realized such an ambitious scope of such dimension wasn’t practicable. Neither the dramatic necessities of the novel itself, nor the amount of sheer space required, would allow such a plan.
The idea of a trilogy occurred to me then. Whistle, still untitled and—as a novel—unconceived, was a part of it. So when I began The Thin Red Line (some eleven years later) the plan for a trilogy was already there. And Whistle, as a concept, would be the third part of it.
Which of course it should be. It was always my intention with this trilogy that each novel should stand by itself as a work alone. In a way that, for example, John Dos Passos’ three novels in his fine USA trilogy do not. The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money will not stand alone as novels. USA is one large novel, not a trilogy.
I intended to write the third volume immediately after I finished The Thin Red Line. Other things, other novels, got in the way. Each time I put it aside it seemed to further refine itself. So that each time I took it up again I had to begin all over. My own personal experiments with style and viewpoint affected the actual writing itself.
One of the problems I came up against, with the trilogy as a whole, appeared as soon as I began The Thin Red Line in 1959. In the original conception, first as a single novel, and then as a trilogy, the major characters such as 1st/Sgt Warden, Pvt Prewitt and Mess/Sgt Stark were meant to continue throughout the entire work. Unfortunately the dramatic structure—I might even say, the spiritual content—of the first book demanded that Prewitt be killed in the end of it. The import of the book would have been emasculated if Prewitt did not die.
When the smoke cleared, and I wrote End to From Here to Eternity, the only end it seemed to me it could have had, there I stood with no Prewitt character.
It may seem like a silly problem now. It wasn’t then. Prewitt was meant from the beginning to carry an important role in the second book, and in the third. I could not just resurrect him. And have him there again, in the flesh, wearing the same name.
I solved the problem by changing the names. All of the names. But I changed them in such a way that a cryptic key, a marked similarity, continued to exist, as a reference point, with the old set of names. It seems like an easy solution now, but it was not at the time.
So in The Thin Red Line 1st/Sgt Warden became 1st/Sgt Welsh, Pvt Prewitt became Pvt Witt, Mess/Sgt Stark became Mess/Sgt Storm. While remaining the same people as before. In Whistle Welsh becomes Mart Winch, Witt becomes Bobby Prell, Storm becomes John Strange.
After publication of The Thin Red Line, a few astute readers noted the similarity of names, and wrote to ask me if the similarity was intentional. When they did, I wrote back saying that it was, and explaining why. So far as I know, no critic and no book reviewer ever noticed the name similarity.
There is not much else to add. Except to say that when Whistle is completed, it will surely be the end of something. At least for me. The publication of Whistle will mark the end of a long job of work for me. Conceived in 1946, and begun in the spring of 1947, it will have taken me nearly thirty years to complete. It will say just about everything I have ever had to say, or will ever have to say, on the human condition of war and what it means to us, as against what we claim it means to us.
Paris, 15 November 1973
BOOK ONE
THE SHIP
CHAPTER 1
WE GOT THE WORD that the four of them were coming a month before they arrived. Scattered all across the country in the different hospitals as we were, it was amazing how fast word of any change in the company got back to us. When it did, we passed it back and forth among ourselves by letter or post card. We had our own private network of communications flung all across the map of the nation.
There were only the four of them this time. But what an important four. Winch. Strange. Prell. And Landers. About the four most important men the company had had.
We did not know then, when the first word of them came, that