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shotgun and toke it through the barrel?"
Mr. Shortround shakes his head. "No can do, Craze. We're moving most
skosh."
Donlon is talking into his handset. "Sir, the C.O. wants the Actual."
Donlon gives the handset to Mr. Shortround. The Lieutenant talks to
Delta Six, the commanding officer of Delta One-Five.
"Number ten. Just when we were scarfing up some of the bennies," says
Crazy Earl. "Just when we were getting a little piece of slack..."
Lieutenant Shortround stands up and starts putting on his gear.
"Moving, rich kids. Saddle up. Craze, get your people on their feet."
"Moving. Moving."
We all stand up, except for the NVA corporal who remains seated, a beer
in his hand, a pile of money in his lap, his split lips curled back in a
death grin.
Alice steps up with a machete in one hand and a blue canvas shopping
bag in the other. He kneels. With two blows of the machete Alice chops off
the NVA corporal's feet. He picks up each foot by the big toe and drops it
into the blue shopping bag. "This gook was a very hard dude. Number one! Big
Magic!"
The grunts stuff beer bottles, piasters, long-rats, and looted
souvenirs into their baggy pockets, into Marine-issue field packs, and into
NVA haversacks souvenired from enemy grunts they have wasted. The grunts
pick up their weapons.
Moving. Moving. I walk behind Cowboy. Rafter Man walks behind me.
I say, "Well, I guess this Citadel shit is going to be oh so bad. But
it could be worse. I mean, at least it's not Parris Island."
Cowboy grins. He says, "There it is."
We see the great walls of the Citadel. With zigzagging ramparts thirty
feet high and eight feet thick, surrounded by a moat, the fortress looks
like an ancient castle from a fairy tale about dragons who guard treasure
and knights on white horses and princesses in need of assistance. The castle
is black stone against a cold gray sky, with dark towers populated by
shadows that are alive.
The Citadel is actually a small walled city constructed by French
engineers as protection for the home of Gia Long, Emperor of the Annamese
Empire. When Hue was the Imperial Capital, the Citadel protected the Emperor
and the royal family and the ancient treasure of the Forbidden City from
pirates raiding from the South China Sea.
We are big white American boys in steel helmets and heavy flak jackets,
armed with magic weapons, laying siege to a castle in modern times. One-Five
has changed a lot since the days when it was the first battalion to hit the
beach at Guadacanal.
Metal birds flash in and shit steel eggs all over the place. F-4
Phantom jet fighters are dropping napalm, high explosives, and Willy
Peter--white phosphorus. With bombs we are expressing ourselves; we are
writing our history in shattered blocks of stone.
Black roses of smoke bloom inside the Citadel.
We ditty-bop Indian-file along both sides of the road, twenty yards
between each man. The lines pop and snick as cocking levers are snapped back
and bolts sent home, chambering rounds. Safeties are clicked off. Selector
switches are thumbed to the full automatic position. Those Marines armed
with M-14's fix bayonets.
Machine guns start typing out history. First our guns, then theirs.
Snipers on the wall fire a round here and there, sighting us in.
War is a catalogue of sounds. Our ears direct our feet.
A bullet crunches into a wall.
Somebody starts singing:
The machine guns are exchanging a steady fire now, like old friends
having a conversation. Thumps and thuds puncture the rhythm of the bullets.
The snipers zero in on us. Each shot becomes a word spoken by death.
Death is talking to us. Death wants to tell us a funny secret. We may not
like death but death likes us. Victor Charlie is hard but he never lies.
Guns tell the truth. Guns never say, "I'm only kidding." War is ugly because
the truth can be ugly and war is very sincere.
I say out loud: "You and me, God--right?"
I send guard-mail directives to my personal Tactical Area of
Responsibility, which extends to the perimeters of my skin. Dear Feet,
tiptoe through the tulips. Balls, hang in there. Legs, don't do any John
Waynes. My body is serviceable. I intend to maintain my body in the
excellent condition in which it was issued.
In the silence of our hearts we speak to our werewolf weapons; our
weapons reply.
Cowboy is listening to me mutter to myself. "John Wayne? Hey, Joker's
right. This ain't real. This is just a John Wayne movie. Joker can be Paul
Newman. I'll be a horse."
"Yeah."
"Crazy Earl says, "Can I be Gabby Hayes?"
"The Rock can be a rock," says Donlon, the radioman.
Alice says, "I'll be Ann-Margret."
"Animal Mother can be a rabid buffalo," says Stutten, honcho of the
third fire team.
The walls are assaulted by werewolf laughter.
"Who'll be the Indians?"
The little enemy folks audition for the part--machine-gun bullets rip
across a wall to starboard.
Lieutenant Shortround calls up his squad leaders with a hand signal--he
holds up his right hand and twirls it. Three squad leaders, including Crazy
Earl, double-time to him. He talks to them, points at the wall. The squad
leaders double-time back to their squads to confer with their fire team
leaders.
Lieutenant Shortround blows a whistle and then we're all running like
big-assed birds. We don't want to to this. We are all afraid. But if you
stayed behind you would be alone. Your friends are going; you go too. You're
not a person anymore. You don't have to be who you are anymore. You're part
of an attack, one green object in a line of green objects, running toward a
breach in the Citadel wall, running through hard noise and bursting metal,
running, running, running...you don't look back.
We double-time, werewolves with guns, panting. We run as though
impatient to sink into the darkness that is opening up to swallow us.
Something snaps and we're past the point of no return. We're going through
the broken wall. We're running fast and we aren't going to stop. Nothing can
stop us.
The air is being torn.
The deck shifts beneath your feet. The asphalt sucks at your feet like
sand on the beach.
Green tracer bullets dissect the sky.
Bullets hit the street. The impact of the bullets is the sound of a
covey of quail taking flight. And sparks. You feel the shock of bullets
punching through bricks. Splinters of stone sting your face.
People tell you what to do.
Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving. If you stop moving, if you
hesitate, your heart will stop beating. Your legs are machines winding you
up like a mechanical toy. If your legs stop moving, your taut spring will
run down and you will fall over, a lump without motion.
You feel like you could run around the world. Now the asphalt is a
trampoline and you are fast and graceful, a green jungle cat.
Sounds. Cardboard being torn. Head-on collisions. Trains derailing.
Walls falling into the sea.
Metal hornets swarm overhead.
Pictures: The dark eyes of guns; the cold eyes of guns. Pictures blink
and blur, a wall, tiny men, shattered blocks of stone.
Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving...
Your feet take you up...up...over the rubble of the
wall...up...up...you're loving it...climbing, you're not human, you're an
animal, you feel like a god...you scream: "DIE! DIE! DIE, YOU MOTHERFUCKERS!
DIE! DIE! DIE!"
Hornets try to swarm into you--you swat them aside.
Boots crunch in powdered stone. Equipment flaps, clangs, and rattles.
People curse.
"Oh, fuck."
Keep moving.
Your Boy Scout shit is wet with sweat. Salty sweat wiggles into your
eyes and onto your lips. Your right index finger is on the trigger of your
M-16. Here I come, you say to yourself, here I come with a gun full of
bullets. How many rounds left in this magazine? How many days left to my
rotation date? Am I carrying too much gear? Where are they? And where the
hell are my feet?
A face. The face moves. Your weapon sights in. Your M-16 automatic
rifle vibrates. The face is gone.
Keep moving.
And then you feet no longer touch the ground, and you wonder what's
happening to you. Your body relaxes, then goes rigid. You hear the sound of
a human body erupting, the ugly sound of a human body being torn apart by
high-speed metal. The pictures blinking before your eyes slow down like a
silent film on a defective reel. Your weapon floats our of your hands and
suddenly you are alone. You are floating. Up. Up. You are being lifted up by
a wall of sound. The pictures blink faster and faster and suddenly the
filmstrip snaps and the wall of sound slams into you--total, terrible sound.
