each other in loud voices. Berth after berth in the staterooms and bed after bed in the main lounge were emptied, and the occupants carted away. Some of them were coming from as far away as the edge of the Indian Ocean, from Australia, from New Zealand. From New Guinea, the Solomons, the Coral Sea.
On shore under the dockside floodlights there was a great bustle, as ambulance after ambulance drove up, was loaded, and pulled off into the darkness. In the big harbor packed with wartime shipping, lights shone everywhere, on ships, in shore installations, from cars and buses and trucks.
And above the harbor the lights of the city blazed as if for a festive occasion, or as if welcoming the wounded home. To the men on board, used to blackouts and brownouts, the sight was breathtaking. Some began to weep again.
When the unloading was over, and the lights on board began to dim down again, a third of the berths and beds were empty. The rest, the Army personnel, would have to wait for San Francisco. Frisco was another two days run up the coast. Those last two days, in the partially empty ship, were going to seem the longest, and the worst. And everybody knew it.
John Strange certainly knew it. When things settled down, Strange made his way back to Bobby Prell’s bed in the diminished-seeming main lounge. Strange leaned over Prell’s bed foot again and tried hard one more time to think of something funny to say. He had hoped once again, because of the greatness of the occasion, to get Winch to come with him to visit Prell. If he had, it would be the first time. The first in fact since Winch had suddenly appeared at the Naval base hospital in the New Hebrides, on his way out apparently, but not looking wounded and not even looking particularly sick. Even back there, Winch had flatly refused to visit Prell or have anything to do with him.
Because of Prell, Strange had spent a lot of time in the ship’s main lounge. They hadn’t called him Mother Strange for nothing, back in the old company. But he had never gotten used to the lounge, or gotten so he did not feel uncomfortable in it.
Long afterward, Strange noted, they all of them still spoke about how during the voyage the main lounge was never far from anyone’s thoughts. No matter where they went, or what Stateside hospital the post cards and letters came back from. They all of them said or wrote the same thing about the lounge. All of us, Strange thought. It was as if all of them, hunting, casting around, were trying to find the common factors that would hold the whole experience together for them. And the voyage was the final act of the play, the dividing line. Like the International Date Line, when they crossed it.
Among themselves, they had calculated that 13 percent were damaged bad enough to have to travel in the lounge. The statistics of being wounded fascinated Strange as much as they did the rest of them. And on board, it was their biggest game. Next to card playing. Blackjack. And poker.
Of the 13 percent of them in the lounge, one-fifth, or 2.6 percent of the total, had to go into the extra-care unit. The 2.6 percent were almost all lung wounds. Only about a sixth of them were abdominals or head wounds. Because the head wounds almost always died before they got on board, and the abdominals either died or recovered sufficiently to travel out in the open lounge with the others. Among the infantry, us infantry, Strange thought with a chief cook’s smile, it was an interesting note that 75 percent of the lung wounds were caused by rifle or machinegun bullets, but only 50 percent of the abdominals were bullet wounds. They did not know why, and they did not know whether these figures also applied to other types of outfits.
Strange found it a well-run, put-together place, the main lounge. Once your nose got over its outrage at the smell. And once the dark part of your mind got over its supernatural, witches-and-broomstick feeling about it. The feeling that right here,
On shore under the dockside floodlights there was a great bustle, as ambulance after ambulance drove up, was loaded, and pulled off into the darkness. In the big harbor packed with wartime shipping, lights shone everywhere, on ships, in shore installations, from cars and buses and trucks.
And above the harbor the lights of the city blazed as if for a festive occasion, or as if welcoming the wounded home. To the men on board, used to blackouts and brownouts, the sight was breathtaking. Some began to weep again.
When the unloading was over, and the lights on board began to dim down again, a third of the berths and beds were empty. The rest, the Army personnel, would have to wait for San Francisco. Frisco was another two days run up the coast. Those last two days, in the partially empty ship, were going to seem the longest, and the worst. And everybody knew it.
John Strange certainly knew it. When things settled down, Strange made his way back to Bobby Prell’s bed in the diminished-seeming main lounge. Strange leaned over Prell’s bed foot again and tried hard one more time to think of something funny to say. He had hoped once again, because of the greatness of the occasion, to get Winch to come with him to visit Prell. If he had, it would be the first time. The first in fact since Winch had suddenly appeared at the Naval base hospital in the New Hebrides, on his way out apparently, but not looking wounded and not even looking particularly sick. Even back there, Winch had flatly refused to visit Prell or have anything to do with him.
Because of Prell, Strange had spent a lot of time in the ship’s main lounge. They hadn’t called him Mother Strange for nothing, back in the old company. But he had never gotten used to the lounge, or gotten so he did not feel uncomfortable in it.
Long afterward, Strange noted, they all of them still spoke about how during the voyage the main lounge was never far from anyone’s thoughts. No matter where they went, or what Stateside hospital the post cards and letters came back from. They all of them said or wrote the same thing about the lounge. All of us, Strange thought. It was as if all of them, hunting, casting around, were trying to find the common factors that would hold the whole experience together for them. And the voyage was the final act of the play, the dividing line. Like the International Date Line, when they crossed it.
Among themselves, they had calculated that 13 percent were damaged bad enough to have to travel in the lounge. The statistics of being wounded fascinated Strange as much as they did the rest of them. And on board, it was their biggest game. Next to card playing. Blackjack. And poker.
Of the 13 percent of them in the lounge, one-fifth, or 2.6 percent of the total, had to go into the extra-care unit. The 2.6 percent were almost all lung wounds. Only about a sixth of them were abdominals or head wounds. Because the head wounds almost always died before they got on board, and the abdominals either died or recovered sufficiently to travel out in the open lounge with the others. Among the infantry, us infantry, Strange thought with a chief cook’s smile, it was an interesting note that 75 percent of the lung wounds were caused by rifle or machinegun bullets, but only 50 percent of the abdominals were bullet wounds. They did not know why, and they did not know whether these figures also applied to other types of outfits.
Strange found it a well-run, put-together place, the main lounge. Once your nose got over its outrage at the smell. And once the dark part of your mind got over its supernatural, witches-and-broomstick feeling about it. The feeling that right here,
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