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the Freedom Hill PX near Da Nang. I've been ordered to write a feature
article on the Freedom Hill Recreation Center on Hill 327 for Leatherneck
magazine. I'm a combat correspondent assigned to the First Marine Division.
My job is to write upbeat news features which are distributed to the highly
paid civilian news correspondents who shack up with their Eurasian maids in
big hotels in Da Nang. The ten correspondents in the First Division's
Informational Services Office are reluctant public relations men for the war
in general and for the Marine Corps in particular. This morning my
commanding officer decided that a really inspiring piece could be written
about Hill 327, an angle being the fact that Hill 327 was the first
permanent position occupied by American forces. Major Lynch thinks I rate
some slack before I return to the ISO office in Phu Bai. My last three field
operations were real shit-kickers; in the field, a Marine correspondent is
just another rifleman. Rafter Man tags along behind me like a kid. Rafter
Man is a combat photographer. He has never been in the shit. He thinks I'm
one hard field Marine.
We go into a movie theater that looks like a warehouse and we watch
John Wayne in The Green Berets, a Hollywood soap opera about the love of
guns. We sit way down front, near some grunts. The grunts are sprawled
across their seats and they've propped muddy jungle boots onto the seats in
front of them. They are bearded, dirty, out of uniform, and look lean and
mean, the way human beings look after they've survived a long hump in the
jungle, the boonies, the bad bush.
I prop my boots on the seats and we watch John Wayne leading the Green
Beanies. John Wayne is a beautiful soldier, clean-shaven, sharply attired in
tailored tiger-stripe jungle utilities, wearing boots that shine like black
glass. Inspired by John Wayne, the fighting soldiers from the sky go
hand-to-hand with all of the Victor Charlies in Southeast Asia. He snaps out
an order to an Oriental actor who played Mr. Sulu on "Star Trek." Mr. Sulu,
now playing an Arvin officer, delivers a line with great conviction: "First
kill...all stinking Cong...then go home." The audience of Marines roars with
laughter. This is the funniest movie we have seen in a long time.
Later, at the end of the movie, John Wayne walks off into the sunset
with a spunky little orphan. The grunts laugh and whistle and threaten to
pee all over themselves. The sun is setting in the South China Sea--in the
East--which makes the end of the movie as accurate as the rest of it.
Most of the zoomies in the audience are clean-shaven office poges who
never go into the field. The poges wear spit-shined boots and starched
utilities and Air Force sunglasses. The poges stare at the grunts as though
the grunts were Hell's Angels at the ballet.
After the screen loses it color and the overhead lights come on, one of
the poges says, "Fucking grunts...they're nothing but animals..."
The grunts turn around. One grunt stands up. He walks over to where the
poges are sitting.
The poges laugh and punch each other and mock the grunt's angry face.
Then they are silent. They stare at the grunt's face. He's smiling now. He's
smiling like a man who knows a terrible secret.
The zoomie poges do not ask the grunt to explain why he is smiling.
They don't want to know.
Another grunt jumps up, punches the smiling grunt on the arm, says,
"Hey, fuck it, Mother. It ain't no big thing. We don't want to waste these
assholes."
The smiling Marine takes a step forward, but the smaller man stands in
his path.
The poges take advantage of the smiling grunt's delay. They walk
backwards up the aisle until they reach the door, then stumble out into
sunlight.
I say, "Well, no shit. And they say grunts are killers. You ladies do
not look like killers to me."
The smiling grunt is not smiling anymore. He says, "Okay, you
son-of-a-bitch..."
"Stand by, Mother," says the small Marine. "I know this shitbird."
Cowboy and I grab each other and wrestle and punch and pound each other
on the back. We say, "Hey, you old mother-fucker. How you been? What's
happening? Been getting any? Only your sister. Well, better my sister than
my mom, although mom's not bad."
"Hey, Joker, I was hoping I'd never see you again, you piece of shit. I
was hoping that Gunny Gerheim's ghost would keep you on Parris Island
for-ev-er and that he would give you motivation."
I laugh. "Cowboy, you shitbird. You look real mean. If I didn't know
that you're a born poge I'd be scared."
Cowboy grunts. "This is Animal Mother. He is mean."
The big Marine is picking his nose. "You better motherfucking believe
it." A belt of machine-gun bullets crisscross the Marine's chest so that he
looks like a big Mexican bandit.
I say, "This is Rafter Man. He's not a walking camera store. He's a
photographer."
"You a photographer?"
I shake my head. "I'm a combat correspondent."
Animal Mother sneers, exposing rotten canine teeth. "You seen much
'combat'?"
"Hey, don't give me any shit, asshole. My payback is a motherfucker. I
got twice as many operations as any grunt in Eye Corps. I'm just scarfing up
some bennies. My office is up in Phu Bai."
"Yeah?" Cowboy punches me in the chest. "That's our area. One-Five.
Delta Company--the baddest of the bad, the leanest of the lean, the meanest
of the mean. We hitched down here this morning. We rate some slack 'cause
our squad wasted beaucoup Victor Charlies. Man, we are life takers and
heartbreakers. Just ask for the Lusthog Squad, first platoon. We shoot them
full of holes, bro. We fill them full of lead."
I grin. "Sergeant Gerheim would be proud to hear it."
"Yeah," Cowboy says, nodding his head. "Yeah, I guess so." He looks
away. "I hate Viet Nam. They don't even have horses here. Why, there's not
one horse in all of Viet Nam."
Cowboy turns away and introduces us to his squad: Alice, a black man as
big as Animal Mother; Donlon, the radioman; Lance Corporal Stutten, honcho
of the third fire team; Doc Jay, the squad's Navy corpsman; T.H.E. Rock; and
the leader of the Lusthog Squad, Crazy Earl.
Crazy Earl is carrying an M-16 Colt automatic rifle slung on his
shoulder, but in his hands is a Red Ryder BB gun. He's as skinny as a
death-camp survivor, and his face consists of a long, pointed nose with a
hollow cheek on each side. His eyes are magnified by thick lenses and one
arm of his gray Marine-issue eyeglasses has been wired back on with too much
wire. He says, "Saddle up," and the grunts start picking up their gear,
their M-16's and M-79 grenade launchers and captured AK-47 assault rifles,
their ruck-sacks, flak jackets, and helmets. Animal Mother picks up an M-60
machine gun and sets the butt into his hip so that the black barrel slants
up at a forty-five-degree angle. Animal Mother grunts. Crazy Earl turns to
Cowboy and says, "We better be moving, bro. Mr. Shortround will punch our
hearts out if we're late."
Cowboy is picking up his gear. "That's affirmative, Craze. But you got
to talk to Joker, man. We were on the island together. He'll write you up
and make you famous."
Crazy Earl looks at me. There is no expression on his face. "There it
is. They call me Crazy Earl. Gooks love me until I blow them away. Then they
don't love me anymore."
I grin. "There it is."
Crazy Earl grins, gives me a thumbs-up, says, "Moving, Cowboy," and
then leads his squad out of the theater.
Cowboy punches me on the shoulder. "That's my fearless leader, bro. I'm
the first fire-team leader. I'll be squad leader soon. I'm just waiting for
Craze to get wasted. Or maybe he'll just go plain fucking crazy. That's how
Craze got to be honcho. Ol' Stoke, he was our honcho before Craze. Ol'
Supergrunt. Went stark raving. Pretty soon it'll be my turn."
"Hey, you keep your shit together, Cowboy. You know you're a fool. You
know you can't take care of yourself. Remember how easy it was for me to zap
you when Sergeant Gerheim made me play sniper? I mean, the Crotch ought to
fly your mom over here so that she can go into the bush with you."
Cowboy takes a few steps toward the door, turns, waves goodbye, grins.
I give him the finger.
After Cowboy and his squad are gone, Rafter Man and I watch a "Pink
Panther" cartoon. Then we pick up our weapons and head for the PX, which
looks like another warehouse. We buy junk food; pogey bait.
As we wait to pay for our pogey bait with military payment
certificates, Rafter Man tries to find some words. "Joker, I want...I want
to go out. I want to go out into the field. I been in country for almost
three months. Three months. All I do is take hand-shake shots at award
ceremonies. That's number ten, the worst. I'm bored. A high-school girl
could do my job." He gives MPC's to a pretty Vietnamese cashier.
Outside, an apprentice Viet Cong forces me to submit to a boot shine
while his older sister exhibits her breasts to Rafter Man.
"Relax, Rafter. You owe it to yourself. You'll be in the field soon
enough."
"Come on, Joker, cut me a huss. How can I teach geography if I never
see the world? Take me to Phu Bai. Okay?"
"Right," I say. "And then you'll get yourself wasted the first day
you're in the field and it'll be my fault. Your mom will find me after I
rotate back to the World. Your mom will beat the shit out of me. That's a
negative, Rafter. I'm not a sergeant, I'm only a corporal. I'm not
responsible for your scrawny little ass."
"Yes you are. I'm only a lance corporal."
Rafter Man and I stop by the USO and exchange a few off-color jokes
with the round-eyed Red Cross girls, who give us donuts. We ask the Red
Cross girls if they expect us to satisfy our lust with a donut and they
explain that a donut hole is all we rate.
In the USO there are barrels and barrels of letters which have been
written to us by children back in the World:
Dear Soldiers in Red Alert:
We have learned that men in Vietnam alive or dead are the bravest. We
are all trying to help you all
to come home to your house. We'll buy bonds. We help the Red Cross to
help soldiers. We'll help
you and your allies to come back. If possible, we'll send you gifts.
From Your Country,
Cheri
Dear Friend in Battle:
I am eight years old. I have one brother. I have one sister. It must be
sad over there.
Sincerely,
Jeff
Dear American:
I wish I could see you instead of talking on this Card. We have a dog,
and it is so cute. It is black
and has long hair. My name is Lori. I will always remember you in my
prayers. Tell everyone I love
them and I love you too, so good-bye.
Your Friend,
Lori
Rafter Man reads the letters out loud. He can still be touched by them.
To me, the letters are like shoes for the dead, who do not walk.
As dusk approaches, Rafter Man and I hitchhike back to the ISO hootch
in the First Marine Division HQ area.
Rafter Man writes a letter to his mother.
