The First Sergeant in Jones's second novel, The Thin Red Line, is now faced with the responsibility of leading his Company into combat with the Japanese. In this setting the character is far from being the man in control, now he realizes how helpless and out of control he is. The young men surrounding him are reminders of his impotence in affecting their chances for survival; random death is everywhere and it holds no prejudice. Perhaps it is this reason that Jones opted for Welsh as the name of the First Sergeant in this novel. The First Sergeant is always the man with the answers, always dependable and his job is to look out for you. But here, on this island, he can no longer keep the old promises or provide the answers; he is welshing on his primary responsibility to his Company, his family.
Unlike the introduction to the First Sergeant in From Here to Eternity, where Warden is busily making our reports, the introduction to Welsh is a lightning bolt of honesty and cynicism. His commanding officer has just finished a briefing with the platoon commanders and is talking to them very paternally about "the boys" in the Company and how he feels toward them; then he turns to Welsh:
"I think our outfit looks pretty capable, pretty solid, don't you, Sergeant?...Welsh merely grinned at him insolently."Yeah; for a bunch of slobs about to get their fucking ass shot off." (11)
The apparent callousness that Welsh is exhibiting is in keeping with the "honest" aspect of his character established in the first novel. Welsh is not kidding himself or anybody else about what will happen to all these young smiling faces in the coming weeks, months and years. At the same time, he accepts the idea of his own death and may as well consider himself dead already. It is this honesty and acceptance that places Welsh over a line from the other characters. Welsh has taken himself out of the game and is beyond all pretense of worrying and wondering what the future holds. The author writes in The Thin Red Line:
They were a sorry lot, any way you took them. Almost certainly, nearly all of them would be dead before this war was over, including himself, and not a damn one of them was smart enough to know it. Maybe a few did. They were getting in on virtually the very start of it, and they would continue all the way right on through it. Hardly any of them were able or willing to admit or see what an alarming drop in chances this gave them. As far as Welsh was concerned, they had it coming to them and deserved everything they would get. And that included himself. And this amused him too. (22)
Based on Jones's definition of what the evolution of a soldier eventually comes to - the realization and acceptance of your own death - Welsh seems to have arrived at this same conclusion and that, to him, all the worrying is just wasted energy.
In contrast to Welsh who has accepted his condition, Jones shows us what the alternative condition would be; vividly illustrating the emotional breakdown of another Sergeant:
John Bell...was able to see several important things. He was, for instance, the only man who saw Sgt. McCron cover his face with his hands and sit down weeping...Four men of McCron's squad went down at once...Wynn was shot in the throat...Next to him Pfc. Earl, a little shorter, was caught in the face. He went down without a sound, looking as if he'd been hit in the face with a tomato. To Bell's left two other men tumbled...All this was apparently too much for McCron, who had clucked over and mothered his squad for so many months, and he simply dropped his rifle and sat down crying. (226)
One will again notice the use of the "mother" symbolism in that passage. This can be directly tied to 1st/Sgt. Welsh.
In one of the rare instances in The Thin Red Line where Welsh is shown as having some control, the author returns to the theme of maternal symbolism. In a scene that recalls the words of 1st/Sgt Warden in From Here to Eternity,
"If there's any killing in my Company I'll do it...." (234-235)
Welsh is called upon to commit a mercy killing of a wounded member of the Company.
The situation involves a soldier named Tella who is almost cut in half by machine-gun fire, but manages to cling to life. To complicate matters further, he is laying out in the open, a medic has been killed trying to help him, he keeps screaming in pain and is being shot at by snipers. Welsh has finally had enough and he takes off down the hill to try and help this kid:
"How goes it, kid?" Welsh yelped inanely..."Fuck you!" Tella piped. "I'm dying! I'm dying, Sarge!"..."How are you going to help me?"
"Take you back."
"You want to help me, shoot me!"
It was then Welsh noticed the dead medic's belt pouches and began rummaging...Welsh tossed Tella two morphine syrettes and began attacking another pouch...Tella called for more...Welsh handed him a double handfull and then turned to run..."Goodby, Welsh!" "Goodby, kid," .... (242-243)
Later that afternoon, they found Tella surrounded by ten empty syrettes and an eleventh one stuck in his arm. This is the turning point for Welsh. He has killed one of his charges, one of his children and there will be a heavy emotional price to pay.
