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“The germs,“ he says, drawing out the vowel like the fall of a mortar and letting the ending be swallowed up by the impact. “Doc Caswell says all these dead nips have germs.” Dirt covers his face, he licks his cracked and dry lips, but there is no liquid left – dried out like all those corpses they stumbled over on their way up the hill. Empty eyes look down on him.
“Germs,” Eugene pants. He couldn't believe it. Germs.
“Bad germs,” Snaf' says. “Diseases that'll make you sick,” he elaborates. Eugene crouches there, clutching the head of a dead Japanese soldier, his KA-BAR in the other hand, infested blisters on his feet and sprinting behind a blackened stone or a burned out tree stump more often than not because of the runs and Snaf' warns him of germ. “Bad germs.”
He shakes his head, suddenly so angry at Snafu. “Well, is it all right with you if I cut out his insignia then?”, he asks disbelievingly, voice steadily rising in volume, trying to convey his anger. Snafu turns his head away, shrugs. His skin is dark against the pale coral stone. “No danger in tha' Ah know of,” he drawls.
“Yeah?”, Gene asks, out of breath and nodding his head. “That pass muster with you?” He stares at Snafu, anger in his body's every pore. Snafu looks back, swallows. He looks – not frightened. Snafu is never afraid, of nothing – but not as cold, not as empty and uncaring as before. It does nothing to quench the anger that keeps boiling up from Eugene's deepest (Hillbilly, on that stretcher, shot through the lung, quick, but painful), darkest (Ack-Ack, eyes closed, with a standard issued marine blanked being drawn over his head) core. He pushes the dead Jap's head violently to the other side, baring his neck and shoulder, and brings down his KA-BAR to cut of the soldier's shoulder strap.
He looks up again, looks at Snafu and Snafu looks nervous. He picks up another bit of lose coral, turns and twists it between his fingers and Gene still hears the gentle sflob of the stone falling into brain and blood. Eugene stands up, turns away from the dead soldier and sits back down – why is he panting? What got his blood running and boiling and why does he want to scream and shake Snafu until he's satisfied and empty in his head? He looks back at the Japanese soldier, twice, but can't bring himself to really look at him. He's a nip. A rat. One of the reasons they're still on this godforsaken island, stumbling over dead marines and losing their skippers. He stuffs the insignia into his left breast pocket, next to his bible, not being able to look at it any longer.
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When they get back to Pavuvu, he finds the piece of linen in there, after he had a sip of pineapple juice and stared down their new skipper who didn't know Gene's name. Twice Snafu had woken him with a gentle “Sledgehamma” right beside his ear and they'd shared their last five cigarettes on the trek back to base. He'd put a hand onto Snafu's back when he'd become seasick and clapped his helmet back on his head when the taller man had stumbled over a half-rotten Jap corpse and nearly fell face first into its ribcage. He had felt Snafu's body – warm, breathing, swearing and sweating oh so much alive - right behind him when the new skipper tried to irritate him.
He folds his marine greens and remembers Ack-Ack's father, a man he will never see in his entire life, but finds the thought of him having something to do with the shirt he wears oddly comforting and throws the Japanese insignia into the small fire they built on the beach. He stands, wading into the lukewarm ocean and joins Snafu and the rest, trying to wash away the dirt and blood and war in the clear blue pacific ocean.
But when he closes his eyes, he still hears the gently sflob, the cries of pain and fear, still sees the blood and gold teeth and entrails of a fellow marine spread over the coral stones and still feels the rage and war deep inside his cells. He gasps for air, his throat locking up and his eyes dry, grasping for something, anything. The ground slips and the sky breaks into the colors of fire and ash and blood, reeking of vomit and corpses. He grabs the collar of his shirt, desperately trying to draw in some air and slowly, slowly, he can breathe again. But his heart is pounding, and he wants to duck, reaching for his rifle that isn't there because they're safe for now, safe on Pavuvu with its girls and crabs and crappy love movies. He sits up, panting and clutching at the dry sand as if it could anchor him. It slips from his fingers. Like Oswalt. Like Leyden. Like Ack-Ack and Hillbilly. It slips and he slips and leans sideways, like a sinking ship drawing its last breath before the great dive. But his body doesn't meet the sand. It's not the sand that anchors him into the here and now, into this world full of war, blood and sflob. It's the hand on his shoulder that brings him back upright and the presence of a body behind him that steadies him.
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“Sledgehamma.”