A little bit of literature

“The job lasted a month. It was a wonderful time, even though there was a strict order against giving passes. In a situation like this, who the hell wanted passes? Engineer Companies delivered them ready-cut beams and planking of koa wood that they had cut on the slopes of Barber’s Point. All they had to do was dig holes in sand and set beams in them and line them with planking, and then put beams over them and line them with planking, and then cover it all up with sand, after they had made sure the MG apertures pointed the right direction. Their nights were their own. The officers hardly ever came around from the CP in the daytime, let alone during the night. The Company took care not to strain themselves with overwork in the daytime, so as not to detract from the nights. In fact, they were usually so hungover and worndown from the nights that they could not have strained themselves if they had wanted. That was one of the reasons the job took a month. It was a wonderful time.”

Vocabulary build-up

The noun beam means “a squared-off log or a large, oblong piece of timber, metal, or stone used especially as a horizontal support in construction.”

The noun strain means “a great or excessive demand or stress on one's body, mind, or resources.”

Comments

James Jones was born in Robinson, Illinois, in 1921, soon after the end of the Great War. In 1939, just after the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe, he enlisted in the US Army, serving in the 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii during Pearl Harbor and later in Guadalcanal in the Pacific, where he was wounded in action. He drew on his wartime experiences in his many acclaimed novels, including the National Book Award-winner “From Here to Eternity,” published in 1951.James Jones' bestseller portrays the courage, violence and passions of men and women who lived by unspoken codes and with unutterable despair. The plot follows a group of soldiers at an Army post in Hawaii a few months before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The novel was turned into a classic movie (1953) with one of the most memorable heterosexual sex scenes of all time, a passionate romp on the beach starring Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr. However, the original story written by James Jones presented explicit mentions of gay sex, which were taken out by the publisher. Fortunately, sixty years later, Mr. Jones’s estate has made a deal to reissue a digital version of the book that restores those cuts. All in all, with more or less fidelity of the original writing, “From Here to Eternity” is considered one of the most important American novels to come out of World War II, a masterpiece that captures as no other the honor and savagery of men.