The Suicide Run: Five Tales of the Marine Corps by William Styron Page B

was a professional, and the ties to the small elite fellowship to which he belonged—ties of nostalgia as well as loyalty and faith—were as strong (and no more to be wondered at) in the end as those ties which bind other men to a vocation in science or the arts or a political belief or—to be more nearly precise—a church.

THE SUICIDE RUN

    I MUST MAKE A SMALL CONFESSION. Despite my aversion to military things, there are aspects of the life that I have found tolerable—fascinating even, though inferior to chess or Scarlatti. Take mortars, for example. Although I was born with, I’m sure, less than average manual dexterity, the use of mortars in the field—and my ability to supervise the men who handled them—never failed to please me in its neat meshing of teamwork, speed, subtlety of reflex, and mechanical skill. Rather like an athletic ballet with men in almost synchronous motion, the whole process of setting up the long tubes on their bipods and baseplates, locating the aiming stakes, precisely leveling and balancing the weapons with their various little cranks and wheels—all of these comprised a nimble, exciting prelude to the penultimate racket as the rounds popped forth on their lethal journey through the empyrean and to the final, gratifying, earth-jolting crump-crump when—a mile away—the shells blew somepoor nigger shack to sawdust. To be sure, it was never so neat and pretty in combat. Nevertheless, I think it all satisfied a thwarted boyish longing in me, a desire for the loudest and fattest firecracker in the world, though in addition there was something unnervingly priapean about those stiff up-tilted tubes poking the air, and my pleasure may have been rooted in a darker source; whatever, the sense of rhythm, precision, and completion I achieved from working with mortars helps provide another reason why military service and infantry combat in particular is such a magic lure for certain men.
    Of course it was not unheard of, during training, for a mortar to burst apart with dreadful effect, killing or maiming everyone nearby, and once that summer—in another regiment—several faulty rounds fell disastrously short of the target and blotted out the lives of eight young recruits; such eventualities occasionally caused me to sweat and made my mouth grow dry with fear. But in general I managed to avoid thoughts like these and took pleasure in the work. In fact, rather paradoxically, it was the severely military aspects of my recall to service which I liked the most, or minded the least. My flesh had fallen into soft disrepair in the stews of Greenwich Village; the new routine was strenuous, with many days and nights on training problems, amphibious landings, and sadistic hikes, and after the first shock wore off it was an actual delight to develop a trooper’s appetite and to feel the muscle tone return to my flabby, once-sodden limbs.
    I acquired a glorious suntan: a couple of snapshots taken of me at the time record the very figure of a strapping, bronzed, miserable young marine. But I had forgotten howappealing, how spirit-enhancing sheer physical exertion could be, and as I galloped through the swamps and woods with my merry crew of mortarmen I was curiously relieved of my bitter discontent—as if in a perverse way the closer my proximity was to the grime and sweat of the battle, and the more intent became my preoccupation with the niceties of infantry tactics, the less I was harried by that pitiless anxiety. No, what brought me closest to true despair was not the war games or even the frequent lectures on subjects like field sanitation, cargo loading, and the Communist menace (I could usually sleep through these), but the periods of leisure—in the evenings or on weekends—when the free time I had allowed me to reflect on the awfulness of my future. To gripe bitterly in the company of my fellow sufferers provided some solace, but its cathartic effect was ultimately limited. Therefore, during my