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in a blouse from a set of dress blues. But no white hat. And no pants. They
don't give you any pants. Your friends from school and all of the relatives
you never liked anyway will be at your funeral and they'll call you a good
little Christian and they'll say you were a hero to get wasted defeating
Communism and you'll just lie there with a cold ass, dead as a mackerel."
Daytona Dave sits up. "You can be a hero for a little while, sometimes,
if you can stop thinking about your own ass long enough, if you give a shit.
But civilians don't know what to do, so they put up statues in the park for
pigeons to drop turds on. Civilians don't know. Civilians don't want to
know."
I say, "You guys are bitter. Don't you love the American way of life?"
Chili Vendor shakes his head. "No Victor Charlie ever raped my sister.
Ho Chi Minh never bombed Pearl Harbor. We're prisoners here. We're prisoners
of the war. They've taken away our freedom and they've given it to the
gooks, but the gooks don't want it. They'd rather be alive than free."
I grunt. "There it is."
With my magic marker I "X" out a section of thigh on the nude woman
outlined on the back of my flak jacket. The number 58 disappears.
Fifty-seven days and a wake-up left in country.
Midnight. The boredom becomes unbearable. Chili Vendor suggests that we
kill time by wasting our furry little friends.
I say, "Rat race!"
Chili Vendor hops off his canvas cot and into a corner. He breaks up a
John Wayne cookie. In the corner, six inches off the desk, we've nailed a
piece of ammo crate to form a triangular pocket. There's a little hole in
the charred board. Chili Vendor puts the cookie fragments under the board.
Then he snaps off the lights.
I toss Rafter Man one of my booties. Of course, he doesn't know what to
do with it. "What--"
Shhhh.
We wait in ambush, enjoying the anticipation of violence. Five minutes.
Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. Then the Viet Cong rats crawl out of their
holes. We freeze. The rats skitter along the rafters, climb down the
screening, then hop onto the plywood deck, making little thumps, moving
through the darkness without fear.
Chili Vendor waits until the skittering converges in the corner. Then
he jumps out of his rack and flips on the overhead lights.
With the exception of Rafter Man we're all on our feet in the same
second, forming a semicircle across the corner. The rats zip and zing, their
tiny pink feet clawing for traction on the plywood. Two or three escape--so
brave, or so terrified--in such situations motives are immaterial--that they
run right over out feet and between our legs and through the deadly gauntlet
of carefully aimed boots and stabbing bayonets.
But most of the rats herd together under the board.
Mr. Payback takes a can of lighter fluid from his bamboo footlocker. He
squirts lighter fluid into the little hole in the board.
Daytona Dave strikes a match. "Fire in the hole!" He pitches the
burning match into the corner.
The board foomps into flame.
Rats explode from beneath the board like shrapnel from a rodent
grenade.
The rats are on fire. The rats are little flaming kamikaze animals
zinging across the plywood deck, running under racks, over gear, around in
circles, running faster and faster and in no particular direction except
toward some place where there is no fire.
"GET SOME!" Mr. Payback is screaming like a lunatic. "GET SOME! GET
SOME!" He chops a rat in half with his machete.
Chili Vendor holds a rat by the tail and, while it shrieks, pounds it
do death with a boot.
I throw my K-bar at a rat on the other side of the hootch. The big
knife misses the rat, sticks up in the floor.
Rafter Man doesn't know what to do.
Daytona Dave charges around and around with fixed bayonet, zeroing in
on a burning rat like a fighter pilot in a dogfight. Daytona follows the
rat's crazed, erratic course around and around, over all obstacles, gaining
on him with every step. He butt-strokes the rat and then bayonets him, again
and again and again. "That's one confirmed!"
And, as suddenly as it began, the battle is over.
After the rat race everyone collapses. Daytona is breathing hard and
fast. "Whew. That was a good group. Real hard-core. I thought I was going to
have a fucking heart attack."
Mr. Payback coughs, grunts. "Hey, New Guy, how many confirmed did you
get?"
Rafter Man is still sitting on his canvas cot with my boot in his hand.
"I...none. I mean, it happened so fast."
Mr. Payback laughs. "Well, sometimes it's fun to kill something you can
see. You better get squared away, New Guy. Next time the rats will have
guns."
Daytona Dave is wiping his face with a dirty green skivvy shirt. "The
New Guy will do okay. Cut him some slack. Rafter ain't got the killer
instinct, that's all. Now me, I got about fifty confirmed. But everybody
knows that gook rats drag off their dead."
We all throw things at Daytona Dave.
We rest for a while and then we gather up the barbecued rats and take
them outside to hold a funeral in the dark.
Some guys from utilities platoon who live next door come out of their
hootch to pay their respects.
Lance Corporal Winslow Slavin, honcho of the combat plumbers, struts up
in a skuzzy green flight suit. The flight suit is ragged, covered with paint
stains and oil splotches. "Only six? Shit. Last night my boys got seventeen.
Confirmed."
I say, "Sounds like a squad of poges to me. Poges kill poges. These
rats are Viet Cong field Marines. Hard-core grunts."
I pick up one of the rats. I turn to the combat plumbers. I hold up the
rat and I kiss it.
Mr. Payback laughs, picks up one of the dead rats, bites off the tip of
its tail. Then, swallowing, Mr. Payback says, "Ummm....love them crispy
critters." He grins. He bends over, picks up another dead rat, offers it to
Rafter Man.
Rafter Man is frozen. He can't speak. He just looks at the rat.
Mr. Payback laughs. "What's wrong, New Guy? Don't you want to be a
killer?"
We bury the enemy rats with full military honors--we scoop out a
shallow grave and we dump them in.
We sing:
So come along and sing our song
And join our fam-i-ly
M.I.C....K.E.Y....M.O.U.S.E.
Mickey Mouse, Mickey Mouse...
"Dear God," says Mr. Payback, looking up into the ugly sky. "These rats
died like Marines. Cut them some slack. Ah-men."
We all say, "Ah-men."
After the funeral we insult the combat plumbers a few more times and
then we return to our hootch. We lie awake in our racks. We discuss the
battle and the funeral for a long time.
Then we try to sleep.
An hour later. It's raining. We roll up in our poncho liners and pray
for morning. The monsoon rain is cold and heavy and comes without warning.
Wind-blown water batters the ponchos hung around the hootch to protect us
from the weather.
The terrible falling of the shells...
Incoming.
"Oh, shit," somebody says. Nobody moves.
Rafter Man asks, "Is that---"
I say, "There it is."
The crumps start somewhere outside the wire and walk in like the
footsteps of a monster. The crumps are becoming thuds. Thud. Thud. THUD. And
then it's a whistle and a roar.
BANG.
The rain's rhythmic drumming is broken by the clang and rattle of
shrapnel falling on our tin roof.
We're all out of our racks with our weapons in our hands like so many
parts of the same body--even Rafter Man, who has begun to pick up on things.
Pounded by cold rain, we double-time to our bunker.
On the perimeter M-60 machine guns are banging and the M-70 grenade
launchers are blooping and mortar shells are thumping out of the tubes.
Star flares burst all along the wire, beautiful clusters of green fire.
Inside our damp cave of sandbags we huddle elbow-to-elbow in wet
skivvies, feeling the weight of the darkness, as helpless as cavemen hiding
from a monster.
"I hope they're just fucking with us," I say. "I hope they're not going
to hit the wire. I'm not ready for this shit."
Outside our bunker: BANG, BANG, BANG. And falling rain.
Each of us is waiting for the next shell to nail him right on the
head--the mortar as an agent of existential doom.
A scream.
I wait for a time of silence and I crawl out to take a look. Somebody
is down. The whistle of an incoming round forces me to retreat into the
bunker. I wait for the shell to burst.
BANG.
I crawl out, stand up, and I run to the wounded man. He's one of the
combat plumbers. "You utilities platoon? Where's Winslow?"
The man is whining. "I'm dying! I'm dying!" I shake him.
"Where's Winslow?"
"There." He points. "He was coming to help me..."
Rafter Man and Chili Vendor come out and Rafter Man helps me carry the
combat plumber to our bunker. Chili Vendor double-times off to get a
corpsman.
We leave the combat plumber with Daytona and Mr. Payback and
double-time through the rain, looking for Winslow.
He's in the mud outside his hootch, torn to pieces.
The mortar shells stop falling. The machine guns on the perimeter fade
to short bursts. Even so, the grunts standing line continue to pop green
star clusters in case Victor Charlie plans to launch a ground attack.
Somebody throws a poncho over Winslow. The rain taps the green plastic
sheet.
I say, "It took a lot of guts to do what Winslow did. I mean, you can
see Winslow's guts and he sure had a lot of them."
Nobody says anything.
After the green ghouls from graves registration stuff Winslow into a
body bag and take him away, we go back to our hootch. We flop on our racks,
wasted.
I say, "Well, Rafter, now you've heard a shot fired in anger."
Soaking wet in green skivvies, Rafter Man is sitting on his rack. He
has something in his hand. He's staring at it.
I sit up. "Hey, Rafter. What's that? You souvenir yourself a piece of
shrapnel?" No response. "Rafter? You hit?"
Mr. Payback grunts. "What's wrong, New Guy? Did a few rounds make you
nervous?"
Rafter Man looks up with a new face. His lips are twisted into a cold,
sardonic smirk. His labored breathing is broken by grunts. He growls. His
lips are wet with saliva. He's looking at Mr. Payback. The object in Rafter
Man's hand is a piece of flesh, Winslow's flesh, ugly yellow, as big as a
John Wayne cookie, wet with blood. We all look at it for a long time.
Rafter Man puts the piece of flesh into his mouth, onto his tongue, and
we thing he's going to vomit. Instead, he grits his teeth. Then, closing his
eyes, he swallows.
I turn off the lights.
Dawn. The heat of the day comes quickly, burning away the mud puddles
left by the monsoon rain. Rafter Man and I ditty-bop down to the Phu Bai
landing zone. We wait for a med-evac chopper.
Ten minutes later a Jolly Green Giant comes in loaded.
Corpsmen run up the ramp at the rear of the vibrating machine and
reappear immediately, carrying canvas stretchers. On the stretchers are
bloody rags with men inside. Rafter Man and I run into the chopper. We lift
a stretcher and run down the metal ramp. The chopper is already beginning to
lift off.