The deck is enormous as you fall. You merge with the earth. Your flak jacket
absorbs much of the impact. Your helmet falls off your head and spins.
You're on your back, crushed by sound. You think: Is that the sky?
"CORPSMAN," someone says, far away. "CORPSMAN!"
You're on your back. All around you boots dance by, pounding and
crunching. Dirt clods and pieces of stone fall from the sky, into your
mouth, your eyes. You spit out stone. You hold up one of your hands. You try
to tell the pounding boots: Hey, don't step one me.
Your palms are hot. Your legs are broken. With one of your hands you
touch yourself, your face, your thighs, you search your broken guts for
warm, wet cavities.
Your reaction to your own death is nothing more than a highly
intensified curiosity.
A hand presses you down. You wonder if you should try to do something
about your broken legs. You think that it's possible that you don't have any
legs. Tons of ocean water, dark and cold and populated by monsters, are
crushing you. You try to raise your head. Hands hold you down. You fight.
You fling your arms. Strong hands search for damage in your body.
"Legs..."
You cough up spiders.
On the ground beside you is a Marine without a head. Exhibit A,
formerly a person, now two hundred pounds of fractured meat. The Marine
without a head is on his back. His face has been knocked off. The top of his
skull has been torn back, with the soft brain inside. The jawbone and bottom
teeth are intact. In the hands of the Marine without a head is an M-60
machine gun, locked there forever by rigor mortis. His finger in on the
trigger. His canvas jungle boots are muddy.
You look at the dried mud on the jungle boots of the Marine without a
head and you are stunned that his feet look so much like your own.
You reach out. You touch his hand.
Something stings your arm.
Suddenly, you are very tired. You are breathing hard from the running.
Your heart is beating so hard that it seems to want to tear its way out of
your body. Through the center of your heart there is a star-shaped bullet
hole.
Hands touch you. Gentle hands. "You're okay, jarhead. No sweat. I'm Doc
Jay. Can you hear me? You can trust me, Marine. I got magic hands."
"No," you say. "NO!" You try to explain to the hands that part of you
is missing in action. You want the hands to find the missing part; you don't
want your missing part to be left behind. But you cannot speak. Your mouth
won't work.
You sleep. You trust the hands that are holding you, the hands that are
lifting you up.
In your dope dream of death you are an enlistment poster nailed to a
black wall: THE MARINE CORPS BUILDS MEN--BODY--MIND--SPIRIT.
You feel yourself breaking up into three pieces...you hear strange
voices...
"What's wrong?" one voice says, confused and frightened. "What's
wrong?"
"Who's there?"
"What?"
"Who's there?"
"I'm Mind. Are you--"
"Affirmative. I'm his Body. I'm not feeling well..."
"This is utterly ridiculous," interjects a third voice. "This can't be
happening."
"Who said that?" Mind demands. "Body? That you?"
"I said it, fool. You may call me Spirit."
Body sneers. "I don't believe either of you."
Mind speaks slowly: "Now, we've got to be logical about this. Our man
is down. We've got to get organized."
Body whimpers. "Listen, you guys, that's me lying there--not you. You
don't know what it's like."
Mind says, "Look, you moron, we're all in this together. If he goes, we
all go."
"Is he..." Body can't say the word. "I've got to survive."
"No," Mind observes. "Not necessarily. They play this game. I'm not
sure we are allowed to interfere."
Body is horrified. "What kind of 'game'?"
"I'm not sure. Something about rules. They have a lot of rules."
Spirit says, "This guy pisses me off. I'm not going back."
Mind says, "You have to go back."
"On the contrary," says Spirit. "I do as I please. You two have no
control over me."
"Forget him," says Body.
Mind insists, "But Spirit must return with us."
"No. We don't need him."
Mind considers the situation. "Perhaps Spirit has a valid argument.
Perhaps I shouldn't go back either..."
Body is frantic. "NO! PLEASE...."
"Yet, actually, nothing would be achieved by not going back. Our
actions will not affect their game in any event. Losing one man won't change
the game one way or the other. In fact, losing men seems to be the whole
point of the game. We must be practical. Come along, Body, we're going
back."
Spirit says, "Tell the man I'm missing in action."
In your dream you call for Chaplain Charlie. You met the Navy chaplain
when you interviewed him for a feature article you were writing. Chaplain
Charlie was an amateur magician. With his magic, Chaplain Charlie
entertained Marines in sick bays and distributed spiritual tourniquets to
men who were still alive, but weaponless. To brutal, godless children
Chaplain Charlie spoke about how God is merciful, despite appearances, about
how the Ten Commandments lack detail because when you're writing on stone
tablets with lightning bolts you're got to be brief, about how the Free
World will conquer Communism with aid of God and a few Marines, and about
free fish. One day a Vietnamese child booby-trapped Chaplain Charlie's black
bag of tricks. Chaplain Charlie reached in and pulled out a bright ball of
death...
"Hey, hit the deck, leatherneck, we're moving."
"What--?" I recognize the rooms I'm in. I remember the room from an
earlier visit to Hue. I'm in the Palace of Perfect Peace in the Forbidden
City.
Cowboy punches my arm. "Okay, Joker, stop acting. We know you're not
dead."
I sit up. I'm on a canvas med-evac stretcher. "There it is. I did it!
Number one! I got my first heart."
Rafter Man says, "A Purple Heart?"
Cowboy laughs. "Tough titty, you poge. No heart."
I pat myself with my hands. "The hell you say. Where am I hit?"
Rafter Man says, "You been out for hours. Doc Jay said you got blown up
by a B-40. A rocket-propelled grenade. But you only got the concussion. Some
other guy got the shrapnel."
"Well," I say, "that sounds like a lifer-type thing to do."
Animal Mother grunts and spits. Animal Mother spits a lot because he
thinks it makes him look tough. "Lifers never get wasted. Just the ones I
frag, that's all."
Donlon takes a step toward Animal Mother. Donlon is glaring at Animal
Mother. Donlon starts to say something, then decides against it.
Rafter Man says, "Doc Jay gave you some morphine. You were trying to
punch him out."
"There it is," I say. "I'm mean, even when I'm unconscious. But that's
some very good shit, that morphine."
Cowboy pushes his gray Marine-issue glasses up on his nose. "I could
use a hit of something myself. I wish we had time to smoke some grass."
I say, "Hey, bro, who's on your program?"
Cowboy shakes his head. "Mr. Shortround is KIA." Cowboy pulls a red
bandana from his back pocket and wipes his grimy face. "The platoon radioman
was down. Some redneck from Alabama. I forget his name. Took a sniper round
through the knee. The Skipper went out to get him. A frag got him. A frag
got them both. At least..." Cowboy turns to look at Animal Mother. "At
least, that's how Mother tells it, and he was walking point."
I shake the cobwebs out of my head and pick up my gear. "Where's my
Mattel?"
Cowboy hands me a grease gun. "Your Mattel got wasted. Use this." He
hands me a canvas bag containing half-a-dozen grease-gun magazines.
I check out the grease gun. "This thing is obsolete."
Cowboy shrugs. "I souvenired it off a wasted tanker." Cowboy scratches
his face. "I got a new K-bar. And I souvenired Mr. Shortround's pistol."
"Where's Craze?"
Cowboy leads me outside a long row of body bags and ponchos stuffed
with human junk.