I take my black Magic Marker and I make a thick X over the number 59 on
the shapely thigh of a the life-sized nude woman I've drawn on the plywood
partition behind my rack. There is a smaller version of the same woman on
the back of my flak jacket.
Almost every Marine in Viet Nam carries a short-timer's calendar of his
tour of duty--the usual 365 days--plus a bonus of 20 days for being a
Marine. Some are drawn on flak jackets with Magic Markers. Some are drawn on
helmets. Some are tattoos. Others are mimeographed drawings of Snoopy, his
beagle body cut up by pale blue ink, or a helmet on a pair of boots--"The
Short-Timer." The designs vary, but the most popular design is a big-busted
woman-child cut up into pieces like a puzzle. Each day another fragment of
her delicious anatomy is inked out, her crotch being reserved, of course,
for those last few days in country.
Sitting on my rack, I type out my story about Hill 327, the
serviceman's oasis, about how all of us fine young American boys are assured
our daily ration of pogey bait and about how those of us who are lucky
enough to visit the rear areas get to see Mr. John Wayne karate-chop Victor
Charlie to death in a Technicolor cartoon about some other Viet Nam.
The article I actually write is a masterpiece. It takes talent to
convince people that war is a beautiful experience. Come one, come all to
exotic Viet Nam, the jewel of Southeast Asia, meet interesting, stimulating
people of an ancient culture...and kill them. Be the first kid on your block
to get a confirmed kill.
I fall into my rack. I try to sleep.
The setting sun pours orange across the rice paddies beyond our wire.
Midnight. Down in Dogpatch, in the ville, the gooks are shooting off
fireworks to celebrate the Vietnamese New Year. Rafter Man and I sit on the
tin roof of our hootch so that we can watch the more impressive fireworks on
the Da Nang airfield. One hundred-and-twenty-two-millimeter rockets are
falling from the dark sky. I open a B-3 unit and we eat John Wayne cookies,
dipping them in pineapple jam.
Chewing. Rafter Man says, "I thought this was supposed to be a truce on
account of Tet is their big holiday."
I shrug. "Well, I guess it's hard not to shoot somebody you've been
trying to shoot for a long time just because it's a holiday."
A sudden swooosssh...
Incoming.
I jump off the roof.
Rafter Man stands up, his mouth open. He looks down at me like I'm
crazy. "What--"
A rocket hits the deck fifty yards away.
Rafter Man falls off the roof.
I jerk Rafter Man to his feet. I shove him. He falls into a sandbagged
bunker.
All around the hill orange machine-gun tracers flash up into the sky.
Outgoing mortars. Outgoing artillery. Incoming rockets. All kinds of noise.
Illumination rounds pop high above the rice paddies. The flares sway down,
glowing, suspended beneath little parachutes.
I listen for a few moments and then I grab Rafter Man and I pull him
into our hootch. "Get your piece."
I pick up my M-16. I snap in a magazine. I throw a bandolier of full
magazines to Rafter Man. "Lock and load, recruit. Lock and load."
"But that's against regulations."
"Do it."
Outside, headquarters personnel from the surrounding hootches are
stumbling into rifle pits on the perimeter. They crouch down in the damp
holes in their skivvies. They stare out through the wire.
Down on the airfield in Da Nang Victor Charlie's rockets are raining
down on the concrete corrals where the Marine Air Wing parks its F-4 Phantom
fighter bombers. The rockets blink like flashbulbs. The flashbulbs pop. And
then the sound of drums.
The Informational Services Office on the hill is a carnival with green
performers--many, many of them. The lifers are all being fearless leaders.
The New Guys are about to wet their pants. Everyone is talking. Everyone is
pacing and looking, pacing and looking. Most of these guys have never been
in the shit. Violence doesn't excite them the way it excites me because they
don't understand it the way I do. They're afraid. Death is not yet their
friend. So they don't know what they're supposed to say. They don't know
what they're expected to do.
Major Lynch, our commanding officer, marches in and squares us away. He
tells us that Victor Charlie has used the Tet holiday to launch an offensive
all over Viet Nam. Every major military target in Viet Nam has been hit. In
Saigon, the United States Embassy has been overrun by suicide squads. Khe
Sanh is standing by to be overrun, a second Dien Bien Phu. The term "secure
area" no longer has any meaning. Only fifty yards up the hill, near the
commanding general's private quarters, a Viet Cong sapper squad has blown
apart a communications center with a satchel charge. Our "defeated" enemy is
lashing out with a power that is shocking.
Everybody starts talking at once.
Major Lynch is calm. He stands in the center of chaos and tries to give
us orders. Nobody listens. He makes us listen. His words snap out like
bullets from a machine gun. "Zip up those flak jackets. Put on that helmet,
Marine. Load your weapons but do not put a round in the chamber. Everybody
will shut the fuck up. Joker!"
"Aye-aye, sir."
Major Lynch stands in front of the Marine Corps flag--blood red, with
an eagle, globe, and anchor of gold, U.S.M.C. and Semper Fidelis. He taps my
chest with his finger. "Joker, you will take off that damned button. How is
it going to look if you get killed wearing a peace symbol?"
"Aye-aye, sir!"
"Get up to Phu Bai. Captain January will need all his people."
Rafter Man steps forward. "Sir? Could I go with Joker?"
"What? Sound off."
"I'm Compton, sir. Lance Corporal Compton. From Photo. I want to get
into the shit."
"Permission granted. And welcome aboard." The major turns, starts
yelling at the New Guys.
I say, "Sir, I don't think that--"
Major Lynch turns back to me, irritated. "You still here? Vanish,
Joker, most ricky-tick. And take the New Guy with you. You're responsible
for him." The major turns and starts snapping out orders for the defense of
the First Marine Division's Informational Services Office.
Chaos at the Da Nang airfield; enemy rockets have wasted hootches,
Marines, and Phantom jets. I talk to a poge in thick glasses. The poge is
reading a comic book. By using my voice as an instrument of command I
convince the poge that I'm an officer and that I'm on a personal errand for
the Commandant of the Marine Corps. Rafter Man and I are given a priority
rating and have to wait only nine hours before we're stuffed into the
cavernous belly of a C-130 Hercules cargo plane with a hundred Marine Corps
lifers.
Thousands of feet below, Viet Nam is a narrow stripe of dried dragon
shit upon which God has sprinkled toy tanks and airplanes and a lot of
trees, flies, and Marines.
As we descend for a landing at Phu Bai Combat Base, Rafter Man hugs his
three black-body Nikons like metal babies.
I laugh. "When the grunts see that the famous Rafter Man is here,
they'll just know that the war must be over."
Rafter Man grins.
Rafter Man won his nickname the night he fell out of the rafters at the
Thunderbird Club, the enlisted men's slop chute back in the First Marine
Division headquarters area. An Australian comedian and two fat Korean belly
dancers were entertaining an SRO audience. Rafter Man was hammered, but so
was I, so I couldn't stop him. We were back near the entrance and Rafter Man
decided that the only way he was going to get a good look at the seminude
belly dancers was to climb up into the rafters and crawl out above the mass
of green Marines.
General Motors and his staff had stopped by to catch the show. They did
that sometimes. General Motors liked to keep in touch with his Marines.
Rafter Man fell off the rafters like a green bomb, crashing through the
general's table, spilling beer, smashing pretzels, and knocking the general
and four of his staff officers on their brass behinds.
Hundreds of enlisted men, having assumed that Rafter Man was some kind
of unconventional mortar round, were one mass of green laundry. Then heads
began to pop up.
The staff officers jerked Rafter Man to his feet and started yelling
for the M.P.'s.
General Motors raised his hand and there was silence. Unlike many
Marine Corps generals, General Motors looked exactly like a Marine Corps
general, eyes as gray as gun metal, a face that was tough but sensitive--a
Cro-Magnon holy man's face. His jungle utilities were starched,
razor-creased, with shirt-sleeves rolled up neatly.
Rafter Man stood there, staring at the general, grinning like a goddamn
fool. He wobbled. He tried to walk but he couldn't. He was having enough
trouble just standing in one place.
General Motors ordered the broken table cleared away. Then he offered
Rafter Man his chair.
Rafter Man hesitated, looked at the general, then at the staff
officers, who were still pissed off, then at me, then he looked at the
general again. He grinned and sat down on the metal folding chair.
The general nodded, then sat down on the floor next to Rafter Man. With
a wave of his hand he ordered the staff officers to sit on the floor behind
him, which they did, still pissed off.
With another wave of his hand the general ordered the performers to go
on with the show.
The Australian comedian and the sweating belly dancers hesitated.
Rafter Man stood up.
He wobbled, then sank down to the deck beside the general. He put his
arm around the general's shoulders. General Motors looked at him without
expression. Rafter Man said, "Hey, bro, I can fly. Did you see me fly?" He
paused. "You think...am I drunk? I mean, am I hammered or am I hammered?" He
looked around. "Joker? Where's Joker?" But I was still stumbling over angry
poges. "Joker's my bro, sir. We enlisted personnel are tight, you know?
Indubitably. I am in love with those sexy women. I roger that..." His face
got serious. "Who'll take me through the wire? Sir? Where's Joker?" He
looked around, but didn't see me. "I'll fall in the wire. Or blow myself up.
Sir? SIR? I'll step on a mine. I got to find my bro, sir. I don't want to
fall into the wire, not again. JOKER!"
General Motors looked at Rafter Man and smiled. "Don't worry, son.
Marines never abandon their wounded."
Rafter Man looked at the general the way drunks look at people who say
things they don't understand. Then he smiled. He nodded. "Aye-aye, sir."
The Australian comedian and the meaty belly dancers resumed their act,
which consisted primarily of double-takes from the comedian every time one
of the belly dancers slung a big tender breast out of her tiny golden
costume. The act was a smashing success.
By the time the show was over, Rafter Man could stand only if he had a
wall to hold onto. General Motors took Rafter Man's arm and put it over his
shoulders and helped Rafter Man out of the E.M. club and, leaving the staff
officer's behind, helped Rafter Man to stagger down the hill, along the
narrow path through the tangle-foot and the concertina wire.
As the enlisted men left the Thunderbird Club, they watched this small
event and they smiled and nodded and said, "Decent. Number one."
And: "There it is."
