Part of his appeal was that he was old enough to be their father, and there was something fatherly in his attitude toward the soldiers. It might be his job to write about them, but it was clear that Pyle gave a damn while he was doing it — and then some.
The reporter made his way over to where Patrol Easy sat, and they made room for him on the bench.
“Where you from, soldier?” Pyle asked, his pencil poised over his notebook.
“Philadelphia,” Philly said, clearly delighted by the thought of getting his name in the newspaper.
Carefully, Pyle wrote down their names and hometowns.
“Mr. Pyle, you want some of this?” Deke asked. “I reckon my stomach is so shrunk up that I can’t eat it all.”
Pyle noticed the scars on Deke’s face but didn’t look away. Even the journalist in him was too polite to ask where Deke had gotten them. He seemed touched by Deke’s offer to share his meal. He thanked him but shook his head. “You just do the best you can.”
One of the new guys surprised them by producing a bag of pecans. “Now you can say you’ve had everything from soup to nuts with this dinner,” the GI said with a grin. Nobody bothered to point out that there hadn’t been any soup. He shook the bag, then shared it around. “It’s hard to believe I was on the farm pruning these trees two years ago.”
“If you’re lucky, you’ll be back on that farm two years from now — maybe,” Philly said.
Later, Pyle would describe that moment for his readers and add a few insights: “That’s the way conversation at the front goes all the time. The minutes hardly ever go by without some nostalgic reference to home, how long you’ve been away, how long before you get back, what you’ll do first when you hit the States, what your chances are for returning before the war is over.”
Finally, the famous reporter straightened up. “Merry Christmas, boys,” he said. “Do me a favor and keep your heads down.”
For the most part, the town had been cleared of the enemy and Patrol Easy got some decent sleep for once. Their full bellies helped. By the next day, they had new orders. Lieutenant Steele explained that he would be leading a squad to hunt the enemy in the jungles and hills surrounding the base. He seemed glad to have shed his duties as a platoon leader to focus on leading these scouts and snipers. The veterans of Patrol Easy didn’t bother to learn the names of the new guys. There would be time for that if the new guys made it through the first couple of days.
“The plan is to bring the fight to the enemy before they get organized enough to hit the base,” Steele explained. “You might say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
“More like an ounce of lead,” Philly muttered.
By now the veterans of Patrol Easy knew all too well what bringing the fight to the enemy meant. It involved creeping down the jungle trails and across the low hills, stalking the enemy. Deke and Danilo took point, leading the way into the forest. Philly trailed behind them.
For this patrol, they would be heading deep into the hilly terrain. The trees thickened, and the ground grew steeper. Soon they were all panting and sweating with the effort of climbing the hill. Clouds of gnats appeared, sticking to their skin and flying into their eyes.
“Do you think this hill has got a name?” Philly wondered.
“To hell if I know,” Deke replied. “I could think of a couple ideas.”
“How about this? We’ll name the hill after the first guy that gets killed.”
“That’s a hell of a way to be remembered,” Deke replied. “Believe me, I’m in no hurry to have a hill named after me, if that’s what it takes.”
Philly’s suggestion came from the fact that it was common practice to name geographic locations after the men who had died fighting on them. Across the Pacific there were places that soldiers had given names to, such as Anton’s Gulch, Sergeant Darby Hill, or Lefty’s Mountain. These unofficial names couldn’t be found on a map, but they were written in the hearts of the soldiers. Whether it was the 25th Infantry Division or the 77th, they all had similar landmarks named for men who had lost their lives in these places.
Deke decided it wasn’t all that different from back home, where the mountains and gaps — a low crossing point in the hills — usually took the name of some man or event that would have otherwise been forgotten, such as Dead Indian Creek or Frenchman’s Gap. Attached to those names was usually some legend that had been passed down through the years. Those names had staying power, but he wasn’t sure that would be the case once the US Army packed up and left this part of the world.
