16th August 2023
“Nobody could sleep. When morning came, assault craft would be lowered… All over the ship, all through the convoy, there was a knowledge that in a few hours some of them were going to be dead”.
In the first paragraph of Norman Mailer’s account of the invasion of the fictional Pacific Island of Anopopei by American troops at the height of the Second World War, we are thrust immediately into implicit membership of an intelligence and reconnaissance platoon, as it waits on board ship prior to landing,
And, sure enough, the platoon’s first fatality occurs shortly after its arrival on the beach, the young soldier’s inadequate steel helmet pieced by a flying piece of mortar shrapnel.
Perhaps the most striking feature of this war novel is that, as the narrative proceeds, the platoon is relatively rarely in actual combat with the enemy. There is one significant battle when a Japanese attack attempts to break across a river on the front line, several brushes with unseen opponents on the periphery of the island’s jungle and another skirmish when the platoon is on a lengthy patrol. In the background, the sound of artillery fire on the Japanese positions forms a continual soundtrack during the daylight hours. The platoon does suffer further loss of life, however, including when an unexpected machine-gun bullet to the chest brings sudden death to a character with whom we had been heavily invested.
Rather, Mailer is much more interested in telling us about the individual soldiers in the platoon, the continually changing relationships between them, the widespread cynicism and disrespect that they have for their superiors and the unremitting and punishing physical conditions that they all endure.
And so it is that we learn the personal back-stories of, amongst others: Martinez from San Antonio, his nerves highly strung from the previous conflict on the island on Motome; Croft, the tough, bullying sergeant; Red, the cynical drifter; Hearn, the disillusioned graduate; Ridges, the religious son of an impoverished farmer; and Roth and Goldstein, the two Jews at the bottom of platoon’s food chain.
Their ultimate commander on the island – General Edward Cummings – is an ambitious but ultimately sad figure, I think. In the modern parlance, he has a “gender-role confusion” as a closeted homosexual in an unhappy marriage and with complicated feelings towards at least one of the men under his command.
Cummings’s immediate military objective is to break through the Japanese’s defensive Toyaku Line – a thin stretch between Mount Anaka and the sea – but he is under increasing pressure as the time passes. His requests for naval support are continually thwarted and, he realises, the discipline within his forces is ebbing away, as evidenced by the submission of false patrol reports by some of his sergeants and an increased incidence of malingering in the hospital tent.
Although not in regular combat with the enemy, the physical – and mental – stresses placed on the members of the platoon are evident throughout the narrative. At various times, the platoon is pulling a large gun along a heavily muddied track, building a road to the front line, hacking its way through the thick jungle, wading up a river, crossing the sun-drenched lower hills of the mountain and then scaling its perilously thin ledges higher up. At times, Mailer takes us on these tortuous journeys yard by painful yard.
Throughout all this, the combination of torrential storms, stultifying humidity and hot sun means that the soldiers are consistently wet for days at a time, whether from rain or sweat or both. Shortly after their arrival on the island, a high wind blows away the tents from their bivouac near the beach. The guard duty at night involves shivering under damp blankets. Over time, the men endure blisters, diarrhoea, sores on the shoulders from carrying their loads, gnat bites, nausea and sheer exhaustion. There is no respite.
The sounds of the jungle are on permanent call, of course: the noises of various types of wildlife mingled with the perceived and permanent threat of enemy ambush. The wildlife itself plays a relatively minor role – insect bites and one close encounter with a snake aside – until the later stages of the novel. But its impact, when it does come, is devastating. I suspect that, in that particular episode, Mailer took a perverse enjoyment in revelling in the subconscious fears of every comfortable city-dweller.
We keep coming back to the members of the platoon – their hopes, fears, prejudices. From several of them – usually those prone to boasting the most about their sexual conquests – there is little confidence in their wives at home being faithful. Inevitably, there are conflicts within the group – their nerves on edge and energy levels diminished – which are exacerbated by the casual racism and anti-Semitism. The sudden death of one of their number produces – from one or two of the others – a callously shocking lack of sympathy.
For Mailer, the dehumanisation of the soldiers is only one symptom – albeit a significant one – of the savageries of war. After three members of a Japanese unit are killed immediately after being taken by surprise, the fourth is summarily executed on the trail. There is the looting of corpses’ possessions and, on one occasion, the crude extraction of a cadaver’s gold teeth.
Underpinning all this is the realisation amongst some in the platoon that, assuming they remained alive, they were in for the long haul. One of the malingers – Minetta – resting in the hospital tent after sustaining a minor wound to his leg “thought of the war, which would stretch on forever. After this island there’s gonna be another one and then another one…Aaah, there’s no future in the whole goddam thing”. Later, in the absence of a “million dollar wound” – which would lead to a transfer States-side, but with no permanent damage – he seriously contemplates the more drastic action of shooting his foot off and, at the depths of his macabre blackness, weighs up the pros and cons of deciding which one it should be.
Likewise, when some of the other members of platoon start to speculate on what they will do when they get out of the Army, it is Croft – the sergeant – who sets them straight; “Waste of time thinking about it. The war’ll go on for a while”. And so it does: in a contemporaneous passage, General Cummings speculates on whether he could get another promotion before the campaign begins in the Philippines. (Mailer himself saw action in a reconnaissance platoon in the Philippines in 1945).
The Naked and the Dead was the first – and most successful – of Norman Mailer’s 12 novels, published when he was just 25. (His long career – which included journalism, theatre and film – effectively lasted until his death at the age of 84 in 2007, as The Castle in the Forest was published in January of that year). The intense, linear structure of the narrative is punctuated by episodes of “The Time Machine”, which fill in the characters’ backstories, and the “Chorus”, which consist of short acts of play-like dialogue between characters. The main stylistic concession made by the author was the substitution of the word “fug” for the more usual – and, here, prolific – four-letter expletive. The 541-page volume of that I read was published by Allan Wingate of London as the 12th Cheap Edition in 1955 following the earlier nine Impressions of 1949 to 1951.
JR Alexander 