Now the C-130 Hercules propjet is taxiing to a stop. The heavy cargo
door drops and slams into the runway. Rafter Man and I hop out with our
fellow passengers.
There are three damaged C-130's pushed together on the port side of the
airfield. On the starboard side of the airfield is the gutted carcass of
another C-130, charred, still smoking. Men in tinfoil spacesuits are
squirting the torn metal with white foam.
Rafter Man and I ditty-bop off the airfield and we hump down a freshly
oiled dirt road until we come to the perimeter of Phu Bai Combat Base, about
a mile from the airfield and thirty-four miles from the DMZ.
Phu Bai is a vast mud puddle cut into sections by perfectly aligned
rows of frame hootches. The largest structure at Phu Bai is HQ for the Third
Marine Division. The big wooden building stands as a symbol of our power and
as a temple of those who love the power.
We stop at the guard bunker. A big dumb M.P. orders us to clear our
weapons. I click the magazine out of my M-16. Rafter Man does the same. I
stare back at the big dumb M.P. to assert my principles. He is scribbling on
a clipboard with a stubby yellow pencil.
Suddenly the M.P. punches Rafter Man in the chest with his walnut
baton. "You a New Guy?" Rafter Man nods. "I got a working party for you.
You're going to fill sandbags for my bunkers." The M.P. hooks his thumb
toward the guard bunker in the center of the road. A big bite has been taken
out of the bunker. A mortar shell has blasted through one layer of sandbags
and has split open a second layer, spilling sand.
I say, "He's with me."
Sneering, the sergeant draws himself up inside his crisp, clean
stateside utilities, his white helmet liner with Military Police stenciled
in red, his white rifle belt with its gold buckle bearing the eagle, globe
and anchor, his shiny new forty-five automatic pistol, and his black
spit-shined stateside shoes. The big dumb M.P. is smugly enthroned in his
power to exact the trivial. "He'll do what I say, motherfucker. Cor-poral."
He thumps his black metal collar chevrons with the tip of his walnut baton.
"I'm a sergeant."
I nod. "Affirmative. That's affirmative, you fucking lifer. But this
man is only a lance corporal. And he takes his orders from me."
The big dumb M.P. shrugs. "Okay. Okay, motherfucker. You can tell him
what to do. You can fill my sandbags, corporal. Many, many of them."
I look at the deck. An explosion is building up inside me. I experience
fear, and a terrible strain, as the pressure grows and grows, and then
release, relief. "No, you dumb redneck. Negative, you fucking pig. No, I'm
not going to fall out for any Mickey Mouse working party. You know why?
Huh?" I slam the magazine back into my M-16 and I snap the bolt, chambering
a round.
I'm smiling now. I'm smiling as I jam the flash supressor into the big
dumb M.P.'s jelly belly and then I wait for him to make one sound, any
sound, or just the slightest movement and then I'm going to pull the
trigger.
The big dumb M.P.'s mouth falls open. He doesn't have anything else to
say. I don't think he wants me to fill his sandbags anymore.
The clipboard and the pencil fall.
Then, walking backward, the big dumb M.P. retreats into his bunker,
mouth open, hands up.
Rafter Man is too scared to say anything for a while.
I say, "You'll get used to this place. You'll change. You'll
understand."
Rafter Man remains quiet. We walk. Then, "You weren't bluffing. You
would have killed that guy. For nothing."
I say, "There it is."
Rafter Man is looking at me as though he's seeing something new. "Is
everybody like that? I mean, you were laughing. Like..."
"It's not the kind of thing you can talk about. There's no way to
explain stuff like that. After you've been in the shit, after you've got
your first confirmed kill, you'll understand."
Rafter Man is silent. His questions are silent.
"At ease," I say. "Don't kid yourself, Rafter Man, this is a slaughter.
In this world of shit you won't have time to understand. What you do, you
become. You better learn to flow with it. You owe it to yourself."
Rafter Man nods, but he doesn't reply. I know how he feels.
The Informational Services Office for Task Force X-Ray, a unit assigned
to cover elements of the First Division temporarily operating in the Third
Division's area, is a small frame hootch, constructed with two-by-fours and
slave labor. Nailed to the screen door is a red sign with yellow letters:
TFX-ISO. Roofed with sheets of galvanized tin and walled with fine-mesh
screening, the hootch is designed to protect us from the heat. The Seabees
have nailed green plastic ponchos along the side of the hootch. These dusty
flaps are rolled up during the furnace of the day and are rolled down at
night to keep out the fierce monsoon rain.
Chili Vendor and Daytona Dave are doing fleetniks in front of the ISO
hootch. Chili Vendor is a tough Chicano from East L.A. and Daytona Dave is
an easy-going surf bum from a wealthy family in Florida. They have
absolutely nothing in common. They are the best of friends.
About a hundred grunts have stuffed themselves into every available
piece of shade in the area. Each grunt has been given a fleetnik, a printed
form with spaces for all the necessary biographical data required to send a
photograph of the grunt to his hometown newspaper.
Daytona Dave is taking the photographs with a black-body Nikon while
Chili Vendor says, "Smile, scumbag. Say, 'shit.' Next."
The grunt next in line kneels down beside a little Vietnamese orphan of
undetermined sex. Chili Vendor slaps a rubber Hershey bar into the grunt's
hand. "Smile, scumbag. Say, 'shit.' Next."
Daytona Dave snaps the picture.
Chili Vendor snatches the grunt's fleetnik with one hand and the rubber
Hershey bar with the other. "Next!"
The orphan says, "Her, Marine number one! You! You! You give me
chop-chop? You souvenir me?" The orphan grabs at the Hershey bar and jerks
it out of Chili Vendor's hand. He bites the Hershey bar; it's rubber. He
tries to tear off the wrapper; he can't. "Chop-chop number ten!"
Chili Vendor snatches the rubber Hershey bar out of the orphan's hands
and tosses it to the next grunt in the line. "Keep moving. Don't you guys
want to be famous? Some of you dudes probably wasted this kid's family, but
back in your hometown you gonna be the big strong Marine with a heart of
gold."
I say in my John Wayne voice: "Listen up, pilgrim. You skating again?"
Chili Vendor turns, sees me and grins. "Hey, Joker, que pasa? This
might be skating, man, it fucking might be. These gook orphans are
hard-core. I think half of them are Viet Cong Marines."
The orphan is walking away, grumbling, kicking the road. Then, as
though to prove Chili Vendor's point, the orphan pauses. He turns around and
gives us the finger with both hands. Then he walks on.
Daytona Dave laughs. "That kid runs an NVA rifle company. Somebody blow
him away."
I grin. "You ladies are doing an outstanding job. You're both born
poges."
Chili Vendor shrugs. "Hey, bro, the Crotch don't send beaners into the
field. We're too tough. We make the grunts look bad."
"You guys getting hit?"
"That's affirmative," says Daytona Dave. "Every night. A few rounds.
They're just fucking with us. Of course, I've got so many confirmed kills I
lost count. Nobody believes me because the gooks drag off their dead. I do
believe that those little yellow enemy folks eat their casualties. Blood
trails all over the place, but no confirmed kills. So here I am, a hero, and
Captain January has got me doing Mickey Mouse shit with this uppity
wetback."
"CORPORAL JOKER!"
"SIR!" Later, people. Come on, Rafter."
Chili Vendor punches Daytona Dave in the chest. "Doubletime up to the
ville and souvenir me one cute orphan, man, but be sure you get a dirty one,
a really skuzzy one."
"JOKER!"
"AYE-AYE, SIR!"
Captain January is in his plywood cubicle in the back of the ISO
hootch. Captain January is the kind of officer who chews an unlit pipe
because he thinks that a pipe will help to make him a father figure. He's
playing cut-throat Monopoly with Mr. Payback. Mr. Payback has more
T.I.--time in--than any other snuffy in our unit. Captain January isn't
Captain Queeg, but then he's not Humphrey Bogart, either. He picks up his
little silver shoe and moves it to Baltic Avenue, tapping each property
along the way.
"I'll buy Baltic. And two houses." Captain January reaches for the
white and purple deed to Baltic Avenue. "That's another monopoly, Sergeant."
He positions tiny green houses on the board. "Joker, you've scarfed up
beaucoup slack in Da Nang and I am sure that now you are squared away to get
back into the field. Hump up to Hue. The NVA have overrun the city. One-One
is in the shit."
I hesitate. "Sir, would the Captain happen to know who killed my story
on that howitzer crew who wasted a whole squad of NVA with one beehive
round? In Da Nang some poges told me that a colonel shit-canned my story.
Some colonel said that beehive rounds were a figment of my imagination
because the Geneva Convention classified them as 'inhumane' and American
fighting men are incapable of being inhumane."
Mr. Payback grunts. "Inhumane? That's a pretty word for it. Ten
thousand feathered stainless steel darts. Those flechette canisters do
convert gooks into lumps of shitty rags. There it is."
"Oh, damn," says Captain January. He slaps a card onto the field desk.
"Go to jail--go directly to jail--do not pass go--do not collect two hundred
dollars." The captain puts his little silver shoe into jail. "I know who
killed your beehive story, Joker. What I don't know is who has been tipping
off hostile reporters every time we get an adverse incident--like that white
Victor Charlies recon wasted last week, the one the snuffies call 'The
Phantom Blooper.' General Motors is ready to bust me down to a grunt because
of that leak in our security. You talk; I'll talk. Do we have a deal?"
"No. No, Captain. It's not important."
"Number one! Snake eyes! No sweat, Joker. I've got a big piece of slack
for you." Captain January picks up a manila guard mail envelope and pulls
out a piece of paper with fancy writing on it. "Congratulations, Sergeant
Joker." He hands me the paper.
SPECIAL TRUST AND CONFIDENCE IN THE FIDELITY OF JAMES T. DAVIS,
2306777/4312, I DO
APPOINT HIM A SERGEANT IN THE UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS...
I stare at the piece of paper. Then I put the order on Captain
January's field desk. "Number ten. I mean, no way, sir."
Captain January stops his little silver shoe in mid-stride. "What did
you say, Sergeant?"
"Sir, I rose by sheer military genius to the rank of corporal, as they
say, like Hitler and Napoleon. But I'm not a sergeant. I guess I'm just a
snuffy at heart."