We stand over Craze as Cowboy says, "Craze did a John Wayne. He finally
went berserk. Shot BB's at a gook machine gun. The BB's bounced off the gook
gunners. You should have seen it. Craze was laughing like a happy little
kid. Then that slope machine gun blew him away."
I nod. "Anybody else?"
Cowboy checks his weapon, snaps the bolt to see that it's working
smoothly. "T.H.E. Rock. A sniper. Popped his head off. I'll have to tell you
about it. Right now we got a job to do. We got to find that sniper. I'm
personally going to waste that gook son-of-a-bitch. T.H.E. Rock was the
first guy to get wasted after I took the squad. He's my responsibility."
Alice double-times up the road. "That sniper is still there. You can't
see him, but he's there."
Cowboy doesn't say anything; he's looking at the long row of body bags.
He takes a few steps. I walk along with him.
Mr. Shortround doesn't look like an officer anymore. He's naked, lying
facedown on a bloody poncho. His skin is yellow. His eyes are dry in their
sockets, Dead, Mr. Shortround is just another meat-bag with a hole in it.
Cowboy looks down at Mr. Shortround. He takes off his muddy Stetson.
Donlon steps up to Mr. Shortround. There are tears in Donlon's eyes. He
fumbles with his handset. Donlon says, "We're mean Marines, sir." He hurries
away, fumbling with the handset.
Alice walks up to the row of body bags and kicks Mr. Shortround's
corpse. "Go easy, bro."
The squad files by.
I kneel. I fold the poncho over Mr. Shortround's small body. I feel a
great need to say something to the green plastic lump with the human feet. I
say, "Well, you're short, sir."
I think about what I have just said and I know that making a bad pun
was a stupid thing to do. But then anything you could say to a dead officer
who was killed by one of his own men would have to be pretty ridiculous.
Rafter Man and I double-time to catch up with the squad.
We hump past scented lotus ponds, through landscaped gardens, over
bridges linking delicately structured pagodas.
All around the beautiful gardens invisible gunships rip into the peace
and quiet like dogs fighting in a church.
Cowboy holds up his right hand. The squad stops. Alice aims an index
finger at a street of big mansions.
Cowboy looks at me, then at the squad. Cowboy pulls me aside. We walk
ahead for a few steps. "That sniper opened up on us in a gook graveyard.
Some guys in One-One told us they found gold bars in the Emperor's palace.
They had all they could hump, so we was going to souvenir the rest." Cowboy
wipes sweat from his eyes. "T.H.E. Rock was walking point. The sniper shot
T.H.E. Rock's foot off. Shot it off. The Hardass Squad went out to get him,
one at a time. That sniper shot all their feet off. We were hiding behind
graves, those old round graves like baseball mounds, and we had nine grunts
down in the street...." Cowboy pulls a red bandanna from his back pockets
and wipes his sweaty face. "Mr. Shortround wouldn't let us go get them. It
made him sick, but he held us back. Then the sniper started shooting off
fingers, toes, ears--everything. The guys in the road were crying and
begging and we were all growling like animals, but Mr. Shortround held us
back. Then Animal Mother started to go for them and the Skipper grabbed
Animal Mother's collar and hit him in the face. Animal Mother was so mad I
thought he was going to kill us all. But before he could do anything the
sniper started putting rounds into the guys in the street. He didn't miss
more than a couple of times. He popped T.H.E. Rock's head off and then he
put a round through each guy's head. They were all moaning and praying and
then it was quiet and they were dead and it was like we were dead too..."
I don't know what to say.
Cowboy spits, his face a sweaty stone. "After the NVA pulled out, the
lifers sent in the Arvin Black Panthers to take the Forbidden City. Shit.
Nothing left but rear guard squads. We stomped the NVA and they stomped us
and then the lifers send in the Arvins, like the goddamn Arvins did it. Mr.
Shortround said it was their country, said we was only helping out, said it
would boost the morale of the Vietnamese people. Well, fuck the Vietnamese
people. The horrible hogs in hard, hungry Hotel Company ran up an American
flag. Like on Iwo Jima. But some poge officers ordered them to take it down.
The snuffies had to run up the stinking Vietnamese flag, which is yellow,
which is the right color for these chickenshit people. We're getting
slaughtered in this city. And we can't even run up a fucking flag. I just
can't hack this shit, bro. My job is to get my people back to the World in
one piece." Cowboy coughs, spits, wipes his nose with the back of his hand.
"Under fire, these are the best human beings in the world. All they need is
for somebody to throw hand grenades at them for the rest of their
lives...These guys depend on me. I can't send my people out to get that
sniper, Joker. I might lose the whole squad."
I wait until I'm sure that Cowboy has finished talking and then I say,
"That sounds like a personal problem to me, Cowboy. I can't tell you what to
do. If I was a human being instead of a Marine, maybe I'd know." I scratch
my armpit. "You're the honcho. You're the sergeant around here and you give
the orders. You make the decisions. I could never do it. I could never run a
rifle squad. Never happen, bro. I just don't have the balls."
Cowboy thinks about it. Then he grins. "You're right, Joker. You
shitbird. You're right. I've got to get my program squared away. I wish
Gunny Gerheim was here. He'd know what to do." Cowboy thinks about it. He
grins. "Shit." He walks back to the squad. "Moving..."
The squad hesitates. Crazy Earl has always been the one to say what is.
Animal Mother stands up. He sets his M-60 machine gun into his hip. He
doesn't speak. He looks at the dirty faces of the squad. He moves out.
The squad collects its gear and gets to its feet.
Cowboy waves his hand and Mother takes the point.
We are discussing the best way to search the street house to house when
a tank rumbles up.
Donlon says, "Hey, a tank! We can get it to--"
"No," says Cowboy. "Number ten! We don't need any help."
"That's affirmative," says Animal Mother.
I say, "A tank could flush him for us, Cowboy. Think about it. We can't
budge gook grunts without supporting arms."
Cowboy shrugs. "Oh, to hell with it."
I double-time down the road to meet the tank. I run past heaps of
rubble which were houses yesterday, bricks and stones and shattered wood
today.
The tank jerks to a halt. The turret whirs. The big ninety-millimeter
gun locks on me. For a long moment I think that the tank is going to blow me
away.
The top half of the blond tank commander appears in the turret hatch.
The lieutenant is wearing a flak jacket and an olive-drab football helmet
with a microphone that protrudes over his lip. He is a mechanical centaur,
half man, half tank.
I point out the mansions and I explain about the sniper, about how the
sniper wasted our bro and all that good shit.
Cowboy comes over and tells the lieutenant to "wait one" and then to
start wasting the mansions, one after another.
The blond tank commander is silent. He gives us a thumbs-up.
Cowboy sends Lance Corporal Stutten and his fire team around behind the
row of mansions.
Animal Mother sets up his M-60 on a low wall and opens fire, raking the
mansions at random. Every fifth round is a tracer.
The tank rolls up to the first mansion.
The rest of us double-time down an alley and cross the road a hundred
yards down the street, at the end of the row of mansions.
At the opposite end of the street sits the tank. The tank fires a round
of high explosives. The upper story of the first house is blown apart. The
roof collapses.
Animal Mother continues to fire from his position near the tank.
Cowboy double-times to the first house at our end of the street. He
steps carefully to the rear corner of the house, peeks around the corner.
Cowboy waits for Lance Corporal Stutten to pop a green smoke as a signal
that his fire team is in position as a blocking force.
We wait.
When green smoke begins to pour from a drainage ditch behind the first
house at the far end of the street Cowboy waves his hand and we all open
fire at the first house at our end of the street. One at a time, we run
across the street to the first house, joining Cowboy.
