The Suicide Run: Five Tales of the Marine Corps by William Styron Page A
Authors: William Styron
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and strange coasts, storm-swept distances accompanied always and always in my mind’s innermost recess with the muffled tramp of booted footfalls, as of legions of men being hurried to unknown destinies. Then the sound of the bugle died away and I heard Paul’s voice again through the growing clatter of the bar, where the officers’ wives’ unbridledlaughter and “My Truly, Truly Fair,” booming from the Muzak, battled each other over the incessant churning of the cocktail shakers.
“And so his boy became a marine, did he?” he said to me. “He was so proud of that kid. The last time I saw the Gunner—it must have been ten years ago, in San Diego, just after Pearl Harbor—he said he only wished his boy had been born early enough to fight in the war. But he also said no matter, his kid would be a marine someday. And so he is. How he adored that boy! He’ll get his chance in Korea. Nice fellow?”
“Charming,” I said, misty-eyed.
“That Gunner!” Paul exclaimed. “Christ, you know he wouldn’t salute any officer less than flag grade, and there were even some colonels he wouldn’t give the time of day to. Wore his dungarees everywhere, even at parade. What a character!” He went on with a smile, shaking his head, deeply moved, reminiscent: “You know, in 1942 they had surveyed him out for medical reasons at Pendleton—he must have been over fifty then—yet they couldn’t make him quit. Here he was, technically separated from the service, and he had the gumption, the grit—the brass to hitch a ride, I mean literally stow away on a transport going to Pearl Harbor, where he stormed into the commanding general’s office—in his dungarees, mind you—and demanded that he be assigned to duty somewhere in the First Division. He meant Guadalcanal, too, and no rotten office job. Of course, he couldn’t make it, but what grit , what splendid brass! No sir, they don’t make marines like the Gunner anymore. Did you ever hear how he won that Medal of Honor—”
The Old Corps. Suddenly I understood that despitePaul’s vivid anecdotal style I really didn’t give a damn how the old fart had gotten his Medal of Honor—and this was truly still a measure of my disaffection with the Corps and all it stood for. Paul, however, had warmed to his subject with all the vivacity and zeal of one of those pukka sahib types, usually played by David Niven, memorializing vanished exploits on the Afghan border; and just as my disappointment in Paul became sharpest and most vexing I realized how foolish it was for me to feel that way: he was a marine above all, first and foremost, always a marine, and for me it had been the dreamiest wishful thinking, goofy as a schoolgirl’s, to see him as truly “literary” or “artistic” when these were merely components of an enlightened and superior dilettantism. It was extraordinary enough that those delicate aspects of his personality had not been obliterated by the all-demanding, all-molding pressures of the military system, had not been trampled by the ruthless boot of an organization insisting of its members that their sensibilities remain male and muscular, their culture sterile, ingrown, and philistine if not mindless. He had read Camus. This alone, it seemed to me, was almost a miracle.
The bugle call still lingered in my mind, suffusing me with a mood both restless and somber, and as I sat there in the twilight listening to Paul’s stories about the Gunner, listening to his warm and feeling panegyric to this old departed mercenary warrior, to these tales of the Old Corps with their memories and echoes of sea duty and shore leave, of jungle bivouacs, of Haitian outposts, Nicaraguan patrols, Chinese skirmishes, and other relics of America’s magisterial thrusts and forays throughout the hemisphere and the world, I realized that Paul was certainly at least as comfortable, if notmore so, when talking of these matters as about French cuisine or the gentle art of fiction. He
“And so his boy became a marine, did he?” he said to me. “He was so proud of that kid. The last time I saw the Gunner—it must have been ten years ago, in San Diego, just after Pearl Harbor—he said he only wished his boy had been born early enough to fight in the war. But he also said no matter, his kid would be a marine someday. And so he is. How he adored that boy! He’ll get his chance in Korea. Nice fellow?”
“Charming,” I said, misty-eyed.
“That Gunner!” Paul exclaimed. “Christ, you know he wouldn’t salute any officer less than flag grade, and there were even some colonels he wouldn’t give the time of day to. Wore his dungarees everywhere, even at parade. What a character!” He went on with a smile, shaking his head, deeply moved, reminiscent: “You know, in 1942 they had surveyed him out for medical reasons at Pendleton—he must have been over fifty then—yet they couldn’t make him quit. Here he was, technically separated from the service, and he had the gumption, the grit—the brass to hitch a ride, I mean literally stow away on a transport going to Pearl Harbor, where he stormed into the commanding general’s office—in his dungarees, mind you—and demanded that he be assigned to duty somewhere in the First Division. He meant Guadalcanal, too, and no rotten office job. Of course, he couldn’t make it, but what grit , what splendid brass! No sir, they don’t make marines like the Gunner anymore. Did you ever hear how he won that Medal of Honor—”
The Old Corps. Suddenly I understood that despitePaul’s vivid anecdotal style I really didn’t give a damn how the old fart had gotten his Medal of Honor—and this was truly still a measure of my disaffection with the Corps and all it stood for. Paul, however, had warmed to his subject with all the vivacity and zeal of one of those pukka sahib types, usually played by David Niven, memorializing vanished exploits on the Afghan border; and just as my disappointment in Paul became sharpest and most vexing I realized how foolish it was for me to feel that way: he was a marine above all, first and foremost, always a marine, and for me it had been the dreamiest wishful thinking, goofy as a schoolgirl’s, to see him as truly “literary” or “artistic” when these were merely components of an enlightened and superior dilettantism. It was extraordinary enough that those delicate aspects of his personality had not been obliterated by the all-demanding, all-molding pressures of the military system, had not been trampled by the ruthless boot of an organization insisting of its members that their sensibilities remain male and muscular, their culture sterile, ingrown, and philistine if not mindless. He had read Camus. This alone, it seemed to me, was almost a miracle.
The bugle call still lingered in my mind, suffusing me with a mood both restless and somber, and as I sat there in the twilight listening to Paul’s stories about the Gunner, listening to his warm and feeling panegyric to this old departed mercenary warrior, to these tales of the Old Corps with their memories and echoes of sea duty and shore leave, of jungle bivouacs, of Haitian outposts, Nicaraguan patrols, Chinese skirmishes, and other relics of America’s magisterial thrusts and forays throughout the hemisphere and the world, I realized that Paul was certainly at least as comfortable, if notmore so, when talking of these matters as about French cuisine or the gentle art of fiction. He
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