"Sergeant Joker, you will belay the Mickey Mouse shit. You won a
meritorious promotion on Parris Island. You've got an excellent record in
country. You've got high enough time-in-grade. You rate this promotion. This
is the only war we've got, Sergeant. Your career as a Marine--"
"No, sir. We bomb these people, then we photograph them. My stories are
paper bullets fired into the fat black heart of Communism. I've fought to
make the world safe for hypocrisy. We have met the enemy and he is us. War
is good business--invest your son. Viet Nam means never having to say you're
sorry. Arbeit Macht Frei--"
"Sergeant Joker!"
"Negative, Captain. Number ten. I'm a corporal. You can send me to the
brig, sir--I know that. Lock me up in Portsmouth Naval Prison until I rot,
but let me rot as a corporal, sir. You know I do my job. I write that the
Nam is an Asian Eldorado populated by a cute, primitive but determined
people. War is a noisy breakfast food. War is fun to eat. War can give you
better checkups. War cures cancer--permanently. I don't kill. I write.
Grunts kill; I only watch. I'm only young Dr. Goebbels. I'm not a sergeant."
I add: "Sir."
Captain January's silver shoe lands on Oriental Avenue. There is a tiny
red plastic hotel on Oriental Avenue. Captain January grimaces and then
counts out thirty-five dollars in MPC. He hands Mr. Payback the small
colorful bills and then hands him the dice. "Sergeant, you will be wearing
chevrons indicating your proper rank the next time I see your or I will
definitely jump on your program. Do you want to be a grunt? If not, you will
remove that unauthorized peace button from your duty uniform."
I don't say anything.
Captain January looks at Rafter Man. "Who's this? Sound off, Marine."
Rafter Man stutters.
I say, "This is Lance Corporal Compton, sir. The New Guy in Photo."
"Outstanding. Welcome aboard, Marine. Joker, make sleeping sounds here
tonight and head up to the Hue in the morning. Walter Cronkite is due here
tomorrow so we'll be busy. I'll need Chili Vendor and Daytona here. But your
job is important, too. General Motors called me about this personally. We
need some good, clear photographs. And some hard-hitting captions. Get me
photographs of indigenous civilian personnel who have been executed with
their hands tied behind their backs, people buried alive, priests with their
throats cut, dead babies--you know what I want. Get me some good body
counts. And don't forget to calculate your kill ratios. And Joker..."
"Yes, sir?"
"Don't even photograph any naked bodies unless they're mutilated."
"Aye-aye, sir."
"And Joker..."
"Yes, sir?"
"Get a haircut."
"Aye-aye, sir."
As Mr. Payback release his little silver car Captain January says,
"Three houses! Three houses! Park fucking Place! That's...eighty dollars!"
Mr. Payback counts out all of his money. "That breaks me, Captain. I
owe you seven bucks."
Captain January rakes up the pile of MPC, a shit-eating grin on his
face. "You do not understand a business, Mr. Payback. If we had Marine
generals who understood business this war would be over. The secret to
winning this war is in public relations. Harry S. Truman once said that the
Marine Corps has a propaganda machine almost equal to Stalin's. He was
right. In war, truth is the first casualty. Correspondents are more
effective than grunts. Grunts merely kill the enemy. All that matters is
what we write, what we photograph. History may be written with blood and
iron but it's printed with ink. Grunts are good show business but we make
them what they are. The lesser services like to joke about how every Marine
platoon goes into battle accompanied by a platoon of Marine Corps
photographers. That's affirmative. Marines fight harder because Marines have
bigger legends to live up to."
Captain January slaps a large package on the floor by his desk. "And
this is the final product of all our industry. My wife likes to show an
interest in my work. She asked me for a souvenir. I'm sending her a gook."
Rafter Man's expression is so funny that I have to look away to avoid
laughing out loud. "Sir?"
"Yes, Sergeant?"
"Where's the Top?"
"The First shirt went to Da Nang for some in-country R & R. You can see
him after you come back from Hue." Captain January looks at his wristwatch.
"Seventeen hundred. Chow time."
On the way to chow Rafter Man and I meet Chili Vendor and Daytona Dave
and Mr. Payback at the ISO enlisted men's hootch. I give Rafter Man a
utility jacket with 101st Airborne patches all over it. My own Army jacket
has First Air Cavalry insignia. I select two salty sets of Army collar
chevrons and we pin them on. Now we're Spec-5's--Army sergeants. Chili
Vendor and Daytona Dave and Mr. Payback are all buck sergeants from the
Ninth Infantry Division.
We go to chow down in the Army mess hall. The Army eats real food.
Cake, roast beef, ice cream, chocolate milk--all the bennies. Our own mess
hall serves Kool-Aid and shit-on-a-shingle--chipped beef on toast--with
peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dessert.
"When's the Top due back?"
Chili Vendor says, "Oh, maybe tomorrow. January on your program again?"
I nod. "That fucking lifer. He's crazy. He's just plain fucking crazy.
He gets crazier every time I see him. Now he's mailing a gook stiff home to
his wife."
Daytona says, "There it is. But then the Top is a lifer, too."
"But the Top is decent. I mean, maybe the Crotch is his home, and he
makes us do a good job, but he don't harass us with Mickey Mouse shit. He
cuts the snuffies some slack when he can. The Top's not a lifer; he's a
career Marine. Lifers are a breed. A lifer is anybody who abuses authority
he doesn't deserve to have. There are plenty of civilian lifers."
The Army mess sergeant with the big cigar spot-checks I.D.'s.
The Army mess sergeant with the big cigar takes the shiny mess trays
out of our hands and throws us out of his mess hall.
We retreat to the Marine mess hall where we eat shit-on-a-shingle and
drink lukewarm Kool-Aid and we talk about how the Army could have at least
souvenired us some leftovers since that's all the Marine Corps ever gets
anyway.
After chow we play tag back to our hootch. Laughing and breathing hard,
we take a moment to pull down the green plastic ponchos nailed on the
outside of the hootch. During the night the ponchos will keep light in and
rain out.
We lie on our racks and swap scuttlebutt. On the ceiling, the combat
correspondent's motto in six-inch block letters: FIRST TO GO, LAST TO KNOW,
WE WILL DEFEND TO THE DEATH OUR RIGHT TO BE MISINFORMED.
Mr. Payback performs his sea stories for Rafter Man: "The only
difference between a sea story and a fairy tale is that a fairy tale begins
with 'Once upon a time...' and a sea story begins with 'This is no shit.'
Well, New Guy, listen up, because this is no shit. January orders me to play
Monopoly. All fucking day. Every day of the fucking week. There's nothing
lower than a lifer. They fuck me over, man, but I don't say a word. I do not
say a word. Payback is a motherfucker, New Guy. Remember that. When Luke the
gook zaps you in the back and Phantoms bury him in napalm canisters, that's
payback. When you shit on people it comes back to you, sooner or later, only
worse. My whole program is a mess because of lifers. But Payback will come,
sooner or later. I'd walk a mile for a payback."
I laugh. "Payback, you hate lifers because you are a lifer."
Mr. Payback lights up a joint. "You're the one who's tight with the
lifers, Joker. Lifers take care of their own."
"Negative. The lifers are afraid to talk to me, I got so many ops."
"Operations? Shit." Mr. Payback turns to Rafter Man. "Joker thinks that
the bad bush is down the road in the ville. He's never been in the shit.
It's hard to talk about it. Like on Hastings--"
Chili Vendor interrupts: "You weren't on Operation Hastings, Payback.
You weren't even in country."
"Oh, eat shit and die, you fucking Spanish American. You poge. I was
there, man. I was in the shit with the grunts, man. Those guys have got
guts, you know? They are very hard individuals. When you've been in the shit
with grunts you're tight with them from then on, you know?"
I grunt. "Sea stories."
"Oh, yeah? How long have you been in country, Joker? Huh? How much T.I.
you got? How much fucking time in? Thirty months, poge. I got thirty months
in country. I been there, man."
I say, "Don't listen to any of Mr. Payback's bullshit, Rafter Man.
Sometimes he thinks he's John Wayne."
"That's affirmative," says Mr. Payback. "You listen to Joker, New Guy.
He knows ti ti--very little. And if he ever does know anything it'll be
because he learned it from me. You just know he's never been in the shit. He
ain't got the stare."
Rafter Man looks up. "The what?"
"The thousand-yard stare. A Marine gets it after he's been in the shit
for too long. It's like you've really seen...beyond. I got it. All field
Marines got it. You'll have it, too."
Rafter Man says, "I will?"
Mr. Payback takes a few hits off the joint and then passes it to Chili
Vendor. "I used to be an atheist, when I was a New Guy, a long time ago..."
Mr. Payback takes his Zippo lighter out of his shirt pocket and hands it to
Rafter Man. "See? It says, 'You and me, God--right?'" Mr. Payback giggles.
He seems to be trying to focus his vision on some distant object. "Yes,
nobody is an atheist in a foxhole. You'll be praying."
Rafter Man looks at me, grins, hands the lighter back to Mr. Payback.
"There sure is a lot of stuff to learn."
I'm whittling a piece of ammo crate with my K-bar jungle knife. I'm
carving myself a wooden bayonet.
Daytona Dave says, "Remember that gook kid that tried to eat the candy
bar? It bit me. I was down in the ville, scarfing up some orphans and that
little Victor Charlie ambushed me. Ran up and bit the shit out of my hand."
Daytona holds up his left hand, revealing a little red crescent of tooth
marks. "The kids says that our chop-chop is number ten. I bet I get rabies."
Chili Vendor grins. He turns to Rafter Man. "There it is, New Guy.
You'll know you're salty when you stop throwing C-ration cans to the kids
and start throwing the cans at them."
I say, "I got to get back into the shit. I ain't heard a shot fired in
anger in weeks. I'm bored to death. How are we ever going to get used to
being back in the World? I mean, a day without blood is like a day without
sunshine."
Chili Vendor says, "No sweat. The old mamasan that does our laundry
tells us things even the lifers in Intelligence don't know. She says that in
Hue the whole fucking North Vietnamese army is dug in deep inside an old
fortress they call the Citadel. You won't come back, Joker. Victor Charlie
is gonna shoot you in the heart. The Crotch will ship your scrawny little
ass home in a three-hundred-dollar aluminum box all dressed up like a lifer
article on the Freedom Hill Recreation Center on Hill 327 for Leatherneck
magazine. I'm a combat correspondent assigned to the First Marine Division.