We place the stretcher on the deck with the others, where the corpsmen
are sorting the dead from the living, changing bandages, adjusting plasma
bottles.
Rafter Man and I run into the prop wash, running sideways beneath the
thumping blades into a tornado of hot wind and stinging gravel. We stop,
hunched over, holding up our thumbs.
The chopper pilot is an invading Martian in an orange flame-retardant
flight suit and an olive-drab space helmet. The pilot's face is a shadow
behind a dark green visor. He gives us a thumbs-up. We run around to the
cargo ramp and the door gunner gives us a hand up into the belly of the
vibrating machine just as it lifts off.
The flight to Hue is north eight miles. Far below, Viet Nam is a
patchwork quilt of greens and yellows. It's a beautiful country, especially
when seen from the air. Viet Nam is like a page from a Marco Polo picture
book. The deck is pockmarked with shell holes, and napalm air strikes have
charred vast patches of earth, but the land is healing itself with beauty.
My ears pop. I pinch my nose and puff out my cheeks. Rafter Man
imitates me. We sit on bales of green rubber-impregnated canvas body bags.
As we near Hue, the door gunner smokes marijuana and fires his M-60
machine gun at a farmer in the rice paddies below. The door gunner has long
hair, a bushy moustache, and is naked except for an unbuttoned Hawaiian
sport shirt. On the Hawaiian sport shirt are a hundred yellow hula dancers.
The hamlet beneath us is in free fire zone--anybody can shoot at it at
any time and for any reason. We watch the farmer run in the shallow water.
The farmer knows only that his family needs some rice to eat. The farmer
knows only that the bullets are tearing him apart.
He falls, and the door gunner giggles.
The med-evac chopper sets down on a landing zone near Highway One, a
mile south of Hue. The LZ is cluttered with walking wounded, stretcher
cases, and body bags. Before Rafter Man and I are off the LZ our chopper has
been loaded with wounded and is airborne again, flying back to Phu Bai.
We wait for a rough rider convoy in front of a bombed-out gas station.
Hours pass. Noon. I take off my flak jacket. I pull my old, ragged Boy Scout
shirt out of my NVA rucksack. I put on my Boy Scout shirt so that the sun
won't roast the flesh from my bones. On the frayed collar, corporal's
chevrons that are so salty that the black enamel has worn off and the brass
shows through. Over the right breast pocket, a cloth rectangle which reads
First Marine Division, CORRESPONDENT. And in Vietnamese: BAO CHI.
Sitting on a bullet-riddled yellow oyster that says SHELL OIL, we drink
Cokes that cost five dollars a bottle. The mamasan who sells us the Cokes is
wearing a conical white hat. She bows every time we speak. She squawks and
chatters like an old black bird. She flashes her black teeth at us. She is
very proud of her teeth. Only a lifetime of chewing betel nuts can make
teeth as black as hers. We don't understand a word of her magpie chatter,
but the hatred in the smile frozen on her face says clearly, "Oh well,
Americans may be assholes but they are very rich."
There is a popular sea story which says that old Victor Charlie
mamasans sell Cokes with ground-up glass in them. Drinking, we wonder if
that's true.
Two Dusters, light tanks with twin 40mm guns, grind by. The men in the
Dusters ignore our thumbs.
An hour later a Mighty Mite zooms by at eighty miles an hour, the
maximum speed of the little jeep. No luck.
Then a convoy of six-bys appears, led by two M-48 Patton tanks. Thirty
big trucks roar by at full speed. Two more Patton tanks are riding security
at tail-end Charlie.
The first tank speeds up as it passes us.
The second tank slows down, bucks, jerks to a halt. In the turret is a
blond tank commander who is not wearing a helmet or a shirt. He waves us on.
We put on our flak jackets. We pick up our gear and swing it up onto the
tank. Then Rafter Man and I climb up onto a block of hot, vibrating metal.
Down in a hatch by our feet is the driver. His head protrudes just
enough for him to see; his hands are on the controls. The driver jerks the
wobble stick and the tank lurches forward, bouncing, grinding, faster and
faster and faster. The roar of an eight-hundred-horsepower diesel engine
accelerates to a rhythmic rumble of mechanical power.
Rafter Man and I fall back against the hot turret. We are hanging onto
the long ninety-millimeter gun like monkeys. The cool air of speed is
delicious after hours in Viet Nam's one-hundred-and-twenty- degree yellow
furnace. Our sweat-soaked shirts are cold. Flashing by: Vietnamese hootches,
ponds with white ducks in them, circular graves with chipped and faded
paint, and endless shimmering pieces of emerald water newly planted with
rice.
It's a wonderful day. I'm so happy that I am alive, in one piece, and
short. I'm in a world of shit, yes, but I am alive. And I am not afraid.
Riding the tank gives me a thrilling sense of power and well-being. Who
dares to shoot at the man who rides the tiger?
It's a beautiful tank. Painted on the long barrel: BLACK FLAG--We
Exterminate Household Pests. Flying on a radio antenna, a ragged Confederate
flag. Military vehicles are beautiful because they are built from functional
designs which make them real, solid, without artifice. The tank possesses
the beauty of its hard lines; it is fifty tons of rolling armor on tracks
like steel watchbands. The tank is our protection, rolling on and on
forever, clanking out the dark mechanical poetry of iron and guns.
Suddenly the tank shifts to the left. Rafter Man and I are thrown hard
into the turret. Metal grinds metal. The tank hits a bump, shifting sharply
to the right and jerking to a halt, throwing us forward. Rafter Man and I
hang onto the gun and say, "Son-of-a-bitch..."
The blond tank commander climbs out of the turret hatch and jumps off
the back of the tank.
The tank driver has run the tank off the road.
Fifty yards back a water buffalo is down on its back, legs out
straight. The water bo bellows, tosses its curved horns. On the deck, in the
center of the road, I see a tiny body, facedown.
Chattering Vietnamese civilians pour out of the roadside hootches,
staring and pointing. The Vietnamese civilians crowd around to see how their
American saviors have crushed the guts out of a child.
The blond tank commander speaks to the Vietnamese civilians in French.
Then, walking back to the tanks, the blond tank commander is pursued by an
ancient papasan. There are tears in the papasan's eyes. The withered old man
shakes his bony little fists and throws Asian curses at the tank commander's
back. The Vietnamese civilians grow silent. Another child is dead, and,
although it is very sad and painful, they accept it.
The blond tank commander climbs up onto his tank and reinserts his legs
into the turret hatch. "Iron Man, you fucking shitbird. You will drive this
machine like it's a tank and not a goddamn sports car. You hit that little
girl, you blind idiot. Hell, I could see her through the fucking vision
blocks. She was standing on that water bo's back..."
The driver turns, his face hard. "I didn't see them, skipper. What do
they think they're doing, crossing in front of me like that? Don't these
zipperheads know that tanks got the right-of-way?" The driver's face is
coated with a thin film of oil and sweat; iron has entered into his soul and
he has become a component of the tank, sweating oil to lubricate its meshing
gears.
The blond tank commander says, "You fuck up one more time, Iron Man,
and you will be a grunt."
The driver turns back to the front. "Aye-aye, sir. I'll watch the road,
Lieutenant."
Rafter Man asks, "Sir, did we kill that girl? Why was that old man
yelling at you?" Rafter Man looks sick.
The blond tank commander takes a green ballpoint pen and little green
notebook out of his hip pocket. He writes something in the notebook. "The
little girl's grandfather? He was yelling about how he needs his water bo.
He wants a condolence award. He wants us to pay him for the water bo."
Rafter Man doesn't say anything.
The blond tank commander yells at Iron Man: "Drive, you blind
son-of-a-bitch."
And the tank rolls on.
On the outskirts of Hue, the ancient Imperial Capital, we see the first
sign of the battle--a cathedral, centuries old, now a bullet-peppered box of
ruined stone, roof caved in, walls punctured by shells.
Entering Hue, the third largest city in Viet Nam, is a strange new
experience. Our was has been in the paddies, in hamlets where the largest
structure was a bamboo hut. Seeing the effects of war upon a Vietnamese city
makes me feel like a New Guy.
The weather is dreary but the city is beautiful. Hue has been beautiful
for so long that not even war and bad weather can make it ugly.
Empty streets. Every building in Hue has been hit with some kind of
ordnance. The ground is still wet from last night's rain. The air is cool.
The whole city is enveloped in a white mist. The sun is going down.
We roll past a tank which has been gutted by B-40 rocket-propelled
grenades. On the barrel of the shattered ninety-millimeter gun: BLACK FLAG.
Fifty yards down the road we pass two wasted six-bys. One of the big
trucks has been knocked onto its side. The cab of the truck is a broken mass
of jagged, twisted steel. The second six-by has burned and is only a
skeleton of black iron. The windshields of both trucks have been strung with
bright necklaces of bullet holes.
As we roll past Quoc Hoc High School I punch Rafter Man on the arm. "Ho
Chi Minh went there," I say. "I wonder if Uncle Ho played varsity
basketball. I wonder who Uncle Ho took to the senior prom."
Rafter Man grins.
Shots pop, far away. Single rounds. Short bursts of automatic weapons.
The fighting has stopped, for the moment. The shots we hear are just some
grunt trying to get lucky.
Near the University of Hue the tank grinds to a halt and Rafter Man and
I hop off. The University of Hue is now a collection point for refugees on
their way to Phu Bai. Whole families with all of their possessions have
occupied the classrooms and corridors since the battle began. The refugees
are too tired to run anymore. The refugees look cold and drained the way you
look after death sits on your face and smothers you for so long that you get
tired of screaming. Outside, the women cook pots of rice. All over the deck
there are piles of human shit.
We wave good-bye to the blond tank commander and his tank grumbles and
rolls away. The tank's steel cleats crush some bricks which have been thrown
into the street by explosions.
Rafter Man and I stare across the River of Perfumes. We stare at the
Citadel. The river is ugly. The river is muddy. The steel suspension
bridge--The Bridge of the Golden Waters--is down, blown by enemy frogmen.
Torn girders jut out of the dark water like the broken bones of a sea
serpent.
A hand grenade explodes, far away, inside the Citadel.
