clerk had had his right ankle smashed by a heavy-mortar fragment and needed orthopedic surgery. Bobby Prell had taken a burst of heavy-machinegun fire across both thighs in a firefight, sustaining multiple compound fractures, and heavy tissue damage.
This was the land of personal news we ached to hear. Could it be that we were secretly pleased? That we were glad to see others join us in our half-unmanned state? We certainly would have denied it, would have attacked and fought anyone who suggested it. Especially about the four of them.
There were quite a few of us sitting in the shiny, spotless, ugly hospital snack bar, having coffee after morning rounds, when Corello came running in waving the letter. Corello was an excitable Italian from McMinnville, Tennessee. No one knew why he had not been sent to the hospital in Nashville, instead of to Luxor, just as no one knew how his Italian forebears happened to wind up in McMinnville, where they ran a restaurant. Corello had been home once since his arrival in Luxor, and had stayed less than a day. Couldn’t stand it, he said. Now he pushed his way through to us among the hospital-white tables, holding the letter high.
There was a momentary hush in the room. Then the conversations went right on. The old hands had seen this scene too many times. The two cracker waitresses looked up from their chores, alarmed until they saw the letter, then went back to their coffee-drawing.
Rays of Southern sun were streaming through the tall plate glass from high up, down into all that white. In sunny corners lone men sat at tables writing letters, preferring the clatter and people here to the quiet of the library. There were five of us from the company at one table and Corello stopped there.
At once, men of ours sitting at other tables got up and came over. In seconds all of us in the snack bar had clustered around. We were already passing the letter back and forth. The patients from other outfits looked back down at their coffee and conversation and left us alone.
“Read it out loud,” someone said.
“Yeah, read it. Read it out loud,” several others said.
The man who had it looked up and blushed. Shaking his head about reading out loud, he passed the letter to someone else.
The man who took it smoothed it out, then cleared his throat. He looked it over, then began to read in the stilted voice of a student in a declamation class.
As he read the news, a couple of men whistled softly.
When he finished, he put it down among the coffee mugs. Then he saw it might get stained, and picked it up and handed it to Corello.
“All four of them at the same time,” a man who was standing behind him said hollowly.
“Yeah. The same day practically,” another said.
We all knew none of us would ever go back to the old company. Not now, not once we had been sent back to the United States, we wouldn’t. Once you came back to the States, you were reassigned. But all of us needed to believe the company would continue on as we knew it, go right on through and come out the other end, intact.
“It’s as if— It’s almost like—”
Whichever one of us it was who spoke did not go on, but we all knew what he meant
A kind of superstitious fear had descended over us. In our profession, we pretty much lived by superstition. We had to. When all of knowledge and of past experience had been utilized, the outcome of a firefight, or a defense or an attack, depended largely on luck. Awe of and reverence for the inexplicable, that heart of the dedicated gambler’s obsession, was the only religion that fit our case. We followed a God which coldly incorporated luck within Itself, as one of Its major tools. For a commander, give us the commander who had luck. Let the others have the educated, prepared commanders.
We were like the dim early human who watched his mud hut destroyed by lightning and created God to explain it. Our God could be likened to a Great Roulette Wheel, more than anything.
We had thought the God looked warmly on us, or at least our company. Now it seemed the Wheel was rolling the other way.
There was nothing to do about it. As superstitious men, we understood that. That was part of the rules.
We could only not step on the crack, not walk under