Kimple took out a squad of native soldiers one steaming dawn and started out to trace a telegraph line. The jungle was thick on either side of the narrow trail. A few hours of heavy marching. A scrub tree spitting flame. The native sergeant led a mule back to camp. On the back of that mule, an object was covered with a white sheet. Faulkner came out of his tent and stared at the sergeant’s brown face. Captain Faulkner needed to ask no questions. He fainted dead away. Kimple had been cut half in two with machine gun fire. Half on one side of the mule and half on the other.
Faulkner took the trail alone, his rifle slung under his arm, the safety catch off. They found him with half his guts shot away, his bandoleer empty of shells, the crew of the machine gun lying in lifeless heaps over their cold armament.
They brought Johnny back to the base and sewed him up. He lived and they shipped him to the hospital at San Diego. A month later he was on his way to China. He wrote to no one. Not even his family knew where he was. One general court-martial followed another. They shipped him to Haiti.
He hasn’t heard from Carol since that summer nor she from him.
He has a few more years to live and he’s trying his best to get them over with. He’s rotting himself out with rum and eating out his heart for Carol. He almost ceases to breathe when you’re telling him about her.
But he’s all shot to pieces inside, and even if he took good care of himself, the bullets which tore him up would finish their work in a short time.
Faulkner is really a gentleman ranker. He is not built from enlisted material. And even when he’s drunk — which is the final test — he’s a gentleman.