Rafter Man and I head for the MAC-V, Military Assistance Command--Viet
Nam, compound.
"This is a beautiful place," says Rafter Man.
"It was. It really was. I've been here a few times for award
ceremonies. General Cushman was here. I took his picture and he took a
picture of me taking a picture of him. And Ky was here, all duded up in his
black silk flight jacket with silver general's stars all over it and a black
cap with silver general's stars all over that, too. Ky had these
pearl-handled pistols and wore a purple ascot. He looked like a Japanese
playboy. He had his program squared away, that Ky. He believed in a Viet Nam
for the Vietnamese. I guess that's why we kicked him out. But he was
beautiful that day. You should have seen all the schoolgirls in their ao
dai, purple and white, carrying their little parasols..."
"Where are they now? The girls?"
"Oh, dead, I guess. Did you know that there's a legend that Hue rose
from a pool of mud as a lotus flower?"
"Look at that!"
A squad of Arvins are looting a mansion. The Arvins of the Army of the
Republic of Viet Nam look funny because all of their equipment is too big
for them. In baggy uniforms and oversized helmets they look like little boys
playing war.
I say, "Decent. Number one. We got some slack, Rafter. Remember this,
Rafter Man, any time you can see an Arvin you are safe from Victor Charlie.
The Arvins run like rabbits at the first sign of violence. An Arvin infantry
platoon is about as lethal as a garden club of old ladies throwing
marshmallows. Don't believe all that scuttlebutt about Arvins being cowards.
They just hate the Green Machine more than we do. They were drafted by the
Saigon government, which was drafted by the lifers who drafted us, who were
drafted by the lifers who think that they can buy the war. And Arvins are
not stupid. The Arvins are not stupid when they are doing something they
enjoy, like stealing. Arvins sincerely believe that jewels and money are
essential military supplies. So we're safe until the Arvins start yelling,
'Beaucoup VC, beaucoup VC!' and then run away. But be careful. Arvins are
always shooting at chickens, other people's pigs, and trees. Arvins will
shoot anything except transistor radios, Coca-Colas, sunglasses, money, and
the enemy."
"Don't they get money from their government?"
I grin. "Money is their government."
The sun is gone. Rafter Man and I double-time. A sentry challenges us;
I tell him to go to hell.
Fifty-six days and a wake-up.
In the morning we wake up inside the MAC-V compound, a white two-story
building with bullet-pocked walls. The compound has been enclosed behind a
wall of sandbags and concertina wire.
We gather up our gear and prepare to leave while a light colonel reads
a statement made by the military mayor of Hue. The statement is a denial
that there is looting in Hue and a warning that looters will be shot on
sight. A dozen civilian war correspondents sit on the deck, wiping sleep
from their eyes, half-listening, yawning. Then the light colonel adds a
personal comment. Someone has awarded a Purple Heart to a big white goose
that got wounded while the compound was under attack. The light colonel
feels that the civilian correspondents do not understand that war is serious
business.
Outside, I point to a wasted NVA hanging in the wire. "Was is serious
business, son, and this is our gross national product." I kick the corpse,
triggering panic in the maggots in the hollow eye sockets and in the
grinning mouth and in each of the bullet holes in his chest. "Gross?"
Rafter Man kneels down to get a better look. "Yes, he is confirmed."
A CBS camera crew appears, surrounded by star-struck grunts who strike
combat-Marine poses, pretending to be what they are. They all want Walter
Cronkite to meet their sisters. In white short-sleeved shirts the CBS
cameramen hurry off to photograph death in living color.
I stop a master sergeant. "Top, we want to get into the shit."
The master sergeant is writing on a piece of yellow paper on a
clipboard. He doesn't look up, but jerks his thumb over his shoulder.
"Across the river. One-Five. Get a boat ride by the bridge."
"One-Five? Outstanding. Thanks, Top."
The master sergeant walks away, writing on the yellow paper. He ignores
four skuzzy grunts who run into the compound, each man holding up one corner
of a poncho. On the poncho is a dead Marine. The grunts are screaming for a
corpsman and when they put the poncho down, very gently, a pool of dark
blood pours out onto the concrete deck.
Rafter Man and I hurry down to the River of Perfumes. We talk to a
baby-faced Navy ensign who souvenirs us a ride on a Vietnamese gunboat
ferrying reinforcements to the Vietnamese Marines.
As we skim down the river Rafter Man asks, "Are these guys any good?"
I nod. "The best the Arvins got. They're not as tough as the Korean
Marines, though. The ROK's are so hard that they got muscles in their shit.
The Blue Dragon Brigade. I was on an op with them down by Hoi An."
A shot pops from the shore. The bullet buzzes over.
The gunboat crew opens up with a fifty-caliber machine gun and a forty
mike-mike cannon.
Rafter Man watches with joy in his eyes as the bullets knock up thin
stalks of water along the river bank. He holds his piece at port arms, first
to fight.
The Strawberry Patch, a large triangle of land between the Citadel and
the River of Perfumes, is a quiet suburb of Hue. We get off the gunboat at
the Strawberry Patch and wander around with the Vietnamese Marines until we
see a little Marine with an expensive pump shotgun slung across his back, a
case of C rations on his shoulder, and DEADLY DELTA on his flak jacket.
I say, "Hey, bro, where's One-Five?"
The little Marines turns, smiles.
I say, "You need a huss with that?"
"No thanks, Marine. You people One-One?"
"No, sir," I say. Officers do not wear rank insignia in the field but
snuffies learn to fix a man's rank by his voice. "We're looking for
One-Five. I got a bro in the First Platoon. They call him Cowboy. He wears a
cowboy hat."
"I'm Cowboy's platoon commander. The Lusthog Squad is in the platoon
area up by the Citadel."
We walk along with the little Marine.
"I'm Joker, sir. Corporal Joker. This is Rafter Man. We work for Stars
and Stripes."
"My name is Bayer. Robert M. Bayer the third. My people call me
Shortround, for obvious reasons. You here to make Cowboy famous?"
I laugh. "Never happen."
The gray sky is clearing. The white mist is moving away, exposing Hue
to the sun.
First Platoon's area is within sight of the massive walls of the
Citadel. While First Platoon waits for the attack to begin, the Lusthog
Squad is partying.
Crazy Earl points a forefinger at the three of us. "Resupply! Number
one!" Then: "Hey, cowpuncher, the Joker is on deck."
Cowboy looks up and grins. He's holding a large brown bottle of tiger
piss--Vietnamese beer. "Well, no shit. It's the Joker and his New Guy. Lai
dai, bros, come on, sit and share, sit and share."
Rafter Man and I sit down in the dirt and Cowboy throws loose stacks of
Vietnamese piasters into our laps. I laugh, surprised. I pick up the
brightly colored bills, large bills, in large denominations. Cowboy shoves
bottles of tiger piss into our hands.
"Hey, Skipper!" says Cowboy. "Souvenir me spaghetti and meatballs,
okay? Every time we chow down I pull ham and mothers--the Breakfast of
Champions. I hate fucking ham and lima beans."
The little Marine rips open one case of C's, pulls out a cardboard box,
pitches it to Cowboy.
Cowboy catches the box, squints at the label. "Number one. Thanks,
Skipper."
Crazy Earl throws another stack of piasters into my lap.
Every man in the squad has a pile of money.
"Man, we finally got paid," says Crazy Earl. "You know what I am
saying, gentlemen? We been slave-labor mercenaries and now we are rich. We
got a million P's here, gentlemen. Yes, that's beaucoup P's."
I say, "Sir, where'd this money--"
Mr. Shortround shrugs. "Money? I don't see any money." He takes off his
helmet. On the back of the helmet: Kill a Commie for Christ. Mr. Shortround
lights a cigarette. "About half a million P's. Maybe a thousand dollars per
man in American money."
Cowboy says, "You got to write about our John Wayne lieutenant." Cowboy
punches Mr. Shortround on the arm. "Mr. Shortround is a mustang. When the
Crotch made him a lieutenant he was just a corporal, just a snuffy like us.
He's very little, but he is oh so bad." Cowboy tilts his head back and sucks
in a long swallow of tiger piss. Then: "We were taking this railroad
terminal. That's where the safe was. We blew it open with a block of C-4.
The gooks were coming down on us with automatic weapons, B-40's, even a
fucking mortar. The Lieutenant got six confirmed. Six! He wasted those
zipperheads like a born killer."
"There are NVA here," says Crazy Earl. "Many, many of them."
"That's affirmative," says Cowboy. "And they are as hard as slant-eyed
drill instructors. They are highly motivated individuals."
Crazy Earl holds his bottle by the neck and smashes it across a fallen
statue of a fat, smiling, bald-headed gook. "This ain't a war, it's a series
of overlapping riots. We blow them away. They come up behind us before we're
out of sight and shoot us in the ass. I know a guy in One-One that shot a
gook and then tied a satchel charge to him and blew him into little
invisible pieces because shooting gooks is a waste of time--they come back
to life. But these gooks piss you off so bad that you get to shoot
something, anything. Bros, half the confirmed kills I got are civilians and
the other half is water buffaloes." Earl pauses, burps, drawing the burp out
as long as he can. "You should have seen Animal Mother wasting those Arvins.
As soon as we hit the shit the Arvins started di-di mau-ing for the rear and
Animal Mother spit and then blew them away."
"I miss Stumbling Stewey," says Alice, the black giant. He explains to
me and Rafter Man: "Stumbling Stewey was our honcho before Stoke, the
Supergrunt. Stumbling Stewey was real nervous, you know? Very nervous. I
mean, he was nervous. The only way the dude could relax was throwing hand
grenades. He was always popping frags all over the area. Then he started
holding on to them right up to the last second. So one day ol' Stumbling
Stewey pulled the pin and just stood there, staring, just staring and
staring at that little ol' olive-drab egg in his hand..."
Crazy Earl nods, burps. "I was just a New Guy the day Stumbling Stewey
blew himself away and Stoke the Supergrunt took the squad. Stoke made me
assistant squad leader. He could see that I didn't know nothing, and all
that good shit, but he said he liked my personality." Crazy Earl takes a
swallow from another bottle of beer. "Hey, Cowboy, get your horse! Quick! My
crabs are having a rodeo!"