My job is to write upbeat news features which are distributed to the highly
paid civilian news correspondents who shack up with their Eurasian maids in
big hotels in Da Nang. The ten correspondents in the First Division's
Informational Services Office are reluctant public relations men for the war
in general and for the Marine Corps in particular. This morning my
commanding officer decided that a really inspiring piece could be written
about Hill 327, an angle being the fact that Hill 327 was the first
permanent position occupied by American forces. Major Lynch thinks I rate
some slack before I return to the ISO office in Phu Bai. My last three field
operations were real shit-kickers; in the field, a Marine correspondent is
just another rifleman. Rafter Man tags along behind me like a kid. Rafter
Man is a combat photographer. He has never been in the shit. He thinks I'm
one hard field Marine.
We go into a movie theater that looks like a warehouse and we watch
John Wayne in The Green Berets, a Hollywood soap opera about the love of
guns. We sit way down front, near some grunts. The grunts are sprawled
across their seats and they've propped muddy jungle boots onto the seats in
front of them. They are bearded, dirty, out of uniform, and look lean and
mean, the way human beings look after they've survived a long hump in the
jungle, the boonies, the bad bush.
I prop my boots on the seats and we watch John Wayne leading the Green
Beanies. John Wayne is a beautiful soldier, clean-shaven, sharply attired in
tailored tiger-stripe jungle utilities, wearing boots that shine like black
glass. Inspired by John Wayne, the fighting soldiers from the sky go
hand-to-hand with all of the Victor Charlies in Southeast Asia. He snaps out
an order to an Oriental actor who played Mr. Sulu on "Star Trek." Mr. Sulu,
now playing an Arvin officer, delivers a line with great conviction: "First
kill...all stinking Cong...then go home." The audience of Marines roars with
laughter. This is the funniest movie we have seen in a long time.
Later, at the end of the movie, John Wayne walks off into the sunset
with a spunky little orphan. The grunts laugh and whistle and threaten to
pee all over themselves. The sun is setting in the South China Sea--in the
East--which makes the end of the movie as accurate as the rest of it.
Most of the zoomies in the audience are clean-shaven office poges who
never go into the field. The poges wear spit-shined boots and starched
utilities and Air Force sunglasses. The poges stare at the grunts as though
the grunts were Hell's Angels at the ballet.
After the screen loses it color and the overhead lights come on, one of
the poges says, "Fucking grunts...they're nothing but animals..."
The grunts turn around. One grunt stands up. He walks over to where the
poges are sitting.
The poges laugh and punch each other and mock the grunt's angry face.
Then they are silent. They stare at the grunt's face. He's smiling now. He's
smiling like a man who knows a terrible secret.
The zoomie poges do not ask the grunt to explain why he is smiling.
They don't want to know.
Another grunt jumps up, punches the smiling grunt on the arm, says,
"Hey, fuck it, Mother. It ain't no big thing. We don't want to waste these
assholes."
The smiling Marine takes a step forward, but the smaller man stands in
his path.
The poges take advantage of the smiling grunt's delay. They walk
backwards up the aisle until they reach the door, then stumble out into
sunlight.
I say, "Well, no shit. And they say grunts are killers. You ladies do
not look like killers to me."
The smiling grunt is not smiling anymore. He says, "Okay, you
son-of-a-bitch..."
"Stand by, Mother," says the small Marine. "I know this shitbird."
Cowboy and I grab each other and wrestle and punch and pound each other
on the back. We say, "Hey, you old mother-fucker. How you been? What's
happening? Been getting any? Only your sister. Well, better my sister than
my mom, although mom's not bad."
"Hey, Joker, I was hoping I'd never see you again, you piece of shit. I
was hoping that Gunny Gerheim's ghost would keep you on Parris Island
for-ev-er and that he would give you motivation."
I laugh. "Cowboy, you shitbird. You look real mean. If I didn't know
that you're a born poge I'd be scared."
Cowboy grunts. "This is Animal Mother. He is mean."
The big Marine is picking his nose. "You better motherfucking believe
it." A belt of machine-gun bullets crisscross the Marine's chest so that he
looks like a big Mexican bandit.
I say, "This is Rafter Man. He's not a walking camera store. He's a
photographer."
"You a photographer?"
I shake my head. "I'm a combat correspondent."
Animal Mother sneers, exposing rotten canine teeth. "You seen much
'combat'?"
"Hey, don't give me any shit, asshole. My payback is a motherfucker. I
got twice as many operations as any grunt in Eye Corps. I'm just scarfing up
some bennies. My office is up in Phu Bai."
"Yeah?" Cowboy punches me in the chest. "That's our area. One-Five.
Delta Company--the baddest of the bad, the leanest of the lean, the meanest
of the mean. We hitched down here this morning. We rate some slack 'cause
our squad wasted beaucoup Victor Charlies. Man, we are life takers and
heartbreakers. Just ask for the Lusthog Squad, first platoon. We shoot them
full of holes, bro. We fill them full of lead."
I grin. "Sergeant Gerheim would be proud to hear it."
"Yeah," Cowboy says, nodding his head. "Yeah, I guess so." He looks
away. "I hate Viet Nam. They don't even have horses here. Why, there's not
one horse in all of Viet Nam."
Cowboy turns away and introduces us to his squad: Alice, a black man as
big as Animal Mother; Donlon, the radioman; Lance Corporal Stutten, honcho
of the third fire team; Doc Jay, the squad's Navy corpsman; T.H.E. Rock; and
the leader of the Lusthog Squad, Crazy Earl.
Crazy Earl is carrying an M-16 Colt automatic rifle slung on his
shoulder, but in his hands is a Red Ryder BB gun. He's as skinny as a
death-camp survivor, and his face consists of a long, pointed nose with a
hollow cheek on each side. His eyes are magnified by thick lenses and one
arm of his gray Marine-issue eyeglasses has been wired back on with too much
wire. He says, "Saddle up," and the grunts start picking up their gear,
their M-16's and M-79 grenade launchers and captured AK-47 assault rifles,
their ruck-sacks, flak jackets, and helmets. Animal Mother picks up an M-60
machine gun and sets the butt into his hip so that the black barrel slants
up at a forty-five-degree angle. Animal Mother grunts. Crazy Earl turns to
Cowboy and says, "We better be moving, bro. Mr. Shortround will punch our
hearts out if we're late."
Cowboy is picking up his gear. "That's affirmative, Craze. But you got
to talk to Joker, man. We were on the island together. He'll write you up
and make you famous."
Crazy Earl looks at me. There is no expression on his face. "There it
is. They call me Crazy Earl. Gooks love me until I blow them away. Then they
don't love me anymore."
I grin. "There it is."
Crazy Earl grins, gives me a thumbs-up, says, "Moving, Cowboy," and
then leads his squad out of the theater.
Cowboy punches me on the shoulder. "That's my fearless leader, bro. I'm
the first fire-team leader. I'll be squad leader soon. I'm just waiting for
Craze to get wasted. Or maybe he'll just go plain fucking crazy. That's how
Craze got to be honcho. Ol' Stoke, he was our honcho before Craze. Ol'
Supergrunt. Went stark raving. Pretty soon it'll be my turn."
"Hey, you keep your shit together, Cowboy. You know you're a fool. You
know you can't take care of yourself. Remember how easy it was for me to zap
you when Sergeant Gerheim made me play sniper? I mean, the Crotch ought to
fly your mom over here so that she can go into the bush with you."
Cowboy takes a few steps toward the door, turns, waves goodbye, grins.
I give him the finger.
After Cowboy and his squad are gone, Rafter Man and I watch a "Pink
Panther" cartoon. Then we pick up our weapons and head for the PX, which
looks like another warehouse. We buy junk food; pogey bait.
As we wait to pay for our pogey bait with military payment
certificates, Rafter Man tries to find some words. "Joker, I want...I want
to go out. I want to go out into the field. I been in country for almost
three months. Three months. All I do is take hand-shake shots at award
ceremonies. That's number ten, the worst. I'm bored. A high-school girl
could do my job." He gives MPC's to a pretty Vietnamese cashier.
Outside, an apprentice Viet Cong forces me to submit to a boot shine
while his older sister exhibits her breasts to Rafter Man.
"Relax, Rafter. You owe it to yourself. You'll be in the field soon
enough."
"Come on, Joker, cut me a huss. How can I teach geography if I never
see the world? Take me to Phu Bai. Okay?"
"Right," I say. "And then you'll get yourself wasted the first day
you're in the field and it'll be my fault. Your mom will find me after I
rotate back to the World. Your mom will beat the shit out of me. That's a
negative, Rafter. I'm not a sergeant, I'm only a corporal. I'm not
responsible for your scrawny little ass."
"Yes you are. I'm only a lance corporal."
Rafter Man and I stop by the USO and exchange a few off-color jokes
with the round-eyed Red Cross girls, who give us donuts. We ask the Red
Cross girls if they expect us to satisfy our lust with a donut and they
explain that a donut hole is all we rate.
In the USO there are barrels and barrels of letters which have been
written to us by children back in the World:
Dear Soldiers in Red Alert:
We have learned that men in Vietnam alive or dead are the bravest. We
are all trying to help you all
to come home to your house. We'll buy bonds. We help the Red Cross to
help soldiers. We'll help
you and your allies to come back. If possible, we'll send you gifts.
From Your Country,
Cheri
Dear Friend in Battle:
I am eight years old. I have one brother. I have one sister. It must be
sad over there.
Sincerely,
Jeff
Dear American:
I wish I could see you instead of talking on this Card. We have a dog,
and it is so cute. It is black
and has long hair. My name is Lori. I will always remember you in my
prayers. Tell everyone I love
them and I love you too, so good-bye.
Your Friend,
Lori
Rafter Man reads the letters out loud. He can still be touched by them.
To me, the letters are like shoes for the dead, who do not walk.
As dusk approaches, Rafter Man and I hitchhike back to the ISO hootch
in the First Marine Division HQ area.
Rafter Man writes a letter to his mother.
