Chapter 33
THIS BRIEF CHAPTER is from Winch’s viewpoint after learning of the death of Prell. In this chapter we see the progressive deterioration of Winch. He goes crazy.
We have already seen the signs of Winch’s imminent crackup: the night he saw the image of one of the platoon’s dead infantrymen on the windshield of his car and skidded off the road; his urge to pinch the Gray Lady at Prell’s wedding; his wild poker game at the Claridge and later his burning Jack Alexander’s IOU; his bad dreams of the Japanese charging with the bayonet during the mortar fire and of the soldier in no man’s land being wounded over and over again with no hope of rescue; the fart in the Peabody restaurant; his hatred for the two Wurlitzer jukeboxes in the main PX, which he viewed as the world of the future—“chrome, and pipe, and plastic, and whirling iridescent lights, and jarred, canned music”; his pent-up grief over the death of Landers. All of this mental stress was compounded by the increasing symptoms of congestive heart failure. When Strange left Winch in the Camp O’Bruyerre PX at the end of Chapter 30, he “did not think Winch looked good at all.”
“Prell and Landers and Strange were what was left to him of his real life,” the author wrote in Chapter 22. And now Winch hears of the death of Prell.
Beginning with Winch’s dwelling on the fate of Prell, the action in this chapter took place in May, 1944, not long before the D-Day invasion.
Winch was still seeing Carol, but they were beginning to make their farewells. He had not yet broken up with her—she was not leaving Luxor until June—but he had in fact pushed her toward leaving and encouraged her to marry her new boyfriend from Ohio. When she finally departed, it was the end of their affair.
During the time he was making his farewells to Carol, and advising her to marry the second lover rather than the boy from Luxor, Winch had been wandering down to the grenade range of Camp O’Bruyerre in the afternoons. Being a top sergeant and now a junior warrant officer, he was on friendly terms with the grenade officer and grenade warrant officer, and there was a lot of amiable banter among them as they watched the raw draftees learn about hand grenades. While he was there one afternoon, when no one was looking he casually picked up a couple of grenades and slipped one into each pocket of his coat, then walked away unnoticed. Later, in his room, he unscrewed them with a pair of pliers and poured the powder into a jar, which he hid. For two or three nights he slept with the defused grenades under his pillow.
Then late one night, after he had been in the main PX drinking wine against the contradictory blasts of the two Wurlitzer jukeboxes, he returned to his room and put the powder back in the grenades. He waited for the base to quieten down. At 3:00 a.m. he put the grenades into his pockets and snuck across the deserted grounds to the PX.
Winch broke the window of the PX with the butt of one of the grenades. Then, very slowly and deliberately, he pulled out the pins and tossed the grenades one at a time through the broken windows into the empty room, so that they rolled across the floor and landed under the Wurlitzer machines.
Winch moved away and ducked. A terrific explosion followed, blowing up not only the Wurlitzers but most of the PX as well. Smoke and debris were everywhere.
Winch allowed the wreckage to settle and then peered in through the broken window at the results of his raid. He began to laugh maniacally. In no time at all the MPs descended on the area in jeeps. They spotted Winch hiding in the shrubbery. He tried to run from them, still laughing wildly, but because of his heart condition he could not get away from them, he bent over with breathlessness, and the MPs captured him and took him away. He wound up in the hospital prison ward.