When the trilogy moves on to the third novel, Whistle, the character of the First Sergeant is suffering from a heart ailment that is getting progressively worse. He experiences nightmares that become hallucinations and is in the process of having a mental breakdown. The name chosen for the character at this point is 1st/Sgt Winch. From an allegorical standpoint this name represents the progressive action of his heart condition and his mental state; his heart and mind are being pulled out of him. This would be in keeping with the analogy to Karen Holmes, and, as far as the mother image is concerned, could be likened to a mother whose heart is wrenched from her by the loss of her sons. The character's overall condition certainly suggests that he is heartbroken; the author writes,
Hell he wasn't even wounded. He was only sick. An unaccustomed hollowness opened up in him at the word. Shit, he had never been sick a day in his life. Under the hollowness, the booze seeped through him its insidiouis, seductive, golden-honeyed, poisonous message of sunshine and good will. (13)
The first allusion the author gives of the simultaneous physical and mental breakdown of Winch comes when he goes to visit an old Army buddy who has been stateside and getting rich off the black market:
"Tell me, what's it like out there, Mart? Pretty rough? Hunh? Where were you hit?"Winch thought his own mind must be deserting him, because he felt ice-cold all over...Old T.D. refilled his glass. Winch's teeth clenched. He wanted to pick up the beautiful, precious bottle of Seven Crown and crown T.D. Hoggenbeck with it, split his skull...A picture of his blank-faced, fear-eyed platoons, bleeding and breathing mud for every yard of ground, passed across the inside of Winch's eyes...All this had nothing to do with this, nothing at all. (71)
As this exchange continues, Winch's friend, T.D., asks him if he has had a heart attack. Winch responds that it is nothing more than a "murmur." The implication is that this murmur will turn into a roar as the novel progresses.
The other main characters also begin to notice a change in Winch. Throughout the course of the trilogy these characters all know the First Sergeant to be someone who cares about the men and is in complete control of himiself. Now, however, after experiencing combat and the daily death of his troops, he's a much different man.
One of the main characters that returns stateside with Winch, is a Corporal named Prell. Prell's legs have been badly wounded by machine-gun fire and there is some question as to whether or not he will ever walk again; the doctor's are talking about amputation. Winch has known Prell since before the war and knows that such a fate would slowly kill the Corporal. In what can only be called a paradox of sympathy and caring, Wince theorizes that what Prell needs is an enemy to focus his mind on so as not to dwell on his wounds and feel sorry for himself. Winch's expression of his caring is a "heartless" display which is in keeping with his character's condition; Jones writes the following,
What Prell needed was enemies. An enemy he was going to fight...."You reckon they'll give me a tin cup and some G.I. pencils to sell...."
"They'll do better than that. They'll give you a pension. And a leather leg...Just don't tell them about your squad." (His squad was cut to pieces in the same action in which he was wounded and cited for the Medal of Honor."
"You son of a bitch, I'll kill your sharecropping-ass...if it takes the rest of my life..."
"I don't think so. I'll probably be dead long before you're well enough...."
There was probably more truth in that than he realized when he said, it "Winch thought and grinned. Oh well. He would be Prell's enemy. Everybody needed one enemy. (153)
Four days after Winch and Prell had this conversation, Prell's legs started to improve remarkably.
The nightmares Winch experiences gradually turn into hallucinations. This is another indication that his condition is deteriorating:
...he thought about how the Company in the midst of its anguish of change was forgetting them. Forgetting him...and he dozed again...suddenly something, a dream, woke him up wanting to shout a command, "Get them out! Get them out of there! Fast! Move them left! Can't you see the mortars have them bracketed!" (198)
In his dream Winch mutters these words while on a bus, but soon these words will become audible to his friends and other patients at the hospital; another sign that "murmurs" are growing louder as his condition deteriorates. The hallucinations soon follow as Winch's conscious and subconscious begin to blend together:
Suddenly...a white picture formed on the windshield, as if etched by Steuben....Winch stared at it, engrossed...and recognized it...it was Jacklin. Pfc. Freddie Jacklin...one of the dead, from the platoons. The forever beleagured platoons of Winch's mind....It was the first time any of his nightmares had actually impinged upon his outside physical world and affected it. (302-303)
The face of Pfc. Jacklin is significant here because we find out that this soldier, in Winch's nightmare, is connected to the incident that Welsh had with Tella in The Thin Red Line. The difference between the two is that, in Whistle, Winch could not get to Jacklin to ease his pain. He was pinned down with the other troops and watching as Jacklin was repeatedly sniped at. This is his recurring nightmare.
The parallel relationshiop between Winch's physical condition and his deteriorating mental state recalls to mind analogy to Karen Holmes. She considers herself an empty shell because she has lost her womb, the essence of her womanhood. The First Sergeant, however, is emotionally empty and has lost his heart. Karen has lost the ability to be a mother and Warden has lost his troops, his children.
Though each novel is strong enough to stand on its own, when read together the reader experiences something of what the author actually underwent during a brief piece of his life. A life where he and his generation were thrown into the history books. But his trilogy asks us to remember that the process was not as antisceptic as the history books present things. Real people, just like the ones we know and meet everyday, were crippled, maimed and died horribly, sometimes alone, sometimes for no other reason than they were told to "get up and move that way" and they did; they were sons, they were brothers, they were fathers, they were soldiers.
On 9 May 1977 James Jones succumbed to congestive heart failure.
Giles, James. James Jones. Boston: Twayne, 1981. Jones, James. From Here to Eternity. New York: Dell, 1985. --. The Thin Red Line. New York: Scribner, 1962. --. Whistle: A Work-In-Progress By James Jones. New York: Delacorte, 1978. --. WWII. New York: Ballantine, 1975. MacShane, Frank. Into Eternity: The Life of James Jones, American Writer. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985.