ship was again moving steadily now, across the flat uninhabited wastes of moving salt water. Strange was not at all averse to being home.
In the clear, calm, moonless night the shore and the sea seemed to be illumined by a lemon-pink night light that did not come from anywhere. Behind both the mountains made a black presence, visible only in silhouette, by the stars they blocked. Once, the lights of a city made a dull glow on the shore. And Strange thought of all the blackouts he had seen, as far south as New Caledonia.
After six months, he had let one of his cooks talk him into going on sick call with his hand. They had immediately clapped him in the hospital for evacuation, and had flown him out. In Efate they had said they would not even attempt to operate on it there. So they would have to send him home. The doc there said there were only a few men in the States who could do the operations. He would need more than one. It would be a long painful process, but he ought to have an 80 to 90 percent recovery, when it was finished. The whole thing was the result of his not having come in with it when it first occurred. He should have reported it when it happened. The doc went on to say that, fortunately, the Army would still do all this for him. And the government would pay for it all. But if he had been an industrial worker, his negligence would have cost him the insurance. Strange could not tell him he had been ashamed to report it, embarrassed to go to the hospital, where so many badly mangled men were lying stretched out moaning and would see him. He had only nodded, repeatedly, and said nothing.
Nor could he claim to anybody, even to himself, that he was miserable and unhappy when he heard all this terrible news about his hand.
Way back on the Canal, in the very beginning, Strange had decided early that he was not going to get his ass shot off unless it was absolutely necessary.
When the company went up into its first combat on Guadalcanal’s Hill 52, everybody who could had grabbed his rifle and wanted to go along. Cooks and bakers, supplyroom men, drivers, clerks, and Strange and his kitchen force. Everybody wanted to be in combat. Two days of it was enough for Strange. Nobody but a nut would get himself shot at when he didn’t have to. And when Strange left and went back down, most of his cooks and the supplyroom men went with him. The rest came down the next day. They were under no orders to stay up there. Their orders were to stay back in the rear and guard the company baggage and try to get hot food up to the men, and Strange saw to it that they did just that. They didn’t have much luck with the hot food part. But they did keep the company’s “A” and “B” bags from being rifled by a new outfit who had just arrived. And when the battalion moved up to New Georgia for the invasion, Strange had held himself to the same principle. He would follow his orders, and follow them to the letter. But no more. And he would see that everybody under him did the same. If their orders required them to go on up on the line in the New Georgia jungle, they would go. But not unless.
You could always get yourself knocked off in one of the air raids that came over every day. Without going up on the line to the company. But the percentages were minuscule, compared to what could happen to you up there with the company.
And Strange, like most intelligent men trained in the various logistics disciplines, had realized right away that the wins and losses of this war were going to be governed by industrial percentages and numerical averages, not by acts of individual heroism. And that included survival.
And yet he stayed. When at any moment he could have turned himself in with his bad hand and been evacuated, he had stayed. And even now he felt terrible about leaving. Strange was perceptive enough to understand the paradox of that.
At the window, Strange straightened up from watching the night sea and the dark coastline, and looked around. Most of the men were beginning to drift away, bored as the newness wore