From Hell To Eternity-With The Film Adaptation Of James Jones’ From Here To Eternity In Mind  

 

By Zack James

 

“You know I never got too deeply involved in the nuts and bolts of Army life when I was drafted into that branch of the service in 1969 during the heart of the Vietnam War but I do know that down at the base of the Army, down at the platoon, company, brigade level that the “top kick,” the First Sergeant was the guy who made everything work. Forget the supply sergeants who just stole whatever was not nailed down and sold what they could to whoever would buy it. How do you think all those Army-Navy stores that we bought our de riguer World War II surplus Army jackets, knapsacks and boots got their inventory? Forget that foolishness too about how an “army travels on it stomach,” the mess sergeants put out swill, keeping the good stuff for themselves and the officers, always the officers getting their kick-backs, and there is special place in hell for every freaking “mess” the way they have ruined generations of young men’s appetites. It was the “top kick” and no other who kept things going. That part of the film was straight up as far as I could tell,” long-windedly as was his wont when he got “tagged” on a common subject answered Sam Lowell to the question that Laura Perkins his long-time companion had asked about the movie that they had just watched.

The movie; the classic black and white film adaptation of James Jones’ just prior to American involvement via the dastardly deeds at Pearl Harbor World War II book, From Here To Eternity. Laura had at fist nixed the idea of seeing this film (brought to them via the beauties of Netflix mail delivery-not streaming) because the way the film had been described in the blurb it was a “war” film something she shied away from. Sam told her that while it was a war film in the generic sense it was much deeper than that, not some The Longest Day or Saving Private Ryan “blood and guts” and so he had persuaded her to watch it with him one Saturday night after she had come home from a short but necessary stay in the hospital and they had decided to just take it easy that night. She had liked the film so much that she had immediately afterward asked the question about how true to life it had been and had not been peeved as she had occasion to be many times when he did his long-winded wont.

Knowing only a little of Sam’s checkered military career, knowing basically that he had been in the military during the Vietnam War period like her younger brother and a lot of other guys from Riverdale where she and Sam had grown up during that turbulent time Laura had asked the question after observing  that “Top,” Sergeant Warden played by hulky Burt Lancaster (“hulky” Laura’s term) seemed to have been running the show quite nicely and efficiently while the philandering Captain went off base to some rendezvous with some dishy dame (Sam’s term). That seemed counter-intuitive to her since she had thought that officers, the higher up the better, ran the show.        

You know Sam’s answer and for a guy who was seven kinds of hell to the Army in his time he had the “Army way” down pat. That was what amazed Sam about seeing the film again after maybe forty years. How despite the difference in time periods (pre-World War II and Vietnam, hell, from stories that he had heard from younger “vets” from Afghanistan and Iraq in his work for Veterans for Peace later too), the pre-war voluntary army versus a basically conscripted army, and advances in the killing machine methods the same “chicken-shit” stuff had happened back then. The same freaking stupid stuff down at the base of the Army where it lived.   

“Sure I knew guys like Prewett, the main antagonist played by Montgomery Clift who was given the “treatment” because he did not want to box for the company, a company whose only existence seemed to be so they could win the regimental boxing tournament for the Captain who figured to ride that to a Major’s rank, The tourney set for, get this, December 15, 1941, you knew once you saw that date no damn tournament was going to happen. Yeah there was no damn place for an odd-ball like Prewett despite the fact that he loved the Army. Not many guys during my short time were thinking about making it a career, about being “lifers” but Prewett out of the sticks down in Kentucky where he probably didn’t even have shoes, didn’t get three “squares” a day [three meals a day, okay] had it all mapped out. Figured on thirty years and an easy grift. But he was only fooling himself, because even “from hunger” guys who don’t toe the line don’t have long careers in that man’s Army-where do you think the whole idea of “go along, to get along” came from. Sure the Army, the politicians just picked it up later.”   

“Guys like Maggio too?,” echoed Laura [Played by Frank Sinatra in a great and underrated performance which should be mentioned since we are now in the centennial of his birth.]

Sam chuckled, “Especially guys like Maggio, guys who half the time like my brother had the “choice.” “The “choice”? queried Laura. “Yeah, guys, guys for the neighborhoods, working-class ethnic guys, Italians, Irish, maybe Eastern European, would get the choice. Not blacks, not many anyway who were in segregated units at the time period of the film, although not in my time hell blacks and Latinos were over-represented since the kids from the good schools and neighborhoods took a pass on induction. You noticed you didn’t see any black faces in high or low places in the film. Usually a guy like Maggio, my brother, got into some trouble short of murder, one. My brother’s was for armed robbery of a gas station for about fifty stinking bucks. He was seventeen and so the judge, like a million judges handed the “choice” out. In my brother’s case it was either three to five hard at Norfolk, you know about Norfolk, right? [Laura nods silently.] Or join the Army, no that was not the way it was put my brother told me, you would sign up for military service and you could s choose the branch.”    

“Needless to say that didn’t happen as much during the later stages of the Vietnam War when going to that country was like a death warrant but it happened. Still does even with a volunteer Army,” Sam continued. He could see though that Laura’s eyes were glassing over so he moved on to some of the other aspects of the film that seemed true.