I take my black Magic Marker and I make a thick X over the number 59 on
the shapely thigh of a the life-sized nude woman I've drawn on the plywood
partition behind my rack. There is a smaller version of the same woman on
the back of my flak jacket.
Almost every Marine in Viet Nam carries a short-timer's calendar of his
tour of duty--the usual 365 days--plus a bonus of 20 days for being a
Marine. Some are drawn on flak jackets with Magic Markers. Some are drawn on
helmets. Some are tattoos. Others are mimeographed drawings of Snoopy, his
beagle body cut up by pale blue ink, or a helmet on a pair of boots--"The
Short-Timer." The designs vary, but the most popular design is a big-busted
woman-child cut up into pieces like a puzzle. Each day another fragment of
her delicious anatomy is inked out, her crotch being reserved, of course,
for those last few days in country.
Sitting on my rack, I type out my story about Hill 327, the
serviceman's oasis, about how all of us fine young American boys are assured
our daily ration of pogey bait and about how those of us who are lucky
enough to visit the rear areas get to see Mr. John Wayne karate-chop Victor
Charlie to death in a Technicolor cartoon about some other Viet Nam.
The article I actually write is a masterpiece. It takes talent to
convince people that war is a beautiful experience. Come one, come all to
exotic Viet Nam, the jewel of Southeast Asia, meet interesting, stimulating
people of an ancient culture...and kill them. Be the first kid on your block
to get a confirmed kill.
I fall into my rack. I try to sleep.
The setting sun pours orange across the rice paddies beyond our wire.
Midnight. Down in Dogpatch, in the ville, the gooks are shooting off
fireworks to celebrate the Vietnamese New Year. Rafter Man and I sit on the
tin roof of our hootch so that we can watch the more impressive fireworks on
the Da Nang airfield. One hundred-and-twenty-two-millimeter rockets are
falling from the dark sky. I open a B-3 unit and we eat John Wayne cookies,
dipping them in pineapple jam.
Chewing. Rafter Man says, "I thought this was supposed to be a truce on
account of Tet is their big holiday."
I shrug. "Well, I guess it's hard not to shoot somebody you've been
trying to shoot for a long time just because it's a holiday."
A sudden swooosssh...
Incoming.
I jump off the roof.
Rafter Man stands up, his mouth open. He looks down at me like I'm
crazy. "What--"
A rocket hits the deck fifty yards away.
Rafter Man falls off the roof.
I jerk Rafter Man to his feet. I shove him. He falls into a sandbagged
bunker.
All around the hill orange machine-gun tracers flash up into the sky.
Outgoing mortars. Outgoing artillery. Incoming rockets. All kinds of noise.
Illumination rounds pop high above the rice paddies. The flares sway down,
glowing, suspended beneath little parachutes.
I listen for a few moments and then I grab Rafter Man and I pull him
into our hootch. "Get your piece."
I pick up my M-16. I snap in a magazine. I throw a bandolier of full
magazines to Rafter Man. "Lock and load, recruit. Lock and load."
"But that's against regulations."
"Do it."
Outside, headquarters personnel from the surrounding hootches are
stumbling into rifle pits on the perimeter. They crouch down in the damp
holes in their skivvies. They stare out through the wire.
Down on the airfield in Da Nang Victor Charlie's rockets are raining
down on the concrete corrals where the Marine Air Wing parks its F-4 Phantom
fighter bombers. The rockets blink like flashbulbs. The flashbulbs pop. And
then the sound of drums.
The Informational Services Office on the hill is a carnival with green
performers--many, many of them. The lifers are all being fearless leaders.
The New Guys are about to wet their pants. Everyone is talking. Everyone is
pacing and looking, pacing and looking. Most of these guys have never been
in the shit. Violence doesn't excite them the way it excites me because they
don't understand it the way I do. They're afraid. Death is not yet their
friend. So they don't know what they're supposed to say. They don't know
what they're expected to do.
Major Lynch, our commanding officer, marches in and squares us away. He
tells us that Victor Charlie has used the Tet holiday to launch an offensive
all over Viet Nam. Every major military target in Viet Nam has been hit. In
Saigon, the United States Embassy has been overrun by suicide squads. Khe
Sanh is standing by to be overrun, a second Dien Bien Phu. The term "secure
area" no longer has any meaning. Only fifty yards up the hill, near the
commanding general's private quarters, a Viet Cong sapper squad has blown
apart a communications center with a satchel charge. Our "defeated" enemy is
lashing out with a power that is shocking.
Everybody starts talking at once.
Major Lynch is calm. He stands in the center of chaos and tries to give
us orders. Nobody listens. He makes us listen. His words snap out like
bullets from a machine gun. "Zip up those flak jackets. Put on that helmet,
Marine. Load your weapons but do not put a round in the chamber. Everybody
will shut the fuck up. Joker!"
"Aye-aye, sir."
Major Lynch stands in front of the Marine Corps flag--blood red, with
an eagle, globe, and anchor of gold, U.S.M.C. and Semper Fidelis. He taps my
chest with his finger. "Joker, you will take off that damned button. How is
it going to look if you get killed wearing a peace symbol?"
"Aye-aye, sir!"
"Get up to Phu Bai. Captain January will need all his people."
Rafter Man steps forward. "Sir? Could I go with Joker?"
"What? Sound off."
"I'm Compton, sir. Lance Corporal Compton. From Photo. I want to get
into the shit."
"Permission granted. And welcome aboard." The major turns, starts
yelling at the New Guys.
I say, "Sir, I don't think that--"
Major Lynch turns back to me, irritated. "You still here? Vanish,
Joker, most ricky-tick. And take the New Guy with you. You're responsible
for him." The major turns and starts snapping out orders for the defense of
the First Marine Division's Informational Services Office.
Chaos at the Da Nang airfield; enemy rockets have wasted hootches,
Marines, and Phantom jets. I talk to a poge in thick glasses. The poge is
reading a comic book. By using my voice as an instrument of command I
convince the poge that I'm an officer and that I'm on a personal errand for
the Commandant of the Marine Corps. Rafter Man and I are given a priority
rating and have to wait only nine hours before we're stuffed into the
cavernous belly of a C-130 Hercules cargo plane with a hundred Marine Corps
lifers.
Thousands of feet below, Viet Nam is a narrow stripe of dried dragon
shit upon which God has sprinkled toy tanks and airplanes and a lot of
trees, flies, and Marines.
As we descend for a landing at Phu Bai Combat Base, Rafter Man hugs his
three black-body Nikons like metal babies.
I laugh. "When the grunts see that the famous Rafter Man is here,
they'll just know that the war must be over."
Rafter Man grins.
Rafter Man won his nickname the night he fell out of the rafters at the
Thunderbird Club, the enlisted men's slop chute back in the First Marine
Division headquarters area. An Australian comedian and two fat Korean belly
dancers were entertaining an SRO audience. Rafter Man was hammered, but so
was I, so I couldn't stop him. We were back near the entrance and Rafter Man
decided that the only way he was going to get a good look at the seminude
belly dancers was to climb up into the rafters and crawl out above the mass
of green Marines.
General Motors and his staff had stopped by to catch the show. They did
that sometimes. General Motors liked to keep in touch with his Marines.
Rafter Man fell off the rafters like a green bomb, crashing through the
general's table, spilling beer, smashing pretzels, and knocking the general
and four of his staff officers on their brass behinds.
Hundreds of enlisted men, having assumed that Rafter Man was some kind
of unconventional mortar round, were one mass of green laundry. Then heads
began to pop up.
The staff officers jerked Rafter Man to his feet and started yelling
for the M.P.'s.
General Motors raised his hand and there was silence. Unlike many
Marine Corps generals, General Motors looked exactly like a Marine Corps
general, eyes as gray as gun metal, a face that was tough but sensitive--a
Cro-Magnon holy man's face. His jungle utilities were starched,
razor-creased, with shirt-sleeves rolled up neatly.
Rafter Man stood there, staring at the general, grinning like a goddamn
fool. He wobbled. He tried to walk but he couldn't. He was having enough
trouble just standing in one place.
General Motors ordered the broken table cleared away. Then he offered
Rafter Man his chair.
Rafter Man hesitated, looked at the general, then at the staff
officers, who were still pissed off, then at me, then he looked at the
general again. He grinned and sat down on the metal folding chair.
The general nodded, then sat down on the floor next to Rafter Man. With
a wave of his hand he ordered the staff officers to sit on the floor behind
him, which they did, still pissed off.
With another wave of his hand the general ordered the performers to go
on with the show.
The Australian comedian and the sweating belly dancers hesitated.
Rafter Man stood up.
He wobbled, then sank down to the deck beside the general. He put his
arm around the general's shoulders. General Motors looked at him without
expression. Rafter Man said, "Hey, bro, I can fly. Did you see me fly?" He
paused. "You think...am I drunk? I mean, am I hammered or am I hammered?" He
looked around. "Joker? Where's Joker?" But I was still stumbling over angry
poges. "Joker's my bro, sir. We enlisted personnel are tight, you know?
Indubitably. I am in love with those sexy women. I roger that..." His face
got serious. "Who'll take me through the wire? Sir? Where's Joker?" He
looked around, but didn't see me. "I'll fall in the wire. Or blow myself up.
Sir? SIR? I'll step on a mine. I got to find my bro, sir. I don't want to
fall into the wire, not again. JOKER!"
General Motors looked at Rafter Man and smiled. "Don't worry, son.
Marines never abandon their wounded."
Rafter Man looked at the general the way drunks look at people who say
things they don't understand. Then he smiled. He nodded. "Aye-aye, sir."
The Australian comedian and the meaty belly dancers resumed their act,
which consisted primarily of double-takes from the comedian every time one
of the belly dancers slung a big tender breast out of her tiny golden
costume. The act was a smashing success.
By the time the show was over, Rafter Man could stand only if he had a
wall to hold onto. General Motors took Rafter Man's arm and put it over his
shoulders and helped Rafter Man out of the E.M. club and, leaving the staff
officer's behind, helped Rafter Man to stagger down the hill, along the
narrow path through the tangle-foot and the concertina wire.
As the enlisted men left the Thunderbird Club, they watched this small
event and they smiled and nodded and said, "Decent. Number one."
And: "There it is."
Now the C-130 Hercules propjet is taxiing to a stop. The heavy cargo
door drops and slams into the runway. Rafter Man and I hop out with our
fellow passengers.
