To the End of the War Read Online Free
Author: James Jones
followed Jones’s lead and used the name Sandy throughout. All other names remain the same.
Chapters based on gossip about prominent Robinsonians have been omitted.
Sections of the novel that read like book reports on Eugene Debs, Prince Kropotkin, Thorstein Veblen, and other radicals have been omitted. Reading in Lowney’s library, Jones caught the excitement of college students taking the course “Great Ideas of the World” and wanted to let the whole world know about his intellectual discoveries. Again, he had not internalized these ideas. That material is omitted.
Lessons on Emersonian Transcendentalism have been omitted, as has a lecture on the yin-yang symbol. Lowney’s comments on art and politics are not included.
Johnny’s rage remains, the causes near the surface and deep, deep.
One man whom Johnny once liked now gleefully wants to drop bombs. He remains in all his sinfulness.
Hypocrisy on the home front remains, as do war-mongering ministers, businessmen, and citizens.
Johnny and friends remain, frozen in time, as are their anger, frustration, pain, and humanity.
A toast: “To the end of the war.”
From his first writings about army life, James Jones had a gift for dialogue. In this story, probably written in 1944, he explores the mistreatment and resentments of enlisted men. Wounded and with physical or psychological impairments, they were now declared fit for additional combat service. Desertion was an option.
Little has changed since 1944: the Walter Reed Medical Center scandal, the repeated deployments, the refusal to give benefits to some wounded men and women, and the need for wartime cannon fodder, even if the soldier is not physically fit.
The widow of a fifty-year-old reservist in one of our current wars “said her husband suffered from a bad knee, a bum shoulder, and high blood pressure—and never should never have been sent to Iraq in the first place, given his physical ailments” ( Newsweek , February 14, 2011, p. 34).
OVER THE HILL
ON THE ROAD, AUTUMN 1943
T HE HOSPITAL R ECEIVING O FFICE WAS a small wooden building set in the large quadrangle of brick buildings that held the wards and the various branches of Surgery and Therapy and Pharmacy. Through an opening in this brick bulwark the trucks brought the newly arrived patients from the hospital trains, and long lines of the walking sick and wounded twined in and out around the inner sanctum and passed through the Receiving Office to be assigned and checked and looked over. The hospital, originally built to handle three thousand patients, was already becoming overcrowded and plans were being figured as to how to handle the influx that swept in like waves from the hospital trains that pulled into the hospital siding downtown in Memphis every few days.
This day, however, was not one of those in which a wild scramble was enacted to get the patients settled before dark. There was no influx of patients in the quadrangle, and its largeness looked deserted and lonely except for the occasional uniformed figures going back and forth on some kind of duty.
Corporal Johnny Carter, formerly of Endymion, Indiana, carrying the black gladstone which held all his earthly possessions, limped indifferently across the expanse of dusty sparsely grassed red earth from the Convalescent Barracks to the Receiving Office. He was on his way out, back to duty.
He left his bag on the porch of the white wooden building and went inside to pick up his records and travel orders. He didn’t know yet where he was going, and he didn’t care much since one place would be about the same as another: The best he could hope for would be a camp near or in a large town. He was not happy at the prospect of going back to duty.
The chief clerk, who handed him the orders and the large brown envelope of records, was a tall slim arrogantly intelligent young man, after the usual pattern of army clerks. He was a technical sergeant and his black wavy hair was worn long in
Chapters based on gossip about prominent Robinsonians have been omitted.
Sections of the novel that read like book reports on Eugene Debs, Prince Kropotkin, Thorstein Veblen, and other radicals have been omitted. Reading in Lowney’s library, Jones caught the excitement of college students taking the course “Great Ideas of the World” and wanted to let the whole world know about his intellectual discoveries. Again, he had not internalized these ideas. That material is omitted.
Lessons on Emersonian Transcendentalism have been omitted, as has a lecture on the yin-yang symbol. Lowney’s comments on art and politics are not included.
Johnny’s rage remains, the causes near the surface and deep, deep.
One man whom Johnny once liked now gleefully wants to drop bombs. He remains in all his sinfulness.
Hypocrisy on the home front remains, as do war-mongering ministers, businessmen, and citizens.
Johnny and friends remain, frozen in time, as are their anger, frustration, pain, and humanity.
A toast: “To the end of the war.”
From his first writings about army life, James Jones had a gift for dialogue. In this story, probably written in 1944, he explores the mistreatment and resentments of enlisted men. Wounded and with physical or psychological impairments, they were now declared fit for additional combat service. Desertion was an option.
Little has changed since 1944: the Walter Reed Medical Center scandal, the repeated deployments, the refusal to give benefits to some wounded men and women, and the need for wartime cannon fodder, even if the soldier is not physically fit.
The widow of a fifty-year-old reservist in one of our current wars “said her husband suffered from a bad knee, a bum shoulder, and high blood pressure—and never should never have been sent to Iraq in the first place, given his physical ailments” ( Newsweek , February 14, 2011, p. 34).
OVER THE HILL
ON THE ROAD, AUTUMN 1943
T HE HOSPITAL R ECEIVING O FFICE WAS a small wooden building set in the large quadrangle of brick buildings that held the wards and the various branches of Surgery and Therapy and Pharmacy. Through an opening in this brick bulwark the trucks brought the newly arrived patients from the hospital trains, and long lines of the walking sick and wounded twined in and out around the inner sanctum and passed through the Receiving Office to be assigned and checked and looked over. The hospital, originally built to handle three thousand patients, was already becoming overcrowded and plans were being figured as to how to handle the influx that swept in like waves from the hospital trains that pulled into the hospital siding downtown in Memphis every few days.
This day, however, was not one of those in which a wild scramble was enacted to get the patients settled before dark. There was no influx of patients in the quadrangle, and its largeness looked deserted and lonely except for the occasional uniformed figures going back and forth on some kind of duty.
Corporal Johnny Carter, formerly of Endymion, Indiana, carrying the black gladstone which held all his earthly possessions, limped indifferently across the expanse of dusty sparsely grassed red earth from the Convalescent Barracks to the Receiving Office. He was on his way out, back to duty.
He left his bag on the porch of the white wooden building and went inside to pick up his records and travel orders. He didn’t know yet where he was going, and he didn’t care much since one place would be about the same as another: The best he could hope for would be a camp near or in a large town. He was not happy at the prospect of going back to duty.
The chief clerk, who handed him the orders and the large brown envelope of records, was a tall slim arrogantly intelligent young man, after the usual pattern of army clerks. He was a technical sergeant and his black wavy hair was worn long in
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