Cowboy waves his hand around the corner and Lance Corporal Stutten's
fire team opens up with their weapons on full automatic, pouring hundreds of
high-velocity copper-jacketed bullets into the rear of the first house at
their end of the street.
Animal Mother continues to chew up the fronts of all the mansions with
his black steel machine gun.
The tank fires a second round. The ground floor of the first house is
blown apart. The tank grinds forward twenty yards, stops, fires again. The
second story of the second house explodes.
Cowboy leads us into the mansion at our end of the street. Inside, we
leapfrog from corner to corner. Cowboy pops a frag and underhands it into
somebody's kitchen. The detonation rocks the whole house, numbs our ears.
Rafter Man steps forward. He gestures to Cowboy, jerks his thumb at the
ceiling. Cowboy holds up a circled thumb and index finger, "okay." Rafter
Man pops a frag and pitches it up a stairwell to the second story. The
explosion splits the plaster over our heads.
Outside, up the street, the tank fires again.
Cowboy punches me in the chest with his knuckles. Then he punches
Rafter Man and Alice. He aims his right index finger at Donlon, then at the
deck. Donlon nods and begins to silently point out the positions he wants
the men in the squad to take.
Cowboy waves his hand and we follow him up the stairs.
Upstairs, Alice kicks out a window and we all hop out onto the roof.
The tank is two houses away. It fires.
We drop our gear and jump the six-foot chasm between houses.
On the roof of the second house Cowboy stands up and signal Lance
Corporal Stutten, who waves back with his poncho. Bullets from Lance
Corporal Stutten's fire team stop hitting the rest of the house we're
standing on.
I double-time to the front of the house and I wave to Animal Mother.
Bullets from Animal Mother's machine gun stop hitting the front of the
house.
The tank fires. The shell bursts. Shrapnel whines over us.
We converge on a skylight. I drop a frag through the glass.
The grenade explodes in an invisible room below. Concussion shatters
the skylight.
We drop through the ragged rectangular hole into somebody's library.
Shrapnel has mangled leatherbound books. I pick up a small leatherbound book
for a souvenir. The author is Jules Verne; the title is in French. I stuff
the book into my thigh pocket and reach to the front of my flak jacket for
another grenade.
We work our way through the house, fragging every hallway, every room.
But we can't find the sniper.
The tank fires into the second story of the house next door.
I say, "No time."
Cowboy shrugs. "He wasted T.H.E. Rock."
I take a few steps down the stairs. Cowboy holds up his hand. "Listen."
Animal Mother's M-60 is ripping up the roof over our heads.
I say, "Is Mother dinky-dow? Crazy?"
Cowboy shakes his head. "No. Mother is a prick, but he's a good grunt."
We run back to the library.
We drag a heavy antique desk to the ruined skylight and Cowboy climbs
up onto it and lifts himself back onto the roof.
The crack of a Simonov sniper's carbine pierces the muted rhythm of
Mother's machine gun.
Cowboy falls back through the skylight. Alice, who has climbed up onto
the desk, catches Cowboy and eases him down to the desktop.
I pop a frag. I climb up onto the desk and take hold of the roof with
my left hand. I let the spoon fly. The spoon phinnnnings away and rattles
across the floor. I hold the sweaty green oval for three seconds and,
lifting myself up, I flip it up and back so that it rolls across the roof
directly over us. The frag bursts, spraying seven hundred and fifty pieces
of steel wire across the roof. The ceiling splits. Alice hugs Cowboy.
Plaster and splintered wood bounce off my helmet.
Rafter Man jumps up onto the desk and lift himself up onto the roof.
Surprised, I pull myself up after him.
The tank fires into the ground floor of the house next door.
Rafter Man and I crawl on our bellies on the roof.
Behind us, Alice lifts Cowboy over his head like a wrestler, deposits
him gently upon the roof. Then Alice climbs up. He picks Cowboy up in his
arms as though Cowboy were an oversized baby.
Doc Jay calls to us from the roof of the first house.
Alice pulls a tent rope from a thigh pocket and ties it under Cowboy's
arms. He flips the other end of the rope to Doc Jay. Doc Jay gets a good
grip on the rope and braces himself as Alice lowers Cowboy into the chasm
between the houses. Doc Jay pulls in the slack as Cowboy falls. Cowboy's
limp body swings over and thuds into the wall beneath Doc Jay's feet. Doc
Jay grits his teeth, pulls Cowboy up. Alice looks back at me, but I wave him
on. He leaps over to the first house.
Doc Jay gathers up all of our gear and Alice throws Cowboy over his
shoulder and they start back down.
Rafter Man has crawled up to the crest of the roof. He peeks over the
crest.
Bang. A hiss.
I crawl up beside Rafter Man. I take a peek. From behind a low chimney
at the opposite corner of the roof a thin black line protrudes.
We hear the incredibly loud clanking of the tank as it rolls on the
street below. It stops.
Animal Mother and Lance Corporal Stutten stop firing.
"Let's go," I say. I grab Rafter Man's shoulder. "The tank can waste
the gook."
Rafter Man doesn't look at me. He pulls away.
I turn away and I duck walk to the edge of the roof. I stand up and am
about to jump across when the house explodes beneath me.
I fall on my back.
The sniper is moving.
Rafter Man jumps over the crest of the roof and slides down the incline
on his ass.
I try to stand up. But all of my bones have shifted one inch to the
left.
Suddenly a foot steps on my chest, pinning me. The sniper looks down,
surprised. The sniper sees that I'm helpless, glances back at Rafter Man,
gets ready to jump across to the other roof.
Rafter Man runs back up the incline and slides back down on his ass,
ten yards away.
I reach for my grease gun.
The sniper turns toward Rafter Man and raises her SKS carbine.
The sniper is the first Victor Charlie I've seen who was not dead,
captured, or far, far away. She is a child, no more than fifteen years old,
a slender Eurasian angel with dark, beautiful eyes, which, at the same time,
are the hard eyes of a grunt. She's not quite five feet tall. Her hair is
long and black and shiny, held together by rawhide cord tied in a bow. Her
shirt and shorts are mustard-colored khaki and look new. Slung diagonally
across her chest, separating her small breasts, is a white cloth tube fat
with sticky reddish rice. Her B.F. Goodrich sandals have been cut from
discarded tires. Around her tiny waist hangs a web belt from which dangle
homemade hand grenades with hollow wooden handles, made by stuffing black
powder into Coca-Cola cans, a knife for cleaning fish, and six canvas
pouches containing banana clips for the AK-47 assault rifle slung on her
back.
Bang. Rafter Man is firing his M-16. Bang. Bang.
The sniper lowers her weapon. She looks at Rafter Man. She looks at me.
She tries to raise her weapon.
Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bullets shock flesh. Rafter Man is
firing. Rafter Man's bullets are punching the life out of the sniper.
The sniper falls off the roof.
The tank fires into the ground floor beneath us. The house shakes.
I stand up. I feel like a dead man's shit. I walk to the front of the
house. I wave to the blond tank commander. He swings a fifty-caliber machine
gun around and aims it at me. I step into full view on the edge of the roof.
I wave an "all clear."
The tank commander gives me a thumbs-up.
I pop a green smoke grenade and I drop it on the roof.
I limp over to the skylight and I climb back down into the library.
Rafter Man has already jumped into the library and is running down the
shrapnel-scarred stairs.
Down on the street I watch as the tank rolls up to the last house still
standing. I wave another "all clear" and the tank commander gives me another
smile and another thumbs-up and then the tank fires, blasting the top floor.
If fires again, blasting the ground floor.
The tank commander's great mechanical body grumbles contentedly and
rumbles away.
Cowboy double-times to meet me. He punches me on the arm. "Look!"
