@@@@@I'm going to ask her first, 'Been having any
@@@@@I'm going to ask her first, 'Been having any dates?' and if she says, 'Yes,' I'll get the rest out of her in two minutesAnd if she says, 'No, honey, honest I haven't, you know me,' I'm just going to do a little checking with my friends and if I find she's been lying, well, then I'll have her, and, man, maybe I won't give her some lumps before I kick her out Brown shook his head in emphasisHe was about medium size, a trifle fat, with a young boyish face, a snub nose, freckles, and reddish-brown hairBut wrinkles had formed about his eyes and there were several jungle ulcers on his chinAt a second glance, it was apparent that he was easily twenty-eight years old
"It certainly would be a dirty deal for a guy to get when he does go back," Stanley offered
Sergeant Brown nodded soberly, and then his face turned bitter"What do you expect? Do you think you're going to go home a hero? Listen, when you get home folks are going to look at you and say, 'Arthur Stanley, you been gone a long time,' and you'll say, 'Yeah,' and then they'll say, 'Well, things've been pretty rough here, but I guess they're going to improve someYou're sure lucky you missed it all' "
Stanley laughed"I haven't seen much," he said modestly, "but I do know that those poor civilians don't begin to know the score
"Man, but they don't," Brown said"Listen, you've seen enough combat at Motome to have an ideaWhy, when I think of my wife fooling around probably right this minute, while I'm lying here sweating out tomorrow, I begin to get mad He cracked his knuckles nervously, fingered the steel pipe between their hammocks"It ain't as if tomorrow is gonna be so bad although they'll have recon working its ass off, but a little work ain't gonna kill us"Hell, if General Cummings was to come up to me tomorrow and say, 'Brown, I'm putting you on unloading detail for the duration,' you think I'd bitch? In the pig's hole I wouldI've seen enough combat to last ten men, and I'll tell you this invasion tomorrow if we was to be shelled from the ship to the beach and back couldn't begin to equal MotomeThat was one day I knew I was gonna be deadI still don't see how I got through it
"What happened?" Stanley askedHe flexed his knees carefully to avoid kicking the man in the bunk above him, only a foot above his headThis story he had heard a dozen times when he was first assigned to recon, but he knew Brown liked to tell it
"Well, from the beginning when they assigned the platoon to Baker Company for that rubber boat deal, it was a cinch we were screwed, but what could you do?" He went on, telling a story of how they had set out in rubber boats from a destroyer several hours before the dawn, had been caught in an ebb tide and seen by the Japane