Donlon, the radioman, says, "I hope we stay here. This street fighting
is decent duty. We can see them here. We got cover, resupply, even some
areas where you can cut a few Z's without digging a hole. No rice paddies
full of slope shit to swim in. No immersion foot. No jungle rot. No leeches
falling from the trees."
Crazy Earl flips a beer bottle into the air and the bottle arches down
and smashes upon a broken wall. "Affirmative, but we blow up all these
shrines and temples and the gooks got lots of shit to hide under and we have
to dig them out."
Everybody gets a little high. Crazy Earl goes into a long, detailed sea
story about how the Montagnard Tribesmen are in fact Viet Cong cavemen. "We
said we were going to bomb them back to the Stone Age and we do not lie."
Cowboy suggests that Montagnards are actually Viet Cong Indians and
that the secret to winning the war is to issue each grunt a horse. Then
Victor Charlie would have to hump while Marines could ride.
Crazy Earl puts his arm across the shoulders of the man next to him.
The man has a bush cover pulled down over his face, a beer in his hand, a
pile of money in his lap. "This is my bro," says Crazy Earl, removing the
bush cover from the man's face. "This is his party. He is the guest of
honor. You see, today is his birthday."
Rafter Man looks at me, his mouth open. "Sarge..."
I say, "Don't call me Sarge."
The man next to Crazy Earl is a dead man, a North Vietnamese corporal,
a clean-cut Asian kid about seventeen years old with ink-black hair, cropped
short.
Crazy Earl hugs the North Vietnamese corporal. He grins. "I made him
sleep." Crazy Earl puts his forefinger to his lips and whispers, "Shhh. He's
resting now."
Before Rafter Man can start asking questions Animal Mother and another
Marine double-time up the road, carrying a large cardboard box between them.
They drop the box and reach inside. They throw plastic bags to each of us.
"Resupply! Resupply! Get your red-hot bennies. Scarf it up!"
Cowboy snatches up his bag and rips it open. "Long-rats. Outstanding!"
I pick up my bag and I show it to Rafter Man. "This is number one chow,
Rafter. The Army eats this shit on humps. Add water and you got real food."
Lieutenant Shortround says, "Okay, Mother, where'd you souvenir the
chow?"
Animal Mother spits. He grins, baring rotten teeth. "I stole it."
"You stole it, sir."
"Yeah, I stole it...sir."
"That's looting. They shoot people for that."
"I stole it from the Army...sir."
"Outstanding. It is part of your duty as a Marine to harass our sister
services. Carry on."
Cowboy punches the Marine who helped Animal Mother carry the cardboard
box. "This is T.H.E. Rock. Make him famous. He wears that rock around his
neck so that when the dinks zap him they'll know who he is."
T.H.E. Rock grins. "You fucking alcoholic. I wish you'd stop telling
people about my rock." He pulls out a rawhide cord and shows us his rock, a
quartz crystal mounted in brass.
Animal Mother props his M-60 machine gun against a wall and sits down,
cross-legged. "Man, I almost got me some eatin' pussy."
T.H.E. Rock says, "That's affirmative. Mother was chasing a little gook
girl with his dick hanging out...."
Lieutenant Shortround pulls his K-bar from its sheath and cuts a chunk
from a block of C-4 plastic explosive he has extracted from a Claymore mine.
He puts the piece of C-4 into a little stove he has made by punching air
holes into an empty C rations can. He strikes a match and lights the C-4. He
fills a second can with water from his canteen and then holds the can of
water over the blue flame. "Mother, you know what I told you last week."
A Phantom F-4 jet roars over and unloads a few rocket pods into the
Citadel. Explosions rock the deck.
T.H.E. Rock looks at Animal Mother as he explains: "She was just a
baby, sir. Thirteen or fourteen."
Animal Mother grins, spits. "If she's old enough to bleed, she's old
enough to butcher."
Mr. Shortround looks at Animal Mother, but doesn't say anything. He
takes a white plastic spoon out of his shirt pocket and puts it into the can
of boiling water. Then he takes a tinfoil packet of cocoa out of his thigh
pocket, tears it open, pours the brown powder into the can of boiling water.
He takes hold of the white plastic spoon and begins to stir the hot
chocolate slowly. "Animal Mother? Do you hear me? I'm talking to you."
Animal Mother glares at the lieutenant. Then, "Oh, I was just fooling
around, Lieutenant."
Mr. Shortround stirs his hot chocolate.
I say, "Animal Mother, how come you think you're so bad?"
Animal Mother looks at me, surprised. "Hey, motherfucker, don't even
talk to me. You ain't a grunt. You want your face stomped in? Huh? You want
to battle?"
I pick up my M-16.
Animal Mother reaches for his M-60.
Cowboy says, "Man, if there's one thing I can't stand, it's violence. I
mean, if you got to blow Mother away, that's outstanding. Nobody likes
Mother anyway. Shit, he don't even like himself. But you got to get a real
gun, not that toy M-16. If it's Mattel, it's swell." Cowboy unhooks a frag
from his flak jacket and tosses it to me. "Here. Use this."
I catch the hand grenade. I toss it up into the air a few times,
catching it, still looking at Animal Mother. "No, I'm going to get me an
M-60 and then me and this motherfucker are going to have one duel--"
"Stow it, Joker," Mr. Shortround interrupts: "Animal Mother, listen up.
You harass one more little girl and I'm going to put my little silver bar in
my pocket and then you and I are going to throw some hands."
Animal Mother grunts, spits, picks up a bottle of tiger piss. He hooks
a tooth into the metal cap and forces the bottle up. The cap pops off. He
takes a swallow, then looks at me. He mutter, "Fucking poge..." He takes
another couple of swallows and then says very loud, "Cowboy, you remember
when we was set up in that L-shaped ambush up by Khe Sanh and blew away that
NVA rifle squad? You remember that little gook bitch that was guiding them?
She was a lot younger than the one I saw today." He takes another swallow.
"I didn't get to fuck that one either. But that's okay. That's okay. I shot
her motherfucking face off." Animal Mother burps. He looks at me and smirks.
"That's affirmative, poge. I shot her motherfucking face off."
Alice shows me a necklace of little bones and tries to convince me that
they're magic Voodoo bones from New Orleans, but they look like dry old
chicken bones to me.
"We...are animals," I say.
After a couple of minutes Crazy Earl says, "Grunts ain't animals. We
just do our job. We're shot at and missed, shit on and hit. The gooks are
grunts, like us. They fight, like us. They got lifer poges running their
country and we got lifer poges running ours. But at least the gooks are
grunts, like us. Not the Viet Cong. The VC are some dried-up old mamasans
with rusty carbines. The NVA, man, we are tight with the NVA. We kill each
other, no doubt about it, but we're tight. We're hard." Crazy Earl tosses an
empty beer bottle to the deck and picks up his Red Ryder air rifle. He fires
the air rifle at the bottle and the BB ricochets off the bottle with a faint
ping. "I love the little commie bastards, man. I really do. Grunts
understand grunts. These are great days we are living, bros. We are jolly
green giants, walking with the earth with guns. The people we wasted here
today are the finest individuals we will ever know. When we rotate back to
the World we're gonna miss having somebody around who's worth shooting.
There ought to be a government for grunts. Grunts could fix the world up. I
never met a grunt I didn't like, except Mother."
I say, "Never happen. It would make too much sense. It's better that we
save Viet Nam from the people who live here. Of course, they love us; we'll
kill them if they don't. When you've got them by the balls their hearts and
minds will follow."
Donlon says, "Well, we're rich and we got beaucoup beer and beaucoup
chow. Now all we need is the Bob Hope show."
I stand up. The beer has gone to my head. "I'll be Bob Hope." I
hesitate. I touch my face. "Oh, wow, my nose ain't big enough." Mild
laughter.
A hundred yards away a heavy machine gun fires a long burst. Scattered
small arms fire replies.
I do impressions.
"Friends, I am Bob Hope. You all remember me, I'm sure. I was in some
movies with Bing Crosby. Well, I'm here in Viet Nam to entertain you. The
folks back home don't care enough about you to bring you back to the World
so you won't get wasted, but they do care enough to send comedians over here
so that at least you can die laughing. So have you heard the one about the
Viet Nam veteran who came home and said, 'Look, Mom, no hands!'"
The squad laughs. They say: "Do John Wayne!"
Doing my John Wayne voice, I tell the squad a joke: "Stop me if you're
heard this. There was a Marine of nuts and bolts, half robot--weird but
true--whose every move was cut from pain as though from stone. His stoney
little hide had been crushed and broken. But he just laughed and said, 'I've
been crushed and broken before.' And sure enough, he had the heart of a
bear. His heart functioned for weeks after it had been diagnosed by doctors.
His heart weighed half a pound. His heart pumped seven hundred thousand
gallons of warm blood through one hundred thousand miles of veins, working
hard--hard enough in twelve hours to lift one sixty-five ton boxcar one foot
off the deck. He said. The world would not waste the heart of a bear, he
said. On his clean blue pajamas many medals hung. He was a walking word of
history, in the shop for a few repairs. He took it on the chin and was good.
One night in Japan his life came out of his body--black--like a question
mark. If you can keep your head while others are losing theirs perhaps you
have misjudged the situation. Stop me if you've heard this..."
Nobody says anything.
"The war is ruining my sense of humor," I say. I squat.
Cowboy nods. "There it is. All I'm doing is counting my days, just
counting my days. A hundred days and a wake-up and I'll be on that big
silver Freedom Bird, flying back to the World, back to the block, back to
the Lone Star State, back to the land of the big PX. And I'll have medals
all over myself. And I won't be fucked up. No, when you get fucked up they
send you to Japan. You go to Japan and somebody pins a medical discharged to
what's left of you and all that good shit."
"I'd rather be wasted," I say. "Hire the handicapped--they're fun to
watch."
Cowboy grins.
T.H.E. Rocks says, "You know, my mom writes me a lot of letters about
what a brave boy T.H.E. Rock is. T.H.E. Rock is not a boy; he's a person."
He drinks beer. "I know I'm a person because I know there ain't no Santa
Claus. There ain't no fucking Easter bunny. You know? Back in the World we
thought that the future is always safe in a little gold box somewhere. Well,
I'll live forever. I'm T.H.E. Rock."
