Dog Company 6

Dog Company Six, Chapter One Chapter One Bayard regarded his outstretched legs with a great deal of interest. They were floating in front of him like two silver-white fish on the surface of the rusty-red water. All his civilian fat was gone. The legs were thin, and the wet, white skin was stretched tight against the bone and muscle. He must look, he decided, like one of El Greco's gaunt and attenuated figures. Bayard was in his bathtub. He had been wounded in April; it was now June. This was the Hotel Otsu on Lake Biwa, a few miles from Kyoto. He had arrived at the Otsu that afternoon. The hotel had been built, he supposed, twenty or thirty years ago for the American and European tourist trade. Now its shabby elegance was made available to dependents, special visitors, transient officers, and convalescents through the good offices of U.S. Army Special Services, Far East Command. The porcelain of the tub was cracked and stained. The shoddy Oriental imitation of Western plumbing creaked and groaned and worked its secrets spasmodically. Above the chipped and broken shoulder-high tile, the walls and ceiling were painted a strident yellow. The underpowered electric lightbulb hanging bare from its cord glowed a sullen brown. But the water was hot, and this was the bath he had promised himself-the long, hot soaking that would wash away the ingrained pore-deep smells of Korea and the overlying antiseptic and fecal odors of the hospital. The soaking went on for a long time. At last Bayard broke free from the lethargy induced by the bath and climbed reluctantly from the tub. He stood in the center of the tiny bathroom and rubbed dry with the thin and slightly stale towel, examining his bare body as he did so with the diligent curiosity of a child. He dried his legs thoughtfully. They were oddly smooth. Then he remembered that the months of living in woolen underclothing had worn off the body hair. The scar from his wound crawled like a many-legged red lizard from the angle of his hip to the lower edge of his ribs. The surgeon in the Yokusuka hospital had said, "If that piece of grenade had been one inch this way or that. . . ." Still naked, Bayard moved over to the washbasin, where he had laid out his shaving things. He studied his face critically in the mirror. The skin lay firm and clear against the bone. The red windburn had changed in the hospital to a deceptively healthy-looking tan. But his eyes were still tired, and his brown hair, cut to regulation length this afternoon by the hotel barber, was beginning to show streaks of gray. If it had been an American-made fragmentation grenade, it probably would have killed all three of them. As it was, the casing had been poorly cast in some Chinese foundry, and half of it in one large fragment had ripped across Bayard's abdomen while the rest shivered into pinpoint-sized splinters that had peppered Baby-san and Havac. Bayard shaved carefully using a new blade, combed his hair, and then went into the bedroom. He put on a new set of cotton underwear. The drawers were his regular size, but they were too big and to hold them up he had to tighten the tapes on the sides all the way. In the nine months between Inchon and now he had lost twenty pounds. The mama-san who looked after his room had brought his uniform from the tailor shop, and it lay on the bed, the green kersey jacket and trousers neatly pressed. The uniform was enlisted issue, and the cloth felt stiff and unfamiliar. The green wool would be hot and uncomfortable on a June night, but his summer service tropical worsteds were lost, along with the rest of his officer's uniforms. The lieutenant in charge of the warehouse had been more than apologetic for the loss. He had been practically grief-stricken. He insisted on showing Bayard that the division's personal effects were now all neatly sorted and stacked, tagged and palletized. Everything was very sSimmons, Edwin Howard is the author of 'Dog Company 6' with ISBN 9780425180228 and ISBN 0425180220.