Hobson’s Choice
“I’m scared, Hob,” says Peters.
Hobson ignores him and points his rifle into the jungle, squinting against the blackness. It is too dark to see anything. Mosquitoes whine in his ears. He fans them with his free hand.
“I’m fucking scared,” says Peters.
Hobson lowers his rifle. In the darkness Peters’s face is pale smear, his eyes like the holes in a skull.
#
Hobson and Peters had gone through boot camp together, but while Hobson was good enough to be assigned to the Third Reconnaissance Battalion, Peters got sent to a regular rifle platoon.
Hobson further distinguished himself during the horrendous battle of Bougainville and received a field promotion to lance corporal. When the Third Recon rotated to Aukland for R&R, Hobson had a drunken misadventure that got him thrown in the brig for a week. The colonel was so disgusted he busted Hobson to private and transferred him to the Fourth Marines as a replacement rifleman.
The Fourth was stationed on Guadalcanal awaiting the next island invasion. Nobody knew where. After the close camaraderie of Third Recon, the callow jostle of a replacement unit was jarring. Hobson didn’t know a soul and was too ashamed to make new friends. He’d been doing so well, but he’d fucked it all up.
He was standing in the chow line when Peters came up and slapped him on the back.
Hobson was overjoyed to see a familiar face. “Peters!” he yelled. “Where the hell did you come from?”
“I was with the Second Division but got malaria a week before the Tarawa invasion. They evacuated me to Hawaii.”
“You lucky son of a bitch. Missed out on a slaughterhouse, I hear.”
“Didn’t feel so lucky. Had a 105 fever for months. Doctors couldn’t figure it out. They thought I’d die, but I hung in there.”
“And here you are, stuck with me in the Fourth Division with all the replacements.”
Peters looked at the ground, shuffling his feet. “My whole platoon was wiped out before they even made it to the beach,” he said in a quiet voice. “That’s why they sent me here. There was no Second Division left to go back to.”
Hobson peered at him, unsure of what to say. “No shame in surviving, buddy. You got lucky.” He put his arm around his friend. “Anyway, what I saw of the Japs, you’ll get plenty other opportunities. They never surrender.”
#
They started to pal around. Peters was good company, quick with a story or a joke. It was like old times, the war far away. The only thing different was that now Hobson had recurring nightmares of Japs sneaking in and slitting his throat. He’d awake covered in sweat. Sometimes he would get up and walk around the camp at night. As he passed by tents full of sleeping Marines he’d hear groaning and shouts, so he guessed other guys had the same problem. The Japs murdered sleep.
The Fourth was a disorganized mess. Hundreds of replacements arrived every week. Marines slept six or eight to a tent, and there were long lines for everything––chow hall, showers, and, especially, the latrine. A man might wait a half hour for a chance to take a shit, sitting on a johnny hole with nothing but a piece of canvas hanging between him and the men on either side, guys in line yelling to hurry the fuck up.
The good thing about the chaos wass that there were few NCOs and no officers whatsover. Since nobody was around to give them orders, Hobson and Peters killed time exploring the island, hiking and swimming and goofing off. The floral jungles of Guadalcanal were so peaceful it was hard to believe there’d ever been a war there. They’d walk through a cathedral of tree trunks, the canopy a hundred feet above them and casting a soft green light like they were underwater. All around were vines and broad-leaved creepers, spreads of gorgeous orchids wrapped around low branches. If not for the swarms of mosquitos, it would have been a paradise.
#
On what turned out to be their last day of freedom, they lounged on the beach drinking beers Peters had cadged from the officers’ club. The beers felt good, the alcohol loosening things up.
“So,” said Peters, “I’ve been dying to ask. What did you do to get busted and transferred out of Recon?”
Hobson shrugged.
“Come on, Hob,” said Peters. “Everybody knows it happened, but nobody knows why.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Be a decent fella for once. Tell me. I’ll tell you something, too. Deal?”
Hobson looked at Peters’s extended hand, then shook it.
“Ok. After Bougainville, we got sent to Aukland for R&R. I figured we probably only had a week or two of liberty before they made us start marching again, so me and some buddies skipped chow the first night and went on the town. I guess the liquor hit me pretty hard because I blacked out. I came to in the brig the next day. The MPs told me I’d stolen one of their jeeps and crashed it into a cigar store. Apparently I was trying to run down the wooden Indian but lost control. The only reason they didn’t court-martial me is because nobody was hurt and the storeowner didn’t care to press charges.”
“Jesus, Hob. And you don’t remember anything?”
“Last thing I remember was doing shots at a bar.”
He didn’t mention the scathing interview with the colonel. The colonel hadn’t yelled or even sworn at him, but the shame of his disapproval burned deep in Hobson’s gut even now. You almost make me ashamed to be a Marine, the colonel’s exact words.
“Okay,” said Hobson. “Your turn.”
“I didn’t have Malaria,” said Peters, smirking a little.
“What?”
“I’d put my thermometer in my water glass and heat it up with my Zippo until it reached 110, then I’d put it in my mouth. Sometimes I’d spash water on on my face to make it look like I was sweating.” He laughed. “I’d shake and quiver. One time I even wet the bed. You can bet your ass that got their attention!”
He was so caught up in the recollection he didn’t realize that Hobson wasn’t laughing, didn’t see the look on his face.
“There was this one old bitch, Nurse Goines,” he continued. “She suspected me of malingering and laid a trap. Caught me red-handed. The shit hit the fan. They threw me out of the hospital and shipped me out within 24 hours. And here I am.”