Cowboy touches his right ear, carefully. "Look!" There's a neat little round
hole through his right ear and a semicircular nick on the top of his left
ear. "See? A cheap Heart! The round went through the helmet from behind,
spun all the way around my head, then came out and hit me in the arm..."
Cowboy holds up his right forearm, which has already been bandaged. "Did you
see that tank? Was that tank bad? What a honey."
Doc Jay catches up to Cowboy, grabs him roughly, pushes him down.
Cowboy sits on a splintered tree stump while Doc Jay tears the waxy brown
wrapper off a compress bandage and ties the bandage around Cowboy's bloody
head.
Alice and I walk around to the rear of the house.
We find Rafter Man standing over the sniper, drinking a bottle of
Coca-Cola. Rafter Man grins. He says, "Things go better with Coke."
Animal Mother walks up and Rafter Man says, "Look at her! Look at her!"
We all stand over the sniper. The sniper is drawing her breath with
great effort. Guts that look like colorful plastic have squirted out through
bullet holes. The back of the sniper's right leg and her right buttock have
been torn off. She grits her teeth and then makes a sound like a dog that
has been run over.
Lance Corporal Stutten leads his fire team to the sniper. "Look at
that," says Lance Corporal Stutten. "It's a girl. She's all busted up."
"Look at her!" Rafter Man is saying. He struts around the moaning lump
of torn meat. "Look at her! Am I bad? Am I a menace? Am I a life taker? Am I
a heart breaker?"
Alice kneels and unbuckles the sniper's web belt and jerks it from
under her body. The sniper whimpers. She speaks to us in French. Alice
tosses the bloody belt to Rafter Man.
The sniper begins to pray in Vietnamese.
Rafter Man asks, "What's she saying?"
I shrug. "What difference does it make?"
Animal Mother spits. "It's gonna get dark. We better hump back to the
company area."
I say, "What about the gook?"
"Fuck her," says Animal Mother. "Let her rot."
"We can't just leave her here," I say.
Animal Mother takes a giant step toward me, puts his face up close to
mine. "Hey, asshole, Cowboy is down. You're fresh out of friends,
motherfucker. I'm running this squad. I was a platoon sergeant before they
busted me. I say we leave the gook for the mother-loving rats."
Rafter Man is buckling on his NVA belt. The belt has a dull-silver
buckle with a star engraved in the center. "Joker is a sergeant."
Animal Mother is surprised. He stares at Rafter Man, then at me. Then:
"That don't cut no shit out here. This is the field, motherfucker. You ain't
a grunt. You don't pack the gear to be a grunt. You want to fuck with me?
Huh? You want to throw some hands?"
I say, "I wouldn't run this squad for a million dollars. I'm just
saying that we can't leave the gook like this."
"I don't care," says Animal Mother. "Go on and waste her."
I say, "No. Not me."
"Then we saddle up and move...now."
I look at the sniper. She whimpers. I try to decide what I would want
if I were down, half dead, hurting bad, surrounded by my enemies. I look
into her eyes, trying to find the answer. She sees me. She recognizes me--I
am the one who will end her life. We share a bloody intimacy. As I lift my
grease gun she is praying in French. I jerk the trigger. Bang. One round
enters the sniper's left eye and as the bullet exits it tears off the back
of her head.
The squad is silent.
Then Alice grunts, flashes a big grin. "Man, you are one hard dude. How
come you ain't a grunt?"
Cowboy and Doc Jay are standing beside me.
Cowboy says, "Mother, I'm serviceable. Joker, that's a well done.
You're hard.'
Animal Mother spits. He takes a step, kneels, zips out his machete.
With one powerful blow he chops off her head. He picks the head up by its
long black hair and holds it high. He laughs and says, "Rest in pieces,
bitch." And he laughs again. He walks around and sticks the bloody ball of
gore into all our faces. "Hard? Now who's hard? Now who's hard,
motherfuckers?"
Cowboy looks at Animal Mother and sighs. "Joker is hard, Mother.
You...you're just mean."
Animal Mother pauses, spits, throws the head into a ditch.
Cowboy says, "Let's move. We done our job."
Animal Mother picks up his M-60 machine gun, lays it across his
shoulders, struts over to me. He smiles. "You know, Shortround never did see
the frag that wasted him, that little kike." Animal Mother unhooks a hand
grenade from the front of his flak jacket and pushes it into my chest--hard.
Mother looks around, then smiles at me again. "Nobody shits on the Animal,
motherfucker. Nobody."
I hook the grenade onto my flak jacket.
Alice picks up the sniper's rifle. "Hey, number one souvenir!"
Rafter Man is standing over the sniper's decapitated corpse. He aims
his M-16 and fires a long burst of automatic fire into the body. Then he
says, "That's mine, Alice." He takes the SKS from Alice and examines it
closely. He looks down and admires his new belt. "I shot her first, Joker.
She'd have died. That's one confirmed for me."
I say, "Sure, Rafter. You wasted her."
Rafter Man says, "I did. I wasted her. I fucking blew her away." He
looks at his NVA rifle belt again. He holds up the SKS. "Wait until Mr.
Payback sees this!"
Alice is down on his knees beside the corpse. With his machete he chops
off the sniper's feet. He puts the feet into his blue canvas shopping bag.
He chops off the sniper's finger and takes her gold ring.
We wait until Rafter Man takes photographs of the dead gook and we wait
until Alice takes photographs of Rafter Man posing with his SKS set in his
hip and his foot on the mutilated remains of the enemy sniper.
Then, as we're moving out, Rafter Man sees a reflection of his face in
the jagged teeth of a shattered window, sees the new smile upon his face.
Rafter Man stares at himself for a long time and then, dropping the carbine,
Rafter Man just walks off down the road, not looking back, not responding to
our questions.
Cowboy waves his hand and we move out. Nobody says anything about
Rafter Man.
We hump back to the Forbidden City and set in for the night.
I mark the short-timer's calendar on my flak jacket--fifty-five days
and a wake-up left in country.
Later, in the dark, Rafter Man comes back.
The fighting continues all around us all night, sputters of violence
here and there, a mortar round, a curse, a scream.
We sleep like babies.
The sun that rises in Hue on the morning of February 25, 1968,
illuminates a dead city. United States Marines have liberated Hue to the
ground. Here, in the heart of the ancient imperial capital of Viet Nam, a
living shrine to the Vietnamese people on both sides, green Marines in the
green machine have liberated a cherished past. Green Marines in the green
machine have shot the bones of sacred ancestors. Wise, like Solomon, we have
converted Hue into rubble in order to save it.
The next morning Delta Six cuts us some slack and we spend the day
hunting gold bars in the emperor's palace.
We enter the throne room of the old emperors. The throne is blood red,
studded with inlaid mirrors.
I wish I could live in the Imperial Palace. Bright pieces of porcelain
make the walls vivid. The roof is orange tile. There are stone dragons,
ceramic urns, brass cranes standing on the backs of turtles, and many other
fine objects of undetermined origin and function but obviously of great
value and great beauty and very old.
I walk out into the emperor's magnificent garden. I find Alice and
Rafter Man looking at some crispy critters. It's impossible to determine
which army the men were from. Napalm leaves less than bones. I say, "The
aroma of roasted flesh is, admittedly, an acquired taste."
Alice laughs. "This is such a fucking waste. I mean, this place is like
a magic temple, you know? The gooks love this place. Blowing it away is
like, oh, blowing away the White House. Except that nobody gives a shit
about the White House and this place is ten times as old."
I shrug.
"It's crazy," Alice says. "It's just plain fucking crazy. I wish I was
back in the World."