Crazy Earl grunts. "Hey Skipper, what say we stuff some dope into your
don't give you any pants. Your friends from school and all of the relatives
you never liked anyway will be at your funeral and they'll call you a good
little Christian and they'll say you were a hero to get wasted defeating
Communism and you'll just lie there with a cold ass, dead as a mackerel."
Daytona Dave sits up. "You can be a hero for a little while, sometimes,
if you can stop thinking about your own ass long enough, if you give a shit.
But civilians don't know what to do, so they put up statues in the park for
pigeons to drop turds on. Civilians don't know. Civilians don't want to
know."
I say, "You guys are bitter. Don't you love the American way of life?"
Chili Vendor shakes his head. "No Victor Charlie ever raped my sister.
Ho Chi Minh never bombed Pearl Harbor. We're prisoners here. We're prisoners
of the war. They've taken away our freedom and they've given it to the
gooks, but the gooks don't want it. They'd rather be alive than free."
I grunt. "There it is."
With my magic marker I "X" out a section of thigh on the nude woman
outlined on the back of my flak jacket. The number 58 disappears.
Fifty-seven days and a wake-up left in country.
Midnight. The boredom becomes unbearable. Chili Vendor suggests that we
kill time by wasting our furry little friends.
I say, "Rat race!"
Chili Vendor hops off his canvas cot and into a corner. He breaks up a
John Wayne cookie. In the corner, six inches off the desk, we've nailed a
piece of ammo crate to form a triangular pocket. There's a little hole in
the charred board. Chili Vendor puts the cookie fragments under the board.
Then he snaps off the lights.
I toss Rafter Man one of my booties. Of course, he doesn't know what to
do with it. "What--"
Shhhh.
We wait in ambush, enjoying the anticipation of violence. Five minutes.
Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. Then the Viet Cong rats crawl out of their
holes. We freeze. The rats skitter along the rafters, climb down the
screening, then hop onto the plywood deck, making little thumps, moving
through the darkness without fear.
Chili Vendor waits until the skittering converges in the corner. Then
he jumps out of his rack and flips on the overhead lights.
With the exception of Rafter Man we're all on our feet in the same
second, forming a semicircle across the corner. The rats zip and zing, their
tiny pink feet clawing for traction on the plywood. Two or three escape--so
brave, or so terrified--in such situations motives are immaterial--that they
run right over out feet and between our legs and through the deadly gauntlet
of carefully aimed boots and stabbing bayonets.
But most of the rats herd together under the board.
Mr. Payback takes a can of lighter fluid from his bamboo footlocker. He
squirts lighter fluid into the little hole in the board.
Daytona Dave strikes a match. "Fire in the hole!" He pitches the
burning match into the corner.
The board foomps into flame.
Rats explode from beneath the board like shrapnel from a rodent
grenade.
The rats are on fire. The rats are little flaming kamikaze animals
zinging across the plywood deck, running under racks, over gear, around in
circles, running faster and faster and in no particular direction except
toward some place where there is no fire.
"GET SOME!" Mr. Payback is screaming like a lunatic. "GET SOME! GET
SOME!" He chops a rat in half with his machete.
Chili Vendor holds a rat by the tail and, while it shrieks, pounds it
do death with a boot.
I throw my K-bar at a rat on the other side of the hootch. The big
knife misses the rat, sticks up in the floor.
Rafter Man doesn't know what to do.
Daytona Dave charges around and around with fixed bayonet, zeroing in
on a burning rat like a fighter pilot in a dogfight. Daytona follows the
rat's crazed, erratic course around and around, over all obstacles, gaining
on him with every step. He butt-strokes the rat and then bayonets him, again
and again and again. "That's one confirmed!"
And, as suddenly as it began, the battle is over.
After the rat race everyone collapses. Daytona is breathing hard and
fast. "Whew. That was a good group. Real hard-core. I thought I was going to
have a fucking heart attack."
Mr. Payback coughs, grunts. "Hey, New Guy, how many confirmed did you
get?"
Rafter Man is still sitting on his canvas cot with my boot in his hand.
"I...none. I mean, it happened so fast."
Mr. Payback laughs. "Well, sometimes it's fun to kill something you can
see. You better get squared away, New Guy. Next time the rats will have
guns."
Daytona Dave is wiping his face with a dirty green skivvy shirt. "The
New Guy will do okay. Cut him some slack. Rafter ain't got the killer
instinct, that's all. Now me, I got about fifty confirmed. But everybody
knows that gook rats drag off their dead."
We all throw things at Daytona Dave.
We rest for a while and then we gather up the barbecued rats and take
them outside to hold a funeral in the dark.
Some guys from utilities platoon who live next door come out of their
hootch to pay their respects.
Lance Corporal Winslow Slavin, honcho of the combat plumbers, struts up
in a skuzzy green flight suit. The flight suit is ragged, covered with paint
stains and oil splotches. "Only six? Shit. Last night my boys got seventeen.
Confirmed."
I say, "Sounds like a squad of poges to me. Poges kill poges. These
rats are Viet Cong field Marines. Hard-core grunts."
I pick up one of the rats. I turn to the combat plumbers. I hold up the
rat and I kiss it.
Mr. Payback laughs, picks up one of the dead rats, bites off the tip of
its tail. Then, swallowing, Mr. Payback says, "Ummm....love them crispy
critters." He grins. He bends over, picks up another dead rat, offers it to
Rafter Man.
Rafter Man is frozen. He can't speak. He just looks at the rat.
Mr. Payback laughs. "What's wrong, New Guy? Don't you want to be a
killer?"
We bury the enemy rats with full military honors--we scoop out a
shallow grave and we dump them in.
We sing:
So come along and sing our song
And join our fam-i-ly
M.I.C....K.E.Y....M.O.U.S.E.
Mickey Mouse, Mickey Mouse...
"Dear God," says Mr. Payback, looking up into the ugly sky. "These rats
died like Marines. Cut them some slack. Ah-men."
We all say, "Ah-men."
After the funeral we insult the combat plumbers a few more times and
then we return to our hootch. We lie awake in our racks. We discuss the
battle and the funeral for a long time.
Then we try to sleep.
An hour later. It's raining. We roll up in our poncho liners and pray
for morning. The monsoon rain is cold and heavy and comes without warning.
Wind-blown water batters the ponchos hung around the hootch to protect us
from the weather.
The terrible falling of the shells...
Incoming.
"Oh, shit," somebody says. Nobody moves.
Rafter Man asks, "Is that---"
I say, "There it is."
The crumps start somewhere outside the wire and walk in like the
footsteps of a monster. The crumps are becoming thuds. Thud. Thud. THUD. And
then it's a whistle and a roar.
BANG.
The rain's rhythmic drumming is broken by the clang and rattle of
shrapnel falling on our tin roof.
We're all out of our racks with our weapons in our hands like so many
parts of the same body--even Rafter Man, who has begun to pick up on things.
Pounded by cold rain, we double-time to our bunker.
On the perimeter M-60 machine guns are banging and the M-70 grenade
launchers are blooping and mortar shells are thumping out of the tubes.
Star flares burst all along the wire, beautiful clusters of green fire.
Inside our damp cave of sandbags we huddle elbow-to-elbow in wet
skivvies, feeling the weight of the darkness, as helpless as cavemen hiding
from a monster.
"I hope they're just fucking with us," I say. "I hope they're not going
to hit the wire. I'm not ready for this shit."
Outside our bunker: BANG, BANG, BANG. And falling rain.
Each of us is waiting for the next shell to nail him right on the
head--the mortar as an agent of existential doom.
A scream.
I wait for a time of silence and I crawl out to take a look. Somebody
is down. The whistle of an incoming round forces me to retreat into the
bunker. I wait for the shell to burst.
BANG.
I crawl out, stand up, and I run to the wounded man. He's one of the
combat plumbers. "You utilities platoon? Where's Winslow?"
The man is whining. "I'm dying! I'm dying!" I shake him.
"Where's Winslow?"
"There." He points. "He was coming to help me..."
Rafter Man and Chili Vendor come out and Rafter Man helps me carry the
combat plumber to our bunker. Chili Vendor double-times off to get a
corpsman.
We leave the combat plumber with Daytona and Mr. Payback and
double-time through the rain, looking for Winslow.
He's in the mud outside his hootch, torn to pieces.
The mortar shells stop falling. The machine guns on the perimeter fade
to short bursts. Even so, the grunts standing line continue to pop green
star clusters in case Victor Charlie plans to launch a ground attack.
Somebody throws a poncho over Winslow. The rain taps the green plastic
sheet.
I say, "It took a lot of guts to do what Winslow did. I mean, you can
see Winslow's guts and he sure had a lot of them."
Nobody says anything.
After the green ghouls from graves registration stuff Winslow into a
body bag and take him away, we go back to our hootch. We flop on our racks,
wasted.
I say, "Well, Rafter, now you've heard a shot fired in anger."
Soaking wet in green skivvies, Rafter Man is sitting on his rack. He
has something in his hand. He's staring at it.
I sit up. "Hey, Rafter. What's that? You souvenir yourself a piece of
shrapnel?" No response. "Rafter? You hit?"
Mr. Payback grunts. "What's wrong, New Guy? Did a few rounds make you
nervous?"
Rafter Man looks up with a new face. His lips are twisted into a cold,
sardonic smirk. His labored breathing is broken by grunts. He growls. His
lips are wet with saliva. He's looking at Mr. Payback. The object in Rafter
Man's hand is a piece of flesh, Winslow's flesh, ugly yellow, as big as a
John Wayne cookie, wet with blood. We all look at it for a long time.
Rafter Man puts the piece of flesh into his mouth, onto his tongue, and
we thing he's going to vomit. Instead, he grits his teeth. Then, closing his
eyes, he swallows.
I turn off the lights.
Dawn. The heat of the day comes quickly, burning away the mud puddles
left by the monsoon rain. Rafter Man and I ditty-bop down to the Phu Bai
landing zone. We wait for a med-evac chopper.
Ten minutes later a Jolly Green Giant comes in loaded.
Corpsmen run up the ramp at the rear of the vibrating machine and
reappear immediately, carrying canvas stretchers. On the stretchers are
bloody rags with men inside. Rafter Man and I run into the chopper. We lift
a stretcher and run down the metal ramp. The chopper is already beginning to
lift off.
