked to read. Save for Laurel, one or two friends in New York, and a few people at the publishing house, Lacy was the first to set eyes on my inaugural work. I had sensed in him by now an exceptional delicacy and discrimination in literary matters—also a winning honesty. I was eager for his praise, and when it came it warmed and touched me. I mumbled my appreciation.
“Say, incidentally, there’s someone else who wants to see the galleys, if you can manage it. Can I show them to him?” he said.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“My battalion commander, the new one I told you about. The one who replaced Boondock Ben Hudson. He just took over, though I’ve seen a lot of him before.”
“You must be kidding,” I said, looking at him. “A battalion commander? Reading my southern gothic romance? You’ve gone completely out of your mind.”
“No sir,” he replied with a smile. “It’s true, I mean it.” He paused, then added: “Well, you’ll see.”
Although we were late, the cocktail party was still in progress when we arrived at the officers’ club. With its sparkling swimming pool and canopied entrance, its restaurant, its elephantine bar, and its overall feeling of cateredleisure, the club was a place I had come to rather intensely dislike. I preferred by far the sensible, lumpen utility of the B.O.Q. bar (at least you could curse the Marine Corps there) to this vulgar hybrid—part country club, part luxury hotel—which seemed so cheap a simulacrum of a true elegance to
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