I say, "No, back in the World is the crazy part. This, all this world
of shit, this is real."
Cowboy comes around later and says that Delta's company commander has
passed the word to regroup on the beach at the Strawberry Patch.
We march. We look at the rubble we have made. We get tired of looking
at it; there's so much of it.
Twilight.
What's left of Delta Company, 1st Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment,
First Marine Division, is sprawled all over the beach down by the River of
Perfumes. The bearded grunts are sleeping, cooking chow, bragging, comparing
souvenirs, and reenacting every moment of the battle, real and imagined,
every man a hero beyond belief.
The Lusthog Squad is wasted. We have nailed our names into the pages of
history enough for today. Canteens come out. It's too hot to cook so we eat
cold C's.
Some of the guys are getting to their feet.
Donlon stands up, shouts, "LOOK!"
Five hundred yards north there is an island in the River of Perfumes.
On the island a semicircle of miniature tanks is converging upon a frantic
colony of ants. The ants drop their gear and sling their AK-47 assault
rifles over their backs and they jump into the river. The ants swim for it.
All of the tanks open fire with ninety-millimeter shells and with
fifty-caliber machine guns.
Some of the ants sink.
Cobra gunships buzz out of a horizon that is the color of lead and
swoop in for the kill.
The ants swim faster.
The hovering gunships chop up the brown water with their machine guns.
The ants swim, dive, or, in their panic, drown.
Delta Company gets onto its feet.
Three Cobra gunships zoom down to within a few yards of the river and
the helmeted door gunners machine-gun the ants as they flop in the water,
trapped in a syncopated hurricane of hot air beating down from the swirling
rotor blades, trapped in the water while their red life runs out through
bullet holes.
Only one ant reaches the river bank. The ant opens fire at the gunships
as they hover over the water like monsters feeding.
Someone says, "See that shit? He's hard-core."
One gunship detaches itself from the blood feast and skims across the
River of Perfumes. The chopper drops bullets all over the beach, all around
the ant.
The ant runs off the beach.
The gunship zooms back to feed on the ants in the water.
The ant runs onto the beach and opens fire.
The gunship banks sharply and comes in low, rockets swooshing from
under its belly and machine guns chattering.
Mr. Shortround shakes his head. "No can do, Craze. We're moving most
skosh."
Donlon is talking into his handset. "Sir, the C.O. wants the Actual."
Donlon gives the handset to Mr. Shortround. The Lieutenant talks to
Delta Six, the commanding officer of Delta One-Five.
"Number ten. Just when we were scarfing up some of the bennies," says
Crazy Earl. "Just when we were getting a little piece of slack..."
Lieutenant Shortround stands up and starts putting on his gear.
"Moving, rich kids. Saddle up. Craze, get your people on their feet."
"Moving. Moving."
We all stand up, except for the NVA corporal who remains seated, a beer
in his hand, a pile of money in his lap, his split lips curled back in a
death grin.
Alice steps up with a machete in one hand and a blue canvas shopping
bag in the other. He kneels. With two blows of the machete Alice chops off
the NVA corporal's feet. He picks up each foot by the big toe and drops it
into the blue shopping bag. "This gook was a very hard dude. Number one! Big
Magic!"
The grunts stuff beer bottles, piasters, long-rats, and looted
souvenirs into their baggy pockets, into Marine-issue field packs, and into
NVA haversacks souvenired from enemy grunts they have wasted. The grunts
pick up their weapons.
Moving. Moving. I walk behind Cowboy. Rafter Man walks behind me.
I say, "Well, I guess this Citadel shit is going to be oh so bad. But
it could be worse. I mean, at least it's not Parris Island."
Cowboy grins. He says, "There it is."
We see the great walls of the Citadel. With zigzagging ramparts thirty
feet high and eight feet thick, surrounded by a moat, the fortress looks
like an ancient castle from a fairy tale about dragons who guard treasure
and knights on white horses and princesses in need of assistance. The castle
is black stone against a cold gray sky, with dark towers populated by
shadows that are alive.
The Citadel is actually a small walled city constructed by French
engineers as protection for the home of Gia Long, Emperor of the Annamese
Empire. When Hue was the Imperial Capital, the Citadel protected the Emperor
and the royal family and the ancient treasure of the Forbidden City from
pirates raiding from the South China Sea.
We are big white American boys in steel helmets and heavy flak jackets,
armed with magic weapons, laying siege to a castle in modern times. One-Five
has changed a lot since the days when it was the first battalion to hit the
beach at Guadacanal.
Metal birds flash in and shit steel eggs all over the place. F-4
Phantom jet fighters are dropping napalm, high explosives, and Willy
Peter--white phosphorus. With bombs we are expressing ourselves; we are
writing our history in shattered blocks of stone.
Black roses of smoke bloom inside the Citadel.
We ditty-bop Indian-file along both sides of the road, twenty yards
between each man. The lines pop and snick as cocking levers are snapped back
and bolts sent home, chambering rounds. Safeties are clicked off. Selector
switches are thumbed to the full automatic position. Those Marines armed
with M-14's fix bayonets.
Machine guns start typing out history. First our guns, then theirs.
Snipers on the wall fire a round here and there, sighting us in.
War is a catalogue of sounds. Our ears direct our feet.
A bullet crunches into a wall.
Somebody starts singing:
The machine guns are exchanging a steady fire now, like old friends
having a conversation. Thumps and thuds puncture the rhythm of the bullets.
The snipers zero in on us. Each shot becomes a word spoken by death.
Death is talking to us. Death wants to tell us a funny secret. We may not
like death but death likes us. Victor Charlie is hard but he never lies.
Guns tell the truth. Guns never say, "I'm only kidding." War is ugly because
the truth can be ugly and war is very sincere.
I say out loud: "You and me, God--right?"
I send guard-mail directives to my personal Tactical Area of
Responsibility, which extends to the perimeters of my skin. Dear Feet,
tiptoe through the tulips. Balls, hang in there. Legs, don't do any John
Waynes. My body is serviceable. I intend to maintain my body in the
excellent condition in which it was issued.
In the silence of our hearts we speak to our werewolf weapons; our
weapons reply.
Cowboy is listening to me mutter to myself. "John Wayne? Hey, Joker's
right. This ain't real. This is just a John Wayne movie. Joker can be Paul
Newman. I'll be a horse."
"Yeah."
"Crazy Earl says, "Can I be Gabby Hayes?"
"The Rock can be a rock," says Donlon, the radioman.
Alice says, "I'll be Ann-Margret."
"Animal Mother can be a rabid buffalo," says Stutten, honcho of the
third fire team.
The walls are assaulted by werewolf laughter.
"Who'll be the Indians?"
The little enemy folks audition for the part--machine-gun bullets rip
across a wall to starboard.
Lieutenant Shortround calls up his squad leaders with a hand signal--he
holds up his right hand and twirls it. Three squad leaders, including Crazy
Earl, double-time to him. He talks to them, points at the wall. The squad
leaders double-time back to their squads to confer with their fire team
leaders.
Lieutenant Shortround blows a whistle and then we're all running like
big-assed birds. We don't want to to this. We are all afraid. But if you
stayed behind you would be alone. Your friends are going; you go too. You're
not a person anymore. You don't have to be who you are anymore. You're part
of an attack, one green object in a line of green objects, running toward a
breach in the Citadel wall, running through hard noise and bursting metal,
running, running, running...you don't look back.
We double-time, werewolves with guns, panting. We run as though
impatient to sink into the darkness that is opening up to swallow us.
Something snaps and we're past the point of no return. We're going through
the broken wall. We're running fast and we aren't going to stop. Nothing can
stop us.
The air is being torn.
