Better Times Than These by Winston Groom

them, saying nothing, for there was nothing for him to say, when the first tremendous sea lifted the transport on her end and smashed her into a hollow of roiling water as if she were a toy. All of them simply stared at each other in disbelief as the whole ship rose up, quivered for a moment, and then whapped down into the chasm as though she had sailed over a waterfall. For an instant, the electrical system wavered, flickering the bunk-room lights. Then the second sea caught them head on with all the unbridled fury of the first, as though the water outside were some savage living thing trying to get at them through the steel hull.
    No one said anything during those brief seconds. Everyone, Kahn included, felt panic in his chest, a panic at their utter helplessness before a thing so fierce that for the moment it made every past horror of their lives seem trivial. This was not something that could be dealt with; it was a cataclysmic tumult, as old as time itself, moving against them without reason or mercy.
    Gear flew about in the room, and then there was great confusion and swearing. A man who had been trying to vomit behind his bunk threw up on other men. Another, grimacing in pain, had been hit in the shins by a rifle rack that had broken loose.
    “Trunk—Trunk, goddamn it,” Kahn cried, “get these men to hell topside to the lounges. Now.” Kahn heard himself talking, but was surprised, even in this, that he had said what he had said.
    The other company officers in the room saw men moving, but they weren’t sure what was happening. A lieutenant from Alpha Company cried out across the room, “Do we move them?” and Donovan, showing great ingenuity and foresight, bellowed back, “I think there was something over the loudspeaker. Didn’t you hear something like that?”
    “I think I heard it too,” Sharkey yelled loudly.
    Now there was no stopping them. Everyone began clambering into the corridors and up the metal staircases into the troop lounges and dining room, where the big windows gave at least a breath of air. But when they saw what was happening outside the ship, it was enough to make some of them wish they had stayed in their hellhole.
    The seas were as high as buildings and utterly chaotic. The air was filled with white spume, and the rain was driving against the porthole glass at a crazy sidewise angle. The transport had changed course slightly, so as to take the seas just abeam of her port side, but the wind seemed determined to shove her bow further down. Each time the ship crashed into a hollow, they could hear her big propellers churning out of the water with an unsteady, unsettling throb.
    “Hey, Kahn, you want me to get my men together in here?—they’re just sort of all over the boat deck now.” It was Brill, and Kahn, who was holding on to a pipe-line support in the dining room watching the storm through a porthole, had to think for a second because the question Brill asked was a reasonable one.
    “Damn, I don’t know . . . yeah, I guess we should, Brill. Why don’t you get them together in here. If you see Inge and Sharkey and Donovan, tell them to get everybody in here over in a corner or something; just keep them together till we find out what’s going to happen next.”
    Kahn really didn’t know what to do. He was more worried about his own ass for letting the men out of the troop room. He was hoping Patch might not find out he had started it, because of the confusion of the storm. But if he did, Kahn figured he might just as well have been the one who threw over the life ring, because Patch was going to deal with him worse, if he found out he had let the men go up.
    In a corner of the room Major Greaves, the Brigade Chaplain, was praying with a half-dozen men. Kahn could not hear what was being said, but the sober expression on the minister’s swarthy face made him feel uncomfortable, because it looked to Kahn as though the chaplain were calling in all his chits with the Big Fellow