We place the stretcher on the deck with the others, where the corpsmen
are sorting the dead from the living, changing bandages, adjusting plasma
bottles.
Rafter Man and I run into the prop wash, running sideways beneath the
thumping blades into a tornado of hot wind and stinging gravel. We stop,
hunched over, holding up our thumbs.
The chopper pilot is an invading Martian in an orange flame-retardant
flight suit and an olive-drab space helmet. The pilot's face is a shadow
behind a dark green visor. He gives us a thumbs-up. We run around to the
cargo ramp and the door gunner gives us a hand up into the belly of the
vibrating machine just as it lifts off.
The flight to Hue is north eight miles. Far below, Viet Nam is a
patchwork quilt of greens and yellows. It's a beautiful country, especially
when seen from the air. Viet Nam is like a page from a Marco Polo picture
book. The deck is pockmarked with shell holes, and napalm air strikes have
charred vast patches of earth, but the land is healing itself with beauty.
My ears pop. I pinch my nose and puff out my cheeks. Rafter Man
imitates me. We sit on bales of green rubber-impregnated canvas body bags.
As we near Hue, the door gunner smokes marijuana and fires his M-60
machine gun at a farmer in the rice paddies below. The door gunner has long
hair, a bushy moustache, and is naked except for an unbuttoned Hawaiian
sport shirt. On the Hawaiian sport shirt are a hundred yellow hula dancers.
The hamlet beneath us is in free fire zone--anybody can shoot at it at
any time and for any reason. We watch the farmer run in the shallow water.
The farmer knows only that his family needs some rice to eat. The farmer
knows only that the bullets are tearing him apart.
He falls, and the door gunner giggles.
The med-evac chopper sets down on a landing zone near Highway One, a
mile south of Hue. The LZ is cluttered with walking wounded, stretcher
cases, and body bags. Before Rafter Man and I are off the LZ our chopper has
been loaded with wounded and is airborne again, flying back to Phu Bai.
We wait for a rough rider convoy in front of a bombed-out gas station.
Hours pass. Noon. I take off my flak jacket. I pull my old, ragged Boy Scout
shirt out of my NVA rucksack. I put on my Boy Scout shirt so that the sun
won't roast the flesh from my bones. On the frayed collar, corporal's
chevrons that are so salty that the black enamel has worn off and the brass
shows through. Over the right breast pocket, a cloth rectangle which reads
First Marine Division, CORRESPONDENT. And in Vietnamese: BAO CHI.
Sitting on a bullet-riddled yellow oyster that says SHELL OIL, we drink
Cokes that cost five dollars a bottle. The mamasan who sells us the Cokes is
wearing a conical white hat. She bows every time we speak. She squawks and
chatters like an old black bird. She flashes her black teeth at us. She is
very proud of her teeth. Only a lifetime of chewing betel nuts can make
teeth as black as hers. We don't understand a word of her magpie chatter,
but the hatred in the smile frozen on her face says clearly, "Oh well,
Americans may be assholes but they are very rich."
There is a popular sea story which says that old Victor Charlie
mamasans sell Cokes with ground-up glass in them. Drinking, we wonder if
that's true.
Two Dusters, light tanks with twin 40mm guns, grind by. The men in the
Dusters ignore our thumbs.
An hour later a Mighty Mite zooms by at eighty miles an hour, the
maximum speed of the little jeep. No luck.
Then a convoy of six-bys appears, led by two M-48 Patton tanks. Thirty
big trucks roar by at full speed. Two more Patton tanks are riding security
at tail-end Charlie.
The first tank speeds up as it passes us.
The second tank slows down, bucks, jerks to a halt. In the turret is a
blond tank commander who is not wearing a helmet or a shirt. He waves us on.
We put on our flak jackets. We pick up our gear and swing it up onto the
tank. Then Rafter Man and I climb up onto a block of hot, vibrating metal.
Down in a hatch by our feet is the driver. His head protrudes just
enough for him to see; his hands are on the controls. The driver jerks the
wobble stick and the tank lurches forward, bouncing, grinding, faster and
faster and faster. The roar of an eight-hundred-horsepower diesel engine
accelerates to a rhythmic rumble of mechanical power.
Rafter Man and I fall back against the hot turret. We are hanging onto
the long ninety-millimeter gun like monkeys. The cool air of speed is
delicious after hours in Viet Nam's one-hundred-and-twenty- degree yellow
furnace. Our sweat-soaked shirts are cold. Flashing by: Vietnamese hootches,
ponds with white ducks in them, circular graves with chipped and faded
paint, and endless shimmering pieces of emerald water newly planted with
rice.
It's a wonderful day. I'm so happy that I am alive, in one piece, and
short. I'm in a world of shit, yes, but I am alive. And I am not afraid.
Riding the tank gives me a thrilling sense of power and well-being. Who
dares to shoot at the man who rides the tiger?
It's a beautiful tank. Painted on the long barrel: BLACK FLAG--We
Exterminate Household Pests. Flying on a radio antenna, a ragged Confederate
flag. Military vehicles are beautiful because they are built from functional
designs which make them real, solid, without artifice. The tank possesses
the beauty of its hard lines; it is fifty tons of rolling armor on tracks
like steel watchbands. The tank is our protection, rolling on and on
forever, clanking out the dark mechanical poetry of iron and guns.
Suddenly the tank shifts to the left. Rafter Man and I are thrown hard
into the turret. Metal grinds metal. The tank hits a bump, shifting sharply
to the right and jerking to a halt, throwing us forward. Rafter Man and I
hang onto the gun and say, "Son-of-a-bitch..."
The blond tank commander climbs out of the turret hatch and jumps off
the back of the tank.
The tank driver has run the tank off the road.
Fifty yards back a water buffalo is down on its back, legs out
straight. The water bo bellows, tosses its curved horns. On the deck, in the
center of the road, I see a tiny body, facedown.
Chattering Vietnamese civilians pour out of the roadside hootches,
staring and pointing. The Vietnamese civilians crowd around to see how their
American saviors have crushed the guts out of a child.
The blond tank commander speaks to the Vietnamese civilians in French.
Then, walking back to the tanks, the blond tank commander is pursued by an
ancient papasan. There are tears in the papasan's eyes. The withered old man
shakes his bony little fists and throws Asian curses at the tank commander's
back. The Vietnamese civilians grow silent. Another child is dead, and,
although it is very sad and painful, they accept it.
The blond tank commander climbs up onto his tank and reinserts his legs
into the turret hatch. "Iron Man, you fucking shitbird. You will drive this
machine like it's a tank and not a goddamn sports car. You hit that little
girl, you blind idiot. Hell, I could see her through the fucking vision
blocks. She was standing on that water bo's back..."
The driver turns, his face hard. "I didn't see them, skipper. What do
they think they're doing, crossing in front of me like that? Don't these
zipperheads know that tanks got the right-of-way?" The driver's face is
coated with a thin film of oil and sweat; iron has entered into his soul and
he has become a component of the tank, sweating oil to lubricate its meshing
gears.
The blond tank commander says, "You fuck up one more time, Iron Man,
and you will be a grunt."
The driver turns back to the front. "Aye-aye, sir. I'll watch the road,
Lieutenant."
Rafter Man asks, "Sir, did we kill that girl? Why was that old man
yelling at you?" Rafter Man looks sick.
The blond tank commander takes a green ballpoint pen and little green
notebook out of his hip pocket. He writes something in the notebook. "The
little girl's grandfather? He was yelling about how he needs his water bo.
He wants a condolence award. He wants us to pay him for the water bo."
Rafter Man doesn't say anything.
The blond tank commander yells at Iron Man: "Drive, you blind
son-of-a-bitch."
And the tank rolls on.
On the outskirts of Hue, the ancient Imperial Capital, we see the first
sign of the battle--a cathedral, centuries old, now a bullet-peppered box of
ruined stone, roof caved in, walls punctured by shells.
Entering Hue, the third largest city in Viet Nam, is a strange new
experience. Our was has been in the paddies, in hamlets where the largest
structure was a bamboo hut. Seeing the effects of war upon a Vietnamese city
makes me feel like a New Guy.
The weather is dreary but the city is beautiful. Hue has been beautiful
for so long that not even war and bad weather can make it ugly.
Empty streets. Every building in Hue has been hit with some kind of
ordnance. The ground is still wet from last night's rain. The air is cool.
The whole city is enveloped in a white mist. The sun is going down.
We roll past a tank which has been gutted by B-40 rocket-propelled
grenades. On the barrel of the shattered ninety-millimeter gun: BLACK FLAG.
Fifty yards down the road we pass two wasted six-bys. One of the big
trucks has been knocked onto its side. The cab of the truck is a broken mass
of jagged, twisted steel. The second six-by has burned and is only a
skeleton of black iron. The windshields of both trucks have been strung with
bright necklaces of bullet holes.
As we roll past Quoc Hoc High School I punch Rafter Man on the arm. "Ho
Chi Minh went there," I say. "I wonder if Uncle Ho played varsity
basketball. I wonder who Uncle Ho took to the senior prom."
Rafter Man grins.
Shots pop, far away. Single rounds. Short bursts of automatic weapons.
The fighting has stopped, for the moment. The shots we hear are just some
grunt trying to get lucky.
Near the University of Hue the tank grinds to a halt and Rafter Man and
I hop off. The University of Hue is now a collection point for refugees on
their way to Phu Bai. Whole families with all of their possessions have
occupied the classrooms and corridors since the battle began. The refugees
are too tired to run anymore. The refugees look cold and drained the way you
look after death sits on your face and smothers you for so long that you get
tired of screaming. Outside, the women cook pots of rice. All over the deck
there are piles of human shit.
We wave good-bye to the blond tank commander and his tank grumbles and
rolls away. The tank's steel cleats crush some bricks which have been thrown
into the street by explosions.
Rafter Man and I stare across the River of Perfumes. We stare at the
Citadel. The river is ugly. The river is muddy. The steel suspension
bridge--The Bridge of the Golden Waters--is down, blown by enemy frogmen.
Torn girders jut out of the dark water like the broken bones of a sea
serpent.
A hand grenade explodes, far away, inside the Citadel.
Rafter Man and I head for the MAC-V, Military Assistance Command--Viet
Nam, compound.