The deck shifts beneath your feet. The asphalt sucks at your feet like
sand on the beach.
Green tracer bullets dissect the sky.
Bullets hit the street. The impact of the bullets is the sound of a
covey of quail taking flight. And sparks. You feel the shock of bullets
punching through bricks. Splinters of stone sting your face.
People tell you what to do.
Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving. If you stop moving, if you
hesitate, your heart will stop beating. Your legs are machines winding you
up like a mechanical toy. If your legs stop moving, your taut spring will
run down and you will fall over, a lump without motion.
You feel like you could run around the world. Now the asphalt is a
trampoline and you are fast and graceful, a green jungle cat.
Sounds. Cardboard being torn. Head-on collisions. Trains derailing.
Walls falling into the sea.
Metal hornets swarm overhead.
Pictures: The dark eyes of guns; the cold eyes of guns. Pictures blink
and blur, a wall, tiny men, shattered blocks of stone.
Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving...
Your feet take you up...up...over the rubble of the
wall...up...up...you're loving it...climbing, you're not human, you're an
animal, you feel like a god...you scream: "DIE! DIE! DIE, YOU MOTHERFUCKERS!
DIE! DIE! DIE!"
Hornets try to swarm into you--you swat them aside.
Boots crunch in powdered stone. Equipment flaps, clangs, and rattles.
People curse.
"Oh, fuck."
Keep moving.
Your Boy Scout shit is wet with sweat. Salty sweat wiggles into your
eyes and onto your lips. Your right index finger is on the trigger of your
M-16. Here I come, you say to yourself, here I come with a gun full of
bullets. How many rounds left in this magazine? How many days left to my
rotation date? Am I carrying too much gear? Where are they? And where the
hell are my feet?
A face. The face moves. Your weapon sights in. Your M-16 automatic
rifle vibrates. The face is gone.
Keep moving.
And then you feet no longer touch the ground, and you wonder what's
happening to you. Your body relaxes, then goes rigid. You hear the sound of
a human body erupting, the ugly sound of a human body being torn apart by
high-speed metal. The pictures blinking before your eyes slow down like a
silent film on a defective reel. Your weapon floats our of your hands and
suddenly you are alone. You are floating. Up. Up. You are being lifted up by
a wall of sound. The pictures blink faster and faster and suddenly the
filmstrip snaps and the wall of sound slams into you--total, terrible sound.
The deck is enormous as you fall. You merge with the earth. Your flak jacket
absorbs much of the impact. Your helmet falls off your head and spins.
You're on your back, crushed by sound. You think: Is that the sky?
"CORPSMAN," someone says, far away. "CORPSMAN!"
You're on your back. All around you boots dance by, pounding and
crunching. Dirt clods and pieces of stone fall from the sky, into your
mouth, your eyes. You spit out stone. You hold up one of your hands. You try
to tell the pounding boots: Hey, don't step one me.
Your palms are hot. Your legs are broken. With one of your hands you
touch yourself, your face, your thighs, you search your broken guts for
warm, wet cavities.
Your reaction to your own death is nothing more than a highly
intensified curiosity.
A hand presses you down. You wonder if you should try to do something
about your broken legs. You think that it's possible that you don't have any
legs. Tons of ocean water, dark and cold and populated by monsters, are
crushing you. You try to raise your head. Hands hold you down. You fight.
You fling your arms. Strong hands search for damage in your body.
"Legs..."
You cough up spiders.
On the ground beside you is a Marine without a head. Exhibit A,
formerly a person, now two hundred pounds of fractured meat. The Marine
without a head is on his back. His face has been knocked off. The top of his
skull has been torn back, with the soft brain inside. The jawbone and bottom
teeth are intact. In the hands of the Marine without a head is an M-60
machine gun, locked there forever by rigor mortis. His finger in on the
trigger. His canvas jungle boots are muddy.
You look at the dried mud on the jungle boots of the Marine without a
head and you are stunned that his feet look so much like your own.
You reach out. You touch his hand.
Something stings your arm.
Suddenly, you are very tired. You are breathing hard from the running.
Your heart is beating so hard that it seems to want to tear its way out of
your body. Through the center of your heart there is a star-shaped bullet
hole.
Hands touch you. Gentle hands. "You're okay, jarhead. No sweat. I'm Doc
Jay. Can you hear me? You can trust me, Marine. I got magic hands."
"No," you say. "NO!" You try to explain to the hands that part of you
is missing in action. You want the hands to find the missing part; you don't
want your missing part to be left behind. But you cannot speak. Your mouth
won't work.
You sleep. You trust the hands that are holding you, the hands that are
lifting you up.
In your dope dream of death you are an enlistment poster nailed to a
black wall: THE MARINE CORPS BUILDS MEN--BODY--MIND--SPIRIT.
You feel yourself breaking up into three pieces...you hear strange
voices...
"What's wrong?" one voice says, confused and frightened. "What's
wrong?"
"Who's there?"
"What?"
"Who's there?"
"I'm Mind. Are you--"
"Affirmative. I'm his Body. I'm not feeling well..."
"This is utterly ridiculous," interjects a third voice. "This can't be
happening."
"Who said that?" Mind demands. "Body? That you?"
"I said it, fool. You may call me Spirit."
Body sneers. "I don't believe either of you."
Mind speaks slowly: "Now, we've got to be logical about this. Our man
is down. We've got to get organized."
Body whimpers. "Listen, you guys, that's me lying there--not you. You
don't know what it's like."
Mind says, "Look, you moron, we're all in this together. If he goes, we
all go."
"Is he..." Body can't say the word. "I've got to survive."
"No," Mind observes. "Not necessarily. They play this game. I'm not
sure we are allowed to interfere."
Body is horrified. "What kind of 'game'?"
"I'm not sure. Something about rules. They have a lot of rules."
Spirit says, "This guy pisses me off. I'm not going back."
Mind says, "You have to go back."
"On the contrary," says Spirit. "I do as I please. You two have no
control over me."
"Forget him," says Body.
Mind insists, "But Spirit must return with us."
"No. We don't need him."
Mind considers the situation. "Perhaps Spirit has a valid argument.
Perhaps I shouldn't go back either..."
Body is frantic. "NO! PLEASE...."
"Yet, actually, nothing would be achieved by not going back. Our
actions will not affect their game in any event. Losing one man won't change
the game one way or the other. In fact, losing men seems to be the whole
point of the game. We must be practical. Come along, Body, we're going
back."
Spirit says, "Tell the man I'm missing in action."
In your dream you call for Chaplain Charlie. You met the Navy chaplain
when you interviewed him for a feature article you were writing. Chaplain
Charlie was an amateur magician. With his magic, Chaplain Charlie
entertained Marines in sick bays and distributed spiritual tourniquets to
men who were still alive, but weaponless. To brutal, godless children
Chaplain Charlie spoke about how God is merciful, despite appearances, about
how the Ten Commandments lack detail because when you're writing on stone
tablets with lightning bolts you're got to be brief, about how the Free
World will conquer Communism with aid of God and a few Marines, and about
free fish. One day a Vietnamese child booby-trapped Chaplain Charlie's black
bag of tricks. Chaplain Charlie reached in and pulled out a bright ball of
death...
"Hey, hit the deck, leatherneck, we're moving."
"What--?" I recognize the rooms I'm in. I remember the room from an
earlier visit to Hue. I'm in the Palace of Perfect Peace in the Forbidden
City.
Cowboy punches my arm. "Okay, Joker, stop acting. We know you're not
dead."
I sit up. I'm on a canvas med-evac stretcher. "There it is. I did it!
Number one! I got my first heart."
Rafter Man says, "A Purple Heart?"