There are three damaged C-130's pushed together on the port side of the
airfield. On the starboard side of the airfield is the gutted carcass of
another C-130, charred, still smoking. Men in tinfoil spacesuits are
squirting the torn metal with white foam.
Rafter Man and I ditty-bop off the airfield and we hump down a freshly
oiled dirt road until we come to the perimeter of Phu Bai Combat Base, about
a mile from the airfield and thirty-four miles from the DMZ.
Phu Bai is a vast mud puddle cut into sections by perfectly aligned
rows of frame hootches. The largest structure at Phu Bai is HQ for the Third
Marine Division. The big wooden building stands as a symbol of our power and
as a temple of those who love the power.
We stop at the guard bunker. A big dumb M.P. orders us to clear our
weapons. I click the magazine out of my M-16. Rafter Man does the same. I
stare back at the big dumb M.P. to assert my principles. He is scribbling on
a clipboard with a stubby yellow pencil.
Suddenly the M.P. punches Rafter Man in the chest with his walnut
baton. "You a New Guy?" Rafter Man nods. "I got a working party for you.
You're going to fill sandbags for my bunkers." The M.P. hooks his thumb
toward the guard bunker in the center of the road. A big bite has been taken
out of the bunker. A mortar shell has blasted through one layer of sandbags
and has split open a second layer, spilling sand.
I say, "He's with me."
Sneering, the sergeant draws himself up inside his crisp, clean
stateside utilities, his white helmet liner with Military Police stenciled
in red, his white rifle belt with its gold buckle bearing the eagle, globe
and anchor, his shiny new forty-five automatic pistol, and his black
spit-shined stateside shoes. The big dumb M.P. is smugly enthroned in his
power to exact the trivial. "He'll do what I say, motherfucker. Cor-poral."
He thumps his black metal collar chevrons with the tip of his walnut baton.
"I'm a sergeant."
I nod. "Affirmative. That's affirmative, you fucking lifer. But this
man is only a lance corporal. And he takes his orders from me."
The big dumb M.P. shrugs. "Okay. Okay, motherfucker. You can tell him
what to do. You can fill my sandbags, corporal. Many, many of them."
I look at the deck. An explosion is building up inside me. I experience
fear, and a terrible strain, as the pressure grows and grows, and then
release, relief. "No, you dumb redneck. Negative, you fucking pig. No, I'm
not going to fall out for any Mickey Mouse working party. You know why?
Huh?" I slam the magazine back into my M-16 and I snap the bolt, chambering
a round.
I'm smiling now. I'm smiling as I jam the flash supressor into the big
dumb M.P.'s jelly belly and then I wait for him to make one sound, any
sound, or just the slightest movement and then I'm going to pull the
trigger.
The big dumb M.P.'s mouth falls open. He doesn't have anything else to
say. I don't think he wants me to fill his sandbags anymore.
The clipboard and the pencil fall.
Then, walking backward, the big dumb M.P. retreats into his bunker,
mouth open, hands up.
Rafter Man is too scared to say anything for a while.
I say, "You'll get used to this place. You'll change. You'll
understand."
Rafter Man remains quiet. We walk. Then, "You weren't bluffing. You
would have killed that guy. For nothing."
I say, "There it is."
Rafter Man is looking at me as though he's seeing something new. "Is
everybody like that? I mean, you were laughing. Like..."
"It's not the kind of thing you can talk about. There's no way to
explain stuff like that. After you've been in the shit, after you've got
your first confirmed kill, you'll understand."
Rafter Man is silent. His questions are silent.
"At ease," I say. "Don't kid yourself, Rafter Man, this is a slaughter.
In this world of shit you won't have time to understand. What you do, you
become. You better learn to flow with it. You owe it to yourself."
Rafter Man nods, but he doesn't reply. I know how he feels.
The Informational Services Office for Task Force X-Ray, a unit assigned
to cover elements of the First Division temporarily operating in the Third
Division's area, is a small frame hootch, constructed with two-by-fours and
slave labor. Nailed to the screen door is a red sign with yellow letters:
TFX-ISO. Roofed with sheets of galvanized tin and walled with fine-mesh
screening, the hootch is designed to protect us from the heat. The Seabees
have nailed green plastic ponchos along the side of the hootch. These dusty
flaps are rolled up during the furnace of the day and are rolled down at
night to keep out the fierce monsoon rain.
Chili Vendor and Daytona Dave are doing fleetniks in front of the ISO
hootch. Chili Vendor is a tough Chicano from East L.A. and Daytona Dave is
an easy-going surf bum from a wealthy family in Florida. They have
absolutely nothing in common. They are the best of friends.
About a hundred grunts have stuffed themselves into every available
piece of shade in the area. Each grunt has been given a fleetnik, a printed
form with spaces for all the necessary biographical data required to send a
photograph of the grunt to his hometown newspaper.
Daytona Dave is taking the photographs with a black-body Nikon while
Chili Vendor says, "Smile, scumbag. Say, 'shit.' Next."
The grunt next in line kneels down beside a little Vietnamese orphan of
undetermined sex. Chili Vendor slaps a rubber Hershey bar into the grunt's
hand. "Smile, scumbag. Say, 'shit.' Next."
Daytona Dave snaps the picture.
Chili Vendor snatches the grunt's fleetnik with one hand and the rubber
Hershey bar with the other. "Next!"
The orphan says, "Her, Marine number one! You! You! You give me
chop-chop? You souvenir me?" The orphan grabs at the Hershey bar and jerks
it out of Chili Vendor's hand. He bites the Hershey bar; it's rubber. He
tries to tear off the wrapper; he can't. "Chop-chop number ten!"
Chili Vendor snatches the rubber Hershey bar out of the orphan's hands
and tosses it to the next grunt in the line. "Keep moving. Don't you guys
want to be famous? Some of you dudes probably wasted this kid's family, but
back in your hometown you gonna be the big strong Marine with a heart of
gold."
I say in my John Wayne voice: "Listen up, pilgrim. You skating again?"
Chili Vendor turns, sees me and grins. "Hey, Joker, que pasa? This
might be skating, man, it fucking might be. These gook orphans are
hard-core. I think half of them are Viet Cong Marines."
The orphan is walking away, grumbling, kicking the road. Then, as
though to prove Chili Vendor's point, the orphan pauses. He turns around and
gives us the finger with both hands. Then he walks on.
Daytona Dave laughs. "That kid runs an NVA rifle company. Somebody blow
him away."
I grin. "You ladies are doing an outstanding job. You're both born
poges."
Chili Vendor shrugs. "Hey, bro, the Crotch don't send beaners into the
field. We're too tough. We make the grunts look bad."
"You guys getting hit?"
"That's affirmative," says Daytona Dave. "Every night. A few rounds.
They're just fucking with us. Of course, I've got so many confirmed kills I
lost count. Nobody believes me because the gooks drag off their dead. I do
believe that those little yellow enemy folks eat their casualties. Blood
trails all over the place, but no confirmed kills. So here I am, a hero, and
Captain January has got me doing Mickey Mouse shit with this uppity
wetback."
"CORPORAL JOKER!"
"SIR!" Later, people. Come on, Rafter."
Chili Vendor punches Daytona Dave in the chest. "Doubletime up to the
ville and souvenir me one cute orphan, man, but be sure you get a dirty one,
a really skuzzy one."
"JOKER!"
"AYE-AYE, SIR!"
Captain January is in his plywood cubicle in the back of the ISO
hootch. Captain January is the kind of officer who chews an unlit pipe
because he thinks that a pipe will help to make him a father figure. He's
playing cut-throat Monopoly with Mr. Payback. Mr. Payback has more
T.I.--time in--than any other snuffy in our unit. Captain January isn't
Captain Queeg, but then he's not Humphrey Bogart, either. He picks up his
little silver shoe and moves it to Baltic Avenue, tapping each property
along the way.
"I'll buy Baltic. And two houses." Captain January reaches for the
white and purple deed to Baltic Avenue. "That's another monopoly, Sergeant."
He positions tiny green houses on the board. "Joker, you've scarfed up
beaucoup slack in Da Nang and I am sure that now you are squared away to get
back into the field. Hump up to Hue. The NVA have overrun the city. One-One
is in the shit."
I hesitate. "Sir, would the Captain happen to know who killed my story
on that howitzer crew who wasted a whole squad of NVA with one beehive
round? In Da Nang some poges told me that a colonel shit-canned my story.
Some colonel said that beehive rounds were a figment of my imagination
because the Geneva Convention classified them as 'inhumane' and American
fighting men are incapable of being inhumane."
Mr. Payback grunts. "Inhumane? That's a pretty word for it. Ten
thousand feathered stainless steel darts. Those flechette canisters do
convert gooks into lumps of shitty rags. There it is."
"Oh, damn," says Captain January. He slaps a card onto the field desk.
"Go to jail--go directly to jail--do not pass go--do not collect two hundred
dollars." The captain puts his little silver shoe into jail. "I know who
killed your beehive story, Joker. What I don't know is who has been tipping
off hostile reporters every time we get an adverse incident--like that white
Victor Charlies recon wasted last week, the one the snuffies call 'The
Phantom Blooper.' General Motors is ready to bust me down to a grunt because
of that leak in our security. You talk; I'll talk. Do we have a deal?"
"No. No, Captain. It's not important."
"Number one! Snake eyes! No sweat, Joker. I've got a big piece of slack
for you." Captain January picks up a manila guard mail envelope and pulls
out a piece of paper with fancy writing on it. "Congratulations, Sergeant
Joker." He hands me the paper.
SPECIAL TRUST AND CONFIDENCE IN THE FIDELITY OF JAMES T. DAVIS,
2306777/4312, I DO
APPOINT HIM A SERGEANT IN THE UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS...
I stare at the piece of paper. Then I put the order on Captain
January's field desk. "Number ten. I mean, no way, sir."
Captain January stops his little silver shoe in mid-stride. "What did
you say, Sergeant?"
"Sir, I rose by sheer military genius to the rank of corporal, as they
say, like Hitler and Napoleon. But I'm not a sergeant. I guess I'm just a
snuffy at heart."