“You know every guy was forever thinking about weekend passes, passes to get away from the bases. Passes to go into some Army town like in the film, or like Anniston down in Alabama where I took Advanced Infantry Training (AIT) which would have put me in a unit just like Prewett’s and Maggio’s except in 1968, 1969 nobody, no grunt, no canon-fodder, was being sent to Hawaii as a final destination. The only place, or practically the only place where 11 Bravos, infantry, were wanted and needed was hell-hole Vietnam. Period.,” Sam prattled on nervously.

“You didn’t go to Vietnam, did you? You never told me much about your military stuff, said it was in the past. Said the Veterans for Peace stuff was what was important when we reconnected after all those years at our fortieth class reunion back in 2006.  I heard something about you back then, back in about 1971 I think, about you being arrested in some protest but I thought that was after you got out of the service. My brother said something about it, and not in a nice way either. You know how gung-ho he was.”    

Sam red-faced as he answered said “he would talk about it later.” “Yeah, going to town even in the hell-hole Deep South was something to look forward to, to see girls, even if they were tramps and ‘skags’ Go get drunk and drown in the sorrows of the hard fact that they were being trained to be nothing but killers.” [Laura laughed remembering that old time term for the less attractive girls in the class back in the 1960s.] 

Then Sam turned sullen as he thought about the question that was really being posed that night, posed beyond the film and the true aspects of the film from the parade marching and drilling, the chow lines, the rinky-dinky stuff, and the overlay of romance-Army style-foremost between “Top” and the Captain’s wife, played by Deborah Kerr and in the background between Prewett and Lorene, played by Donna Reed who would in turn in the 1960s become a very loud Hollywood opponent of the Vietnam  madness. He chuckled silently no way the Army, peacetime or wartime, was built for romance. Those love affairs were doomed just as his marriage to his first wife was doomed when they hastily decided to do get married during the heat of the Vietnam War. Mistake.

That was not what was agitating him just then but that scene of Maggio escaping from the stockade all battered and half-dead (a few moments later he would be dead but “free,” free from the brutal stockade). This night under the spell of this film he would finally tell Laura about the end of his Army career and be done with it.

“I freaked out a little at that scene of Maggio all battered and bloody after he escaped from the stockade. I “served” two terms in the Army stockade up at Fort Devens, you know up in Ayer mostly gone now as far as I know so I know that it was no easy trip. I never ran into anybody as brutal as Sergeant Judson (played by Ernest Borgnine) but it was no picnic even though I was being held in a separate area for “political prisoners” and other malcontents whom they didn’t want in the “general population” of the stockade.

Laura interrupted, “Are you serious?”  

“Yes, let me tell the highlights now and some other time when I have thought about how much I more I want to tell you I will go into more detail. I am only going to tell you this much because of this damn film,” Sam told Laura with a certain dry-voiced low tune.

“I didn’t resist the draft, didn’t have my head on straight enough before I got inducted, got drafted, like your brother, like a million other guys who when called-went-like it, hate it, you went and you know that was true in Riverdale like in a million other towns. I had my anti-war views more lightly held then, not enough to be a conscientious objector, a Quaker or so I thought. About three days into basic I knew that I had made a mistake that my anti-war views were a lot stronger than I realized (mixed in with confusion, a desire not to die and a few other not always unconfused feelings). Needless to say as the die got cast with me as an 11 Bravo my reactions got more intense. But not enough until I got orders for Vietnam in the summer of 1970 to do anything about it.   

“Then I got “religion,” decided to go see the Quakers in Cambridge that somebody told me about to see if they could help. In the meantime I got married to Josie and I don’t want to talk about that tonight, please, okay. I was supposed to report to Fort Lewis in Washington state for transport to Vietnam but I was “advised” that if I went absent without leave (AWOL, like Prewett) for a period that I would be “dropped from the rolls” out there and could turn myself in to Devens and up there place my conscientious objector application in. I did so. As basically a Catholic “just war” objector then the damn thing was turned down then and I was set for orders back to Vietnam again.

“In those days, 1969, 1970 the war had gone on so long that anti-war protestors were tired of the same old, same old demonstrations in Washington each spring and fall and were beginning to demonstrate at military bases. I joined in one of those in front of Devens one weekday-afternoon in my uniform. That was the first special court-martial- (and stockade time-six months the maximum for such a tribunal). At this time I had been given a civilian lawyer through the Quakers who was pursuing my CO case in the federal court in Boston in a habeas corpus action for illegal detention-basically that they should have approved my CO application which was kind of a complicated legal argument more suitably to be told later.           

“I did the time without too much hassle, actually did a lot of reading and thinking so it wasn’t a total bust. Then I got released after my six months were up-no good time either since I refused to work and so on so I got the full kick. When I got out though I was right back in because I refused to wear the uniform. I am getting tired so let me finish up. I got another six month sentence most of which I served when the federal courts came through on that habeas action, I was discharged and told never to darken their, the Army’s, doors again. Get this-with an honorable discharge which was right since they should have discharged me prior to the stockade-that is what the court said. I’ll tell you more sometime but just remember that look on Maggio’s face when he broke out of the stockade. Free, free at last. That was me when I got out, okay.