"This is a beautiful place," says Rafter Man.
"It was. It really was. I've been here a few times for award
ceremonies. General Cushman was here. I took his picture and he took a
picture of me taking a picture of him. And Ky was here, all duded up in his
black silk flight jacket with silver general's stars all over it and a black
cap with silver general's stars all over that, too. Ky had these
pearl-handled pistols and wore a purple ascot. He looked like a Japanese
playboy. He had his program squared away, that Ky. He believed in a Viet Nam
for the Vietnamese. I guess that's why we kicked him out. But he was
beautiful that day. You should have seen all the schoolgirls in their ao
dai, purple and white, carrying their little parasols..."
"Where are they now? The girls?"
"Oh, dead, I guess. Did you know that there's a legend that Hue rose
from a pool of mud as a lotus flower?"
"Look at that!"
A squad of Arvins are looting a mansion. The Arvins of the Army of the
Republic of Viet Nam look funny because all of their equipment is too big
for them. In baggy uniforms and oversized helmets they look like little boys
playing war.
I say, "Decent. Number one. We got some slack, Rafter. Remember this,
Rafter Man, any time you can see an Arvin you are safe from Victor Charlie.
The Arvins run like rabbits at the first sign of violence. An Arvin infantry
platoon is about as lethal as a garden club of old ladies throwing
marshmallows. Don't believe all that scuttlebutt about Arvins being cowards.
They just hate the Green Machine more than we do. They were drafted by the
Saigon government, which was drafted by the lifers who drafted us, who were
drafted by the lifers who think that they can buy the war. And Arvins are
not stupid. The Arvins are not stupid when they are doing something they
enjoy, like stealing. Arvins sincerely believe that jewels and money are
essential military supplies. So we're safe until the Arvins start yelling,
'Beaucoup VC, beaucoup VC!' and then run away. But be careful. Arvins are
always shooting at chickens, other people's pigs, and trees. Arvins will
shoot anything except transistor radios, Coca-Colas, sunglasses, money, and
the enemy."
"Don't they get money from their government?"
I grin. "Money is their government."
The sun is gone. Rafter Man and I double-time. A sentry challenges us;
I tell him to go to hell.
Fifty-six days and a wake-up.
In the morning we wake up inside the MAC-V compound, a white two-story
building with bullet-pocked walls. The compound has been enclosed behind a
wall of sandbags and concertina wire.
We gather up our gear and prepare to leave while a light colonel reads
a statement made by the military mayor of Hue. The statement is a denial
that there is looting in Hue and a warning that looters will be shot on
sight. A dozen civilian war correspondents sit on the deck, wiping sleep
from their eyes, half-listening, yawning. Then the light colonel adds a
personal comment. Someone has awarded a Purple Heart to a big white goose
that got wounded while the compound was under attack. The light colonel
feels that the civilian correspondents do not understand that war is serious
business.
Outside, I point to a wasted NVA hanging in the wire. "Was is serious
business, son, and this is our gross national product." I kick the corpse,
triggering panic in the maggots in the hollow eye sockets and in the
grinning mouth and in each of the bullet holes in his chest. "Gross?"
Rafter Man kneels down to get a better look. "Yes, he is confirmed."
A CBS camera crew appears, surrounded by star-struck grunts who strike
combat-Marine poses, pretending to be what they are. They all want Walter
Cronkite to meet their sisters. In white short-sleeved shirts the CBS
cameramen hurry off to photograph death in living color.
I stop a master sergeant. "Top, we want to get into the shit."
The master sergeant is writing on a piece of yellow paper on a
clipboard. He doesn't look up, but jerks his thumb over his shoulder.
"Across the river. One-Five. Get a boat ride by the bridge."
"One-Five? Outstanding. Thanks, Top."
The master sergeant walks away, writing on the yellow paper. He ignores
four skuzzy grunts who run into the compound, each man holding up one corner
of a poncho. On the poncho is a dead Marine. The grunts are screaming for a
corpsman and when they put the poncho down, very gently, a pool of dark
blood pours out onto the concrete deck.
Rafter Man and I hurry down to the River of Perfumes. We talk to a
baby-faced Navy ensign who souvenirs us a ride on a Vietnamese gunboat
ferrying reinforcements to the Vietnamese Marines.
As we skim down the river Rafter Man asks, "Are these guys any good?"
I nod. "The best the Arvins got. They're not as tough as the Korean
Marines, though. The ROK's are so hard that they got muscles in their shit.
The Blue Dragon Brigade. I was on an op with them down by Hoi An."
A shot pops from the shore. The bullet buzzes over.
The gunboat crew opens up with a fifty-caliber machine gun and a forty
mike-mike cannon.
Rafter Man watches with joy in his eyes as the bullets knock up thin
stalks of water along the river bank. He holds his piece at port arms, first
to fight.
The Strawberry Patch, a large triangle of land between the Citadel and
the River of Perfumes, is a quiet suburb of Hue. We get off the gunboat at
the Strawberry Patch and wander around with the Vietnamese Marines until we
see a little Marine with an expensive pump shotgun slung across his back, a
case of C rations on his shoulder, and DEADLY DELTA on his flak jacket.
I say, "Hey, bro, where's One-Five?"
The little Marines turns, smiles.
I say, "You need a huss with that?"
"No thanks, Marine. You people One-One?"
"No, sir," I say. Officers do not wear rank insignia in the field but
snuffies learn to fix a man's rank by his voice. "We're looking for
One-Five. I got a bro in the First Platoon. They call him Cowboy. He wears a
cowboy hat."
"I'm Cowboy's platoon commander. The Lusthog Squad is in the platoon
area up by the Citadel."
We walk along with the little Marine.
"I'm Joker, sir. Corporal Joker. This is Rafter Man. We work for Stars
and Stripes."
"My name is Bayer. Robert M. Bayer the third. My people call me
Shortround, for obvious reasons. You here to make Cowboy famous?"
I laugh. "Never happen."
The gray sky is clearing. The white mist is moving away, exposing Hue
to the sun.
First Platoon's area is within sight of the massive walls of the
Citadel. While First Platoon waits for the attack to begin, the Lusthog
Squad is partying.
Crazy Earl points a forefinger at the three of us. "Resupply! Number
one!" Then: "Hey, cowpuncher, the Joker is on deck."
Cowboy looks up and grins. He's holding a large brown bottle of tiger
piss--Vietnamese beer. "Well, no shit. It's the Joker and his New Guy. Lai
dai, bros, come on, sit and share, sit and share."
Rafter Man and I sit down in the dirt and Cowboy throws loose stacks of
Vietnamese piasters into our laps. I laugh, surprised. I pick up the
brightly colored bills, large bills, in large denominations. Cowboy shoves
bottles of tiger piss into our hands.
"Hey, Skipper!" says Cowboy. "Souvenir me spaghetti and meatballs,
okay? Every time we chow down I pull ham and mothers--the Breakfast of
Champions. I hate fucking ham and lima beans."
The little Marine rips open one case of C's, pulls out a cardboard box,
pitches it to Cowboy.
Cowboy catches the box, squints at the label. "Number one. Thanks,
Skipper."
Crazy Earl throws another stack of piasters into my lap.
Every man in the squad has a pile of money.
"Man, we finally got paid," says Crazy Earl. "You know what I am
saying, gentlemen? We been slave-labor mercenaries and now we are rich. We
got a million P's here, gentlemen. Yes, that's beaucoup P's."
I say, "Sir, where'd this money--"
Mr. Shortround shrugs. "Money? I don't see any money." He takes off his
helmet. On the back of the helmet: Kill a Commie for Christ. Mr. Shortround
lights a cigarette. "About half a million P's. Maybe a thousand dollars per
man in American money."
Cowboy says, "You got to write about our John Wayne lieutenant." Cowboy
punches Mr. Shortround on the arm. "Mr. Shortround is a mustang. When the
Crotch made him a lieutenant he was just a corporal, just a snuffy like us.
He's very little, but he is oh so bad." Cowboy tilts his head back and sucks
in a long swallow of tiger piss. Then: "We were taking this railroad
terminal. That's where the safe was. We blew it open with a block of C-4.
The gooks were coming down on us with automatic weapons, B-40's, even a
fucking mortar. The Lieutenant got six confirmed. Six! He wasted those
zipperheads like a born killer."
"There are NVA here," says Crazy Earl. "Many, many of them."
"That's affirmative," says Cowboy. "And they are as hard as slant-eyed
drill instructors. They are highly motivated individuals."
Crazy Earl holds his bottle by the neck and smashes it across a fallen
statue of a fat, smiling, bald-headed gook. "This ain't a war, it's a series
of overlapping riots. We blow them away. They come up behind us before we're
out of sight and shoot us in the ass. I know a guy in One-One that shot a
gook and then tied a satchel charge to him and blew him into little
invisible pieces because shooting gooks is a waste of time--they come back
to life. But these gooks piss you off so bad that you get to shoot
something, anything. Bros, half the confirmed kills I got are civilians and
the other half is water buffaloes." Earl pauses, burps, drawing the burp out
as long as he can. "You should have seen Animal Mother wasting those Arvins.
As soon as we hit the shit the Arvins started di-di mau-ing for the rear and
Animal Mother spit and then blew them away."
"I miss Stumbling Stewey," says Alice, the black giant. He explains to
me and Rafter Man: "Stumbling Stewey was our honcho before Stoke, the
Supergrunt. Stumbling Stewey was real nervous, you know? Very nervous. I
mean, he was nervous. The only way the dude could relax was throwing hand
grenades. He was always popping frags all over the area. Then he started
holding on to them right up to the last second. So one day ol' Stumbling
Stewey pulled the pin and just stood there, staring, just staring and
staring at that little ol' olive-drab egg in his hand..."
Crazy Earl nods, burps. "I was just a New Guy the day Stumbling Stewey
blew himself away and Stoke the Supergrunt took the squad. Stoke made me
assistant squad leader. He could see that I didn't know nothing, and all
that good shit, but he said he liked my personality." Crazy Earl takes a
swallow from another bottle of beer. "Hey, Cowboy, get your horse! Quick! My
crabs are having a rodeo!"