"Sergeant Joker, you will belay the Mickey Mouse shit. You won a
meritorious promotion on Parris Island. You've got an excellent record in
country. You've got high enough time-in-grade. You rate this promotion. This
is the only war we've got, Sergeant. Your career as a Marine--"
"No, sir. We bomb these people, then we photograph them. My stories are
paper bullets fired into the fat black heart of Communism. I've fought to
make the world safe for hypocrisy. We have met the enemy and he is us. War
is good business--invest your son. Viet Nam means never having to say you're
sorry. Arbeit Macht Frei--"
"Sergeant Joker!"
"Negative, Captain. Number ten. I'm a corporal. You can send me to the
brig, sir--I know that. Lock me up in Portsmouth Naval Prison until I rot,
but let me rot as a corporal, sir. You know I do my job. I write that the
Nam is an Asian Eldorado populated by a cute, primitive but determined
people. War is a noisy breakfast food. War is fun to eat. War can give you
better checkups. War cures cancer--permanently. I don't kill. I write.
Grunts kill; I only watch. I'm only young Dr. Goebbels. I'm not a sergeant."
I add: "Sir."
Captain January's silver shoe lands on Oriental Avenue. There is a tiny
red plastic hotel on Oriental Avenue. Captain January grimaces and then
counts out thirty-five dollars in MPC. He hands Mr. Payback the small
colorful bills and then hands him the dice. "Sergeant, you will be wearing
chevrons indicating your proper rank the next time I see your or I will
definitely jump on your program. Do you want to be a grunt? If not, you will
remove that unauthorized peace button from your duty uniform."
I don't say anything.
Captain January looks at Rafter Man. "Who's this? Sound off, Marine."
Rafter Man stutters.
I say, "This is Lance Corporal Compton, sir. The New Guy in Photo."
"Outstanding. Welcome aboard, Marine. Joker, make sleeping sounds here
tonight and head up to the Hue in the morning. Walter Cronkite is due here
tomorrow so we'll be busy. I'll need Chili Vendor and Daytona here. But your
job is important, too. General Motors called me about this personally. We
need some good, clear photographs. And some hard-hitting captions. Get me
photographs of indigenous civilian personnel who have been executed with
their hands tied behind their backs, people buried alive, priests with their
throats cut, dead babies--you know what I want. Get me some good body
counts. And don't forget to calculate your kill ratios. And Joker..."
"Yes, sir?"
"Don't even photograph any naked bodies unless they're mutilated."
"Aye-aye, sir."
"And Joker..."
"Yes, sir?"
"Get a haircut."
"Aye-aye, sir."
As Mr. Payback release his little silver car Captain January says,
"Three houses! Three houses! Park fucking Place! That's...eighty dollars!"
Mr. Payback counts out all of his money. "That breaks me, Captain. I
owe you seven bucks."
Captain January rakes up the pile of MPC, a shit-eating grin on his
face. "You do not understand a business, Mr. Payback. If we had Marine
generals who understood business this war would be over. The secret to
winning this war is in public relations. Harry S. Truman once said that the
Marine Corps has a propaganda machine almost equal to Stalin's. He was
right. In war, truth is the first casualty. Correspondents are more
effective than grunts. Grunts merely kill the enemy. All that matters is
what we write, what we photograph. History may be written with blood and
iron but it's printed with ink. Grunts are good show business but we make
them what they are. The lesser services like to joke about how every Marine
platoon goes into battle accompanied by a platoon of Marine Corps
photographers. That's affirmative. Marines fight harder because Marines have
bigger legends to live up to."
Captain January slaps a large package on the floor by his desk. "And
this is the final product of all our industry. My wife likes to show an
interest in my work. She asked me for a souvenir. I'm sending her a gook."
Rafter Man's expression is so funny that I have to look away to avoid
laughing out loud. "Sir?"
"Yes, Sergeant?"
"Where's the Top?"
"The First shirt went to Da Nang for some in-country R & R. You can see
him after you come back from Hue." Captain January looks at his wristwatch.
"Seventeen hundred. Chow time."
On the way to chow Rafter Man and I meet Chili Vendor and Daytona Dave
and Mr. Payback at the ISO enlisted men's hootch. I give Rafter Man a
utility jacket with 101st Airborne patches all over it. My own Army jacket
has First Air Cavalry insignia. I select two salty sets of Army collar
chevrons and we pin them on. Now we're Spec-5's--Army sergeants. Chili
Vendor and Daytona Dave and Mr. Payback are all buck sergeants from the
Ninth Infantry Division.
We go to chow down in the Army mess hall. The Army eats real food.
Cake, roast beef, ice cream, chocolate milk--all the bennies. Our own mess
hall serves Kool-Aid and shit-on-a-shingle--chipped beef on toast--with
peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dessert.
"When's the Top due back?"
Chili Vendor says, "Oh, maybe tomorrow. January on your program again?"
I nod. "That fucking lifer. He's crazy. He's just plain fucking crazy.
He gets crazier every time I see him. Now he's mailing a gook stiff home to
his wife."
Daytona says, "There it is. But then the Top is a lifer, too."
"But the Top is decent. I mean, maybe the Crotch is his home, and he
makes us do a good job, but he don't harass us with Mickey Mouse shit. He
cuts the snuffies some slack when he can. The Top's not a lifer; he's a
career Marine. Lifers are a breed. A lifer is anybody who abuses authority
he doesn't deserve to have. There are plenty of civilian lifers."
The Army mess sergeant with the big cigar spot-checks I.D.'s.
The Army mess sergeant with the big cigar takes the shiny mess trays
out of our hands and throws us out of his mess hall.
We retreat to the Marine mess hall where we eat shit-on-a-shingle and
drink lukewarm Kool-Aid and we talk about how the Army could have at least
souvenired us some leftovers since that's all the Marine Corps ever gets
anyway.
After chow we play tag back to our hootch. Laughing and breathing hard,
we take a moment to pull down the green plastic ponchos nailed on the
outside of the hootch. During the night the ponchos will keep light in and
rain out.
We lie on our racks and swap scuttlebutt. On the ceiling, the combat
correspondent's motto in six-inch block letters: FIRST TO GO, LAST TO KNOW,
WE WILL DEFEND TO THE DEATH OUR RIGHT TO BE MISINFORMED.
Mr. Payback performs his sea stories for Rafter Man: "The only
difference between a sea story and a fairy tale is that a fairy tale begins
with 'Once upon a time...' and a sea story begins with 'This is no shit.'
Well, New Guy, listen up, because this is no shit. January orders me to play
Monopoly. All fucking day. Every day of the fucking week. There's nothing
lower than a lifer. They fuck me over, man, but I don't say a word. I do not
say a word. Payback is a motherfucker, New Guy. Remember that. When Luke the
gook zaps you in the back and Phantoms bury him in napalm canisters, that's
payback. When you shit on people it comes back to you, sooner or later, only
worse. My whole program is a mess because of lifers. But Payback will come,
sooner or later. I'd walk a mile for a payback."
I laugh. "Payback, you hate lifers because you are a lifer."
Mr. Payback lights up a joint. "You're the one who's tight with the
lifers, Joker. Lifers take care of their own."
"Negative. The lifers are afraid to talk to me, I got so many ops."
"Operations? Shit." Mr. Payback turns to Rafter Man. "Joker thinks that
the bad bush is down the road in the ville. He's never been in the shit.
It's hard to talk about it. Like on Hastings--"
Chili Vendor interrupts: "You weren't on Operation Hastings, Payback.
You weren't even in country."
"Oh, eat shit and die, you fucking Spanish American. You poge. I was
there, man. I was in the shit with the grunts, man. Those guys have got
guts, you know? They are very hard individuals. When you've been in the shit
with grunts you're tight with them from then on, you know?"
I grunt. "Sea stories."
"Oh, yeah? How long have you been in country, Joker? Huh? How much T.I.
you got? How much fucking time in? Thirty months, poge. I got thirty months
in country. I been there, man."
I say, "Don't listen to any of Mr. Payback's bullshit, Rafter Man.
Sometimes he thinks he's John Wayne."
"That's affirmative," says Mr. Payback. "You listen to Joker, New Guy.
He knows ti ti--very little. And if he ever does know anything it'll be
because he learned it from me. You just know he's never been in the shit. He
ain't got the stare."
Rafter Man looks up. "The what?"
"The thousand-yard stare. A Marine gets it after he's been in the shit
for too long. It's like you've really seen...beyond. I got it. All field
Marines got it. You'll have it, too."
Rafter Man says, "I will?"
Mr. Payback takes a few hits off the joint and then passes it to Chili
Vendor. "I used to be an atheist, when I was a New Guy, a long time ago..."
Mr. Payback takes his Zippo lighter out of his shirt pocket and hands it to
Rafter Man. "See? It says, 'You and me, God--right?'" Mr. Payback giggles.
He seems to be trying to focus his vision on some distant object. "Yes,
nobody is an atheist in a foxhole. You'll be praying."
Rafter Man looks at me, grins, hands the lighter back to Mr. Payback.
"There sure is a lot of stuff to learn."
I'm whittling a piece of ammo crate with my K-bar jungle knife. I'm
carving myself a wooden bayonet.
Daytona Dave says, "Remember that gook kid that tried to eat the candy
bar? It bit me. I was down in the ville, scarfing up some orphans and that
little Victor Charlie ambushed me. Ran up and bit the shit out of my hand."
Daytona holds up his left hand, revealing a little red crescent of tooth
marks. "The kids says that our chop-chop is number ten. I bet I get rabies."
Chili Vendor grins. He turns to Rafter Man. "There it is, New Guy.
You'll know you're salty when you stop throwing C-ration cans to the kids
and start throwing the cans at them."
I say, "I got to get back into the shit. I ain't heard a shot fired in
anger in weeks. I'm bored to death. How are we ever going to get used to
being back in the World? I mean, a day without blood is like a day without
sunshine."
Chili Vendor says, "No sweat. The old mamasan that does our laundry
tells us things even the lifers in Intelligence don't know. She says that in
Hue the whole fucking North Vietnamese army is dug in deep inside an old
fortress they call the Citadel. You won't come back, Joker. Victor Charlie
is gonna shoot you in the heart. The Crotch will ship your scrawny little
ass home in a three-hundred-dollar aluminum box all dressed up like a lifer