as well as he did. He spent a good part of every day in there with Prell, talking and laughing and trying to cheer him up. He doubted if he would have done as much for another man. Not in that lousy place. He hadn’t even bothered to look up Landers, Winch’s clerk, during the voyage. But Landers was a wartime volunteer. And Prell—like Winch—was from the old outfit.
Strange with his bad hand had preceded Winch by a week to the Naval base hospital at Efate in the New Hebrides. And when he left the company up in New Georgia, Winch to all appearances had been healthy and in good shape. Bobby Prell of course had preceded both of them by several weeks, when the New Georgia campaign was getting up to its peak of fighting.
Strange would not have put it past Winch to simply decide he had had enough combat, and simply have himself shipped out back to America. Winch was perfectly capable of it, and Strange was convinced he had enough pull to do it. If that was what he decided he wanted to do.
Gossip around the New Hebrides base hospital said that Winch had something wrong with his heart. Just as gossip in the hospital had it that Prell was going to lose one or both of his legs. But Winch did not look or act like a man who had had a heart attack, any more than Bobby Prell looked or acted like a man who was going to let them take off one or both of his legs.
Gossip around the hospital also had it that Prell was being recommended for the Congressional Medal of Honor by the Division’s commander. But when Strange told this to Winch, Winch only snorted with outraged disgust. If anybody knew anything definite about Prell’s potential recommendation, it would be his own 1st/sgt, Winch. But Winch refused to admit he had heard about it. Prell himself had heard nothing about it, apparently. And Strange had felt that if he could get Winch to back-up the fact of the recommendation, it might do Prell a world of good.
It was not that Prell was depressed, or defeated, or suicidal. Or anything bad like that. That wasn’t Prell’s style, any more than it was Winch’s. Prell was just as mean and ornery as he’d ever been. He’d always been a stubborn, proud West Virginia hardhead, which was part of why Winch had never liked him. It was why Strange liked him.
But underneath Prell’s toughness about being wounded, Strange was acute enough to sense a canker. A sort of well-encrusted, walled-off cyst of despair. Which had hardened, and been sealed off. But which might flare up. Or burst, and pour out its morbid fluid. And if that happened, Prell would be in trouble. Some news, even unconfirmed, about a Congressional Medal would be damn good medicine for that.
But Winch was not about to come through with it, even if he had it.
Strange had learned to live with Winch. It wasn’t so hard. You just had to understand that he was a little crazy, and make allowances for it. In fact, just about everything good that had happened to Strange in the past three years Winch had been responsible for. Strange couldn’t forget that.
Back in early 1940, when the old peacetime Division was stationed inland at Schofield Barracks on Wahoo, long before the sneak attack, Strange had been a second cook in the Coast Artillery at Fort Kamehameha, with a 4th CI specialist’s rating and no prospect of advancement. Winch, who as a staff/sgt had been in the same outfit with him at Fort Riley, Kansas five years before, had come down to see him and invite him to transfer into his infantry outfit at Schofield. It was a crazy thing to ask. Fort Kam was close to Honolulu, and had its own swimming beaches, and Strange was drawing down a spec 4’s pay. But Winch had promised him that within three months he would be mess/sgt of his company. Winch had a mess/sgt he wanted to get rid of. This was back in the days when mess/sgts and 1st/cooks reenlisted in place, just to keep their jobs. Strange had accepted. And Winch had come through. Exactly as he’d said.
The move had changed Strange’s life. After his big jump in pay, he had sent home to Texas for his girlfriend and brought her out and married her. This was something Strange had not expected to be