Hobson said nothing. He was remembering the terrifying weeks on Bougainville, the Banzai charge where they’d had to kill hundreds of Jap attackers with machine guns and grenades. The endless nights when Japanese would infiltrate the lines and kill Marines as they slept. Hobson remembered the two guys in Recon captured by the Japs and tortured, their bodies left out in the open for the other Marines to find, eyes gouged and tongues cut out, their chopped-off cocks shoved into their dead mouths.
The thought of Peters malingering in the hospital while his whole Division got slaughtered on Tarawa made Hobson feel sick. The fucking coward. It was unbelievable.
Hobson stood up. “Fuck you,” he spat. He started back to camp.
Peters ran after him, calling out “What did I do?” over and over.
#
Gunnery Sergeant Snope was sent from Camp Lejune to whip the Fourth Marines into fighting shape. Snope was a career Marine, a real leatherneck.
He knew all about Hobson’s time in Third Recon and why he got kicked out. He also knew about Peters and happened in Hawaii.
He knew everything.
Snope put his iron face an inch away from Hobson’s and said, “Hobson, from now on you are that man’s shadow. Peters is your responsibility. He’s a coward and a fuckup, but he is still a Marine and Uncle Sugar spent good money training him. You fucked up too. Your new job is to turn that man into a fighting machine. You do that and maybe you get your stripes back. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes Gunny!” Hobson yelled.
#
The next five weeks were a hell of weapons drills and forced marches and rifle practice and landing practice and field exercises in the jungle. Outwardly Peters seemed to be getting his shit together. He was a fair shot and a quick mover.
But he talked all the time and perpetually asked Hobson about combat. “Is this what it’s like, Hob? Is it like this?”
It drove Hobson crazy. He longed to tell the fucking coward that a field exercise was nothing like combat, even if it was held on Guadalcanal. There was no enemy in an exercise, no terror, no real danger. Nobody died or got mangled.
But ever since that conversation on the beach he loathed Peters and refused to speak to him. Instead, he shoved him and used gestures to get his point across. Go there. Do that.
And then Hobson stopped talking altogether. If given a direct order, he’d scream SIR YES SIR, but other than that he never said anything. Careless noise is fatal, he told himself. He armored himself with silence.
Hobson’s dogged speechlessness seemed to nibble away at what courage Peters had. Peters became even more talkative, needier. His movements were uncertain. He flinched a lot. Hobson remembered what Gunny Snope told him and watched Peters like a mother hen, hating his guts more than ever.
The field exercises continued right up until the Fourth Regiment was ordered aboard ship to sail for a secret destination. The exhausted men shuffled up the gangplank carrying their rifles and combat packs, eyes hollow and backs bent.
The vast chambers below deck were twenty feet high. Despite its enormous size, the ship’s interior felt stuffy and claustrophobic. It was dim and hot and reeked of diesel fuel. Hundreds of closely spaced bunks like library shelves ran floor to ceiling with narrow passages between them, a few tables and benches bolted to the deck here and there for meals and poker games.
Two days before the landing, Sergeant Snope pulled the combat veterans aside and gave them all cigarettes.
“Listen, men,” he said. “On Tarawa six out of ten Marines got killed before they hit the beach. This landing will be worse. You Marines need to be a good example to the new guys. Help them, especially that first night.” Snope smiled. “The good news is that anyone who survives that beachhead will be a hardened veteran by dark.”
#
But the landing on Guam was virtually unopposed. The Marines splashed up onto the beach and into the jungle without a shot being fired. The new men were relieved, laughing and joking and playing horse. They joshed the combat veterans, accused them of exaggeration. You assholes were just trying to scare us.
Hobson knew better. He’d heard scuttlebutt that the Japs were changing their tactics, giving up the beachheads to lure the Marines into slaughter. He remembered how they’d hide in the jungle and bide their time, waiting for nightfall. On Bougainville they were invisible shadows that slipped into foxholes to slit the throats of the Marines they found there.
Hobson remembered the terrible morning he awoke to find his best friend Jacobs dead next to him, blood everywhere, neck gaping like some hideous mouth. They’d killed one and left the other alive, just to scare the shit out of him.
That was what was in Hobson’s nightmare every night. He’d never told anyone about it, nor would he.
The regiment marched five miles inland where Captain Fish ordered them to dig in for the night. Peters was pale, but mercifully silent. They unfolded their entrenching tools and quickly excavated a hole in the soft and spongy ground.
#
Now in the dark Hobson fingers the stacking swivel of his M-1 where the metal joins the walnut stock. Next to him in the hole he can feel Peters shaking.
“I’m scared, Hob, whispers Peters. “Fuck me, I’m scared.”
Hobson says nothing. He takes out his Kabar and jams it into the wall of the hole, keeping it handy.
“Fuck me I’m scared,” says Peters, louder now.
“Shut that man up!” calls a Marine down the line.
Peters is yelling now. “I’m goddamned scared! I don’t want to die, Hob! I’m scared!”
“Fuck’s sake!” hisses the Marine in the next hole. “Shut the hell up before you give away our position!”
Peters rocks back and forth, yelling “HOB I’M SCARED” over and over. Marines in other foxholes take up the cry to silence him, cursing him and Hobson both.
“Shut up, Peters!” says Hobson, the first words he’s uttered in weeks. “Please shut up. Everybody’s scared.”
“I’M SCARED!” screams Peters. “OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD!” He sounds inhuman.
“SHUT HIM UP!” yells the neighboring Marine, panicky.
Hobson grabs Peters by his shoulders, but Peters just screams and claws at Hobson’s face. Hobson punches him in the jaw, trying to knock him out.
Peters shrieks and flails like an epileptic. Hobson hits him again, but Peters has maniac strength and won’t go down.
“Just shoot the motherfucker!” yells a different Marine.
Hobson hesitates. He picks up his rifle and points it at Peters.
Peters’ s eyes are wild. He screams and screams.