Donlon, the radioman, says, "I hope we stay here. This street fighting
is decent duty. We can see them here. We got cover, resupply, even some
areas where you can cut a few Z's without digging a hole. No rice paddies
full of slope shit to swim in. No immersion foot. No jungle rot. No leeches
falling from the trees."
Crazy Earl flips a beer bottle into the air and the bottle arches down
and smashes upon a broken wall. "Affirmative, but we blow up all these
shrines and temples and the gooks got lots of shit to hide under and we have
to dig them out."
Everybody gets a little high. Crazy Earl goes into a long, detailed sea
story about how the Montagnard Tribesmen are in fact Viet Cong cavemen. "We
said we were going to bomb them back to the Stone Age and we do not lie."
Cowboy suggests that Montagnards are actually Viet Cong Indians and
that the secret to winning the war is to issue each grunt a horse. Then
Victor Charlie would have to hump while Marines could ride.
Crazy Earl puts his arm across the shoulders of the man next to him.
The man has a bush cover pulled down over his face, a beer in his hand, a
pile of money in his lap. "This is my bro," says Crazy Earl, removing the
bush cover from the man's face. "This is his party. He is the guest of
honor. You see, today is his birthday."
Rafter Man looks at me, his mouth open. "Sarge..."
I say, "Don't call me Sarge."
The man next to Crazy Earl is a dead man, a North Vietnamese corporal,
a clean-cut Asian kid about seventeen years old with ink-black hair, cropped
short.
Crazy Earl hugs the North Vietnamese corporal. He grins. "I made him
sleep." Crazy Earl puts his forefinger to his lips and whispers, "Shhh. He's
resting now."
Before Rafter Man can start asking questions Animal Mother and another
Marine double-time up the road, carrying a large cardboard box between them.
They drop the box and reach inside. They throw plastic bags to each of us.
"Resupply! Resupply! Get your red-hot bennies. Scarf it up!"
Cowboy snatches up his bag and rips it open. "Long-rats. Outstanding!"
I pick up my bag and I show it to Rafter Man. "This is number one chow,
Rafter. The Army eats this shit on humps. Add water and you got real food."
Lieutenant Shortround says, "Okay, Mother, where'd you souvenir the
chow?"
Animal Mother spits. He grins, baring rotten teeth. "I stole it."
"You stole it, sir."
"Yeah, I stole it...sir."
"That's looting. They shoot people for that."
"I stole it from the Army...sir."
"Outstanding. It is part of your duty as a Marine to harass our sister
services. Carry on."
Cowboy punches the Marine who helped Animal Mother carry the cardboard
box. "This is T.H.E. Rock. Make him famous. He wears that rock around his
neck so that when the dinks zap him they'll know who he is."
T.H.E. Rock grins. "You fucking alcoholic. I wish you'd stop telling
people about my rock." He pulls out a rawhide cord and shows us his rock, a
quartz crystal mounted in brass.
Animal Mother props his M-60 machine gun against a wall and sits down,
cross-legged. "Man, I almost got me some eatin' pussy."
T.H.E. Rock says, "That's affirmative. Mother was chasing a little gook
girl with his dick hanging out...."
Lieutenant Shortround pulls his K-bar from its sheath and cuts a chunk
from a block of C-4 plastic explosive he has extracted from a Claymore mine.
He puts the piece of C-4 into a little stove he has made by punching air
holes into an empty C rations can. He strikes a match and lights the C-4. He
fills a second can with water from his canteen and then holds the can of
water over the blue flame. "Mother, you know what I told you last week."
A Phantom F-4 jet roars over and unloads a few rocket pods into the
Citadel. Explosions rock the deck.
T.H.E. Rock looks at Animal Mother as he explains: "She was just a
baby, sir. Thirteen or fourteen."
Animal Mother grins, spits. "If she's old enough to bleed, she's old
enough to butcher."
Mr. Shortround looks at Animal Mother, but doesn't say anything. He
takes a white plastic spoon out of his shirt pocket and puts it into the can
of boiling water. Then he takes a tinfoil packet of cocoa out of his thigh
pocket, tears it open, pours the brown powder into the can of boiling water.
He takes hold of the white plastic spoon and begins to stir the hot
chocolate slowly. "Animal Mother? Do you hear me? I'm talking to you."
Animal Mother glares at the lieutenant. Then, "Oh, I was just fooling
around, Lieutenant."
Mr. Shortround stirs his hot chocolate.
I say, "Animal Mother, how come you think you're so bad?"
Animal Mother looks at me, surprised. "Hey, motherfucker, don't even
talk to me. You ain't a grunt. You want your face stomped in? Huh? You want
to battle?"
I pick up my M-16.
Animal Mother reaches for his M-60.
Cowboy says, "Man, if there's one thing I can't stand, it's violence. I
mean, if you got to blow Mother away, that's outstanding. Nobody likes
Mother anyway. Shit, he don't even like himself. But you got to get a real
gun, not that toy M-16. If it's Mattel, it's swell." Cowboy unhooks a frag
from his flak jacket and tosses it to me. "Here. Use this."
I catch the hand grenade. I toss it up into the air a few times,
catching it, still looking at Animal Mother. "No, I'm going to get me an
M-60 and then me and this motherfucker are going to have one duel--"
"Stow it, Joker," Mr. Shortround interrupts: "Animal Mother, listen up.
You harass one more little girl and I'm going to put my little silver bar in
my pocket and then you and I are going to throw some hands."
Animal Mother grunts, spits, picks up a bottle of tiger piss. He hooks
a tooth into the metal cap and forces the bottle up. The cap pops off. He
takes a swallow, then looks at me. He mutter, "Fucking poge..." He takes
another couple of swallows and then says very loud, "Cowboy, you remember
when we was set up in that L-shaped ambush up by Khe Sanh and blew away that
NVA rifle squad? You remember that little gook bitch that was guiding them?
She was a lot younger than the one I saw today." He takes another swallow.
"I didn't get to fuck that one either. But that's okay. That's okay. I shot
her motherfucking face off." Animal Mother burps. He looks at me and smirks.
"That's affirmative, poge. I shot her motherfucking face off."
Alice shows me a necklace of little bones and tries to convince me that
they're magic Voodoo bones from New Orleans, but they look like dry old
chicken bones to me.
"We...are animals," I say.
After a couple of minutes Crazy Earl says, "Grunts ain't animals. We
just do our job. We're shot at and missed, shit on and hit. The gooks are
grunts, like us. They fight, like us. They got lifer poges running their
country and we got lifer poges running ours. But at least the gooks are
grunts, like us. Not the Viet Cong. The VC are some dried-up old mamasans
with rusty carbines. The NVA, man, we are tight with the NVA. We kill each
other, no doubt about it, but we're tight. We're hard." Crazy Earl tosses an
empty beer bottle to the deck and picks up his Red Ryder air rifle. He fires
the air rifle at the bottle and the BB ricochets off the bottle with a faint
ping. "I love the little commie bastards, man. I really do. Grunts
understand grunts. These are great days we are living, bros. We are jolly
green giants, walking with the earth with guns. The people we wasted here
today are the finest individuals we will ever know. When we rotate back to
the World we're gonna miss having somebody around who's worth shooting.
There ought to be a government for grunts. Grunts could fix the world up. I
never met a grunt I didn't like, except Mother."
I say, "Never happen. It would make too much sense. It's better that we
save Viet Nam from the people who live here. Of course, they love us; we'll
kill them if they don't. When you've got them by the balls their hearts and
minds will follow."
Donlon says, "Well, we're rich and we got beaucoup beer and beaucoup
chow. Now all we need is the Bob Hope show."
I stand up. The beer has gone to my head. "I'll be Bob Hope." I
hesitate. I touch my face. "Oh, wow, my nose ain't big enough." Mild
laughter.
A hundred yards away a heavy machine gun fires a long burst. Scattered
small arms fire replies.
I do impressions.
"Friends, I am Bob Hope. You all remember me, I'm sure. I was in some
movies with Bing Crosby. Well, I'm here in Viet Nam to entertain you. The
folks back home don't care enough about you to bring you back to the World
so you won't get wasted, but they do care enough to send comedians over here
so that at least you can die laughing. So have you heard the one about the
Viet Nam veteran who came home and said, 'Look, Mom, no hands!'"
The squad laughs. They say: "Do John Wayne!"
Doing my John Wayne voice, I tell the squad a joke: "Stop me if you're
heard this. There was a Marine of nuts and bolts, half robot--weird but
true--whose every move was cut from pain as though from stone. His stoney
little hide had been crushed and broken. But he just laughed and said, 'I've
been crushed and broken before.' And sure enough, he had the heart of a
bear. His heart functioned for weeks after it had been diagnosed by doctors.
His heart weighed half a pound. His heart pumped seven hundred thousand
gallons of warm blood through one hundred thousand miles of veins, working
hard--hard enough in twelve hours to lift one sixty-five ton boxcar one foot
off the deck. He said. The world would not waste the heart of a bear, he
said. On his clean blue pajamas many medals hung. He was a walking word of
history, in the shop for a few repairs. He took it on the chin and was good.
One night in Japan his life came out of his body--black--like a question
mark. If you can keep your head while others are losing theirs perhaps you
have misjudged the situation. Stop me if you've heard this..."
Nobody says anything.
"The war is ruining my sense of humor," I say. I squat.
Cowboy nods. "There it is. All I'm doing is counting my days, just
counting my days. A hundred days and a wake-up and I'll be on that big
silver Freedom Bird, flying back to the World, back to the block, back to
the Lone Star State, back to the land of the big PX. And I'll have medals
all over myself. And I won't be fucked up. No, when you get fucked up they
send you to Japan. You go to Japan and somebody pins a medical discharged to
what's left of you and all that good shit."
"I'd rather be wasted," I say. "Hire the handicapped--they're fun to
watch."
Cowboy grins.
T.H.E. Rocks says, "You know, my mom writes me a lot of letters about
what a brave boy T.H.E. Rock is. T.H.E. Rock is not a boy; he's a person."
He drinks beer. "I know I'm a person because I know there ain't no Santa
Claus. There ain't no fucking Easter bunny. You know? Back in the World we
thought that the future is always safe in a little gold box somewhere. Well,
I'll live forever. I'm T.H.E. Rock."
Crazy Earl grunts. "Hey Skipper, what say we stuff some dope into your