The Last Combat [antikvár]

IT had not stopped raining for a week, except for brief intervals. Sometimes it was a furious downpour, the rain-spots stinging their hands and faces, as hail will sting. Sometimes it was a soft, multitudinous drizzle, a morning mist of rain. But always it was there, a relentless thing* At last it seemed that its roar was a liquid poured into their eardrums, pressing against the membranes, tightening the hard sense of suffocation within their hearts, building a scream that somehow was never released. Their uniforms were like wet dishrags, slopped around their bodies; and as they paced, revolvingly, the tiny confines of their foxholes, these soggy clothes washed them. And they did not want to be washed. They wanted to stay dirty, for in dirt there was a comfort. Dirt was allied to what they were going through. Cleanliness was something foreign now; something belonging to the lost America of fresh white sheets and newly laundered underwear, of summer cotton and red lips and pink breasts, something tormenting when known besides the now habitual filth, mud, stale blood and dead rotting bodies. So they wanted dirt. They had to have dirt-as their beards and itching scalps and sweating feet suggested dirt. Instead, there was the monsoon, and soggy clothes insidiously cleaning their bodies to leprosy white. Because of this they raved and, raising their tired eyes to the clouds, their fists clenched and tears in their voices, groaned aloud. But still the rain poured down. If anything, it mocked the blasphemy that was the GI prayer. First it was a roar, then a soft murmur, as irregular in sound as the China Sea beating on the shore. It was hot and, despite the impetuous wind, heavy with humidity. Cailini had said, before falling into a dreamfilled sleep, that it was like swimming in an already dead sea. Hervey, his buddy and foxhole partner, heard but did not reply. The full tiredness that shrouded him would not even let him nod an appreciation. But the moment he heard Cailini's soft snore, he turned swiftly. The sight of Cailini sleeping was almost more that he could bear. He lifted his foot and was