Cowboy laughs. "Tough titty, you poge. No heart."
I pat myself with my hands. "The hell you say. Where am I hit?"
Rafter Man says, "You been out for hours. Doc Jay said you got blown up
by a B-40. A rocket-propelled grenade. But you only got the concussion. Some
other guy got the shrapnel."
"Well," I say, "that sounds like a lifer-type thing to do."
Animal Mother grunts and spits. Animal Mother spits a lot because he
thinks it makes him look tough. "Lifers never get wasted. Just the ones I
frag, that's all."
Donlon takes a step toward Animal Mother. Donlon is glaring at Animal
Mother. Donlon starts to say something, then decides against it.
Rafter Man says, "Doc Jay gave you some morphine. You were trying to
punch him out."
"There it is," I say. "I'm mean, even when I'm unconscious. But that's
some very good shit, that morphine."
Cowboy pushes his gray Marine-issue glasses up on his nose. "I could
use a hit of something myself. I wish we had time to smoke some grass."
I say, "Hey, bro, who's on your program?"
Cowboy shakes his head. "Mr. Shortround is KIA." Cowboy pulls a red
bandana from his back pocket and wipes his grimy face. "The platoon radioman
was down. Some redneck from Alabama. I forget his name. Took a sniper round
through the knee. The Skipper went out to get him. A frag got him. A frag
got them both. At least..." Cowboy turns to look at Animal Mother. "At
least, that's how Mother tells it, and he was walking point."
I shake the cobwebs out of my head and pick up my gear. "Where's my
Mattel?"
Cowboy hands me a grease gun. "Your Mattel got wasted. Use this." He
hands me a canvas bag containing half-a-dozen grease-gun magazines.
I check out the grease gun. "This thing is obsolete."
Cowboy shrugs. "I souvenired it off a wasted tanker." Cowboy scratches
his face. "I got a new K-bar. And I souvenired Mr. Shortround's pistol."
"Where's Craze?"
Cowboy leads me outside a long row of body bags and ponchos stuffed
with human junk.
We stand over Craze as Cowboy says, "Craze did a John Wayne. He finally
went berserk. Shot BB's at a gook machine gun. The BB's bounced off the gook
gunners. You should have seen it. Craze was laughing like a happy little
kid. Then that slope machine gun blew him away."
I nod. "Anybody else?"
Cowboy checks his weapon, snaps the bolt to see that it's working
smoothly. "T.H.E. Rock. A sniper. Popped his head off. I'll have to tell you
about it. Right now we got a job to do. We got to find that sniper. I'm
personally going to waste that gook son-of-a-bitch. T.H.E. Rock was the
first guy to get wasted after I took the squad. He's my responsibility."
Alice double-times up the road. "That sniper is still there. You can't
see him, but he's there."
Cowboy doesn't say anything; he's looking at the long row of body bags.
He takes a few steps. I walk along with him.
Mr. Shortround doesn't look like an officer anymore. He's naked, lying
facedown on a bloody poncho. His skin is yellow. His eyes are dry in their
sockets, Dead, Mr. Shortround is just another meat-bag with a hole in it.
Cowboy looks down at Mr. Shortround. He takes off his muddy Stetson.
Donlon steps up to Mr. Shortround. There are tears in Donlon's eyes. He
fumbles with his handset. Donlon says, "We're mean Marines, sir." He hurries
away, fumbling with the handset.
Alice walks up to the row of body bags and kicks Mr. Shortround's
corpse. "Go easy, bro."
The squad files by.
I kneel. I fold the poncho over Mr. Shortround's small body. I feel a
great need to say something to the green plastic lump with the human feet. I
say, "Well, you're short, sir."
I think about what I have just said and I know that making a bad pun
was a stupid thing to do. But then anything you could say to a dead officer
who was killed by one of his own men would have to be pretty ridiculous.
Rafter Man and I double-time to catch up with the squad.
We hump past scented lotus ponds, through landscaped gardens, over
bridges linking delicately structured pagodas.
All around the beautiful gardens invisible gunships rip into the peace
and quiet like dogs fighting in a church.
Cowboy holds up his right hand. The squad stops. Alice aims an index
finger at a street of big mansions.
Cowboy looks at me, then at the squad. Cowboy pulls me aside. We walk
ahead for a few steps. "That sniper opened up on us in a gook graveyard.
Some guys in One-One told us they found gold bars in the Emperor's palace.
They had all they could hump, so we was going to souvenir the rest." Cowboy
wipes sweat from his eyes. "T.H.E. Rock was walking point. The sniper shot
T.H.E. Rock's foot off. Shot it off. The Hardass Squad went out to get him,
one at a time. That sniper shot all their feet off. We were hiding behind
graves, those old round graves like baseball mounds, and we had nine grunts
down in the street...." Cowboy pulls a red bandanna from his back pockets
and wipes his sweaty face. "Mr. Shortround wouldn't let us go get them. It
made him sick, but he held us back. Then the sniper started shooting off
fingers, toes, ears--everything. The guys in the road were crying and
begging and we were all growling like animals, but Mr. Shortround held us
back. Then Animal Mother started to go for them and the Skipper grabbed
Animal Mother's collar and hit him in the face. Animal Mother was so mad I
thought he was going to kill us all. But before he could do anything the
sniper started putting rounds into the guys in the street. He didn't miss
more than a couple of times. He popped T.H.E. Rock's head off and then he
put a round through each guy's head. They were all moaning and praying and
then it was quiet and they were dead and it was like we were dead too..."
I don't know what to say.
Cowboy spits, his face a sweaty stone. "After the NVA pulled out, the
lifers sent in the Arvin Black Panthers to take the Forbidden City. Shit.
Nothing left but rear guard squads. We stomped the NVA and they stomped us
and then the lifers send in the Arvins, like the goddamn Arvins did it. Mr.
Shortround said it was their country, said we was only helping out, said it
would boost the morale of the Vietnamese people. Well, fuck the Vietnamese
people. The horrible hogs in hard, hungry Hotel Company ran up an American
flag. Like on Iwo Jima. But some poge officers ordered them to take it down.
The snuffies had to run up the stinking Vietnamese flag, which is yellow,
which is the right color for these chickenshit people. We're getting
slaughtered in this city. And we can't even run up a fucking flag. I just
can't hack this shit, bro. My job is to get my people back to the World in
one piece." Cowboy coughs, spits, wipes his nose with the back of his hand.
"Under fire, these are the best human beings in the world. All they need is
for somebody to throw hand grenades at them for the rest of their
lives...These guys depend on me. I can't send my people out to get that
sniper, Joker. I might lose the whole squad."
I wait until I'm sure that Cowboy has finished talking and then I say,
"That sounds like a personal problem to me, Cowboy. I can't tell you what to
do. If I was a human being instead of a Marine, maybe I'd know." I scratch
my armpit. "You're the honcho. You're the sergeant around here and you give
the orders. You make the decisions. I could never do it. I could never run a
rifle squad. Never happen, bro. I just don't have the balls."
Cowboy thinks about it. Then he grins. "You're right, Joker. You
shitbird. You're right. I've got to get my program squared away. I wish
Gunny Gerheim was here. He'd know what to do." Cowboy thinks about it. He
grins. "Shit." He walks back to the squad. "Moving..."
The squad hesitates. Crazy Earl has always been the one to say what is.
Animal Mother stands up. He sets his M-60 machine gun into his hip. He
doesn't speak. He looks at the dirty faces of the squad. He moves out.
The squad collects its gear and gets to its feet.
Cowboy waves his hand and Mother takes the point.
We are discussing the best way to search the street house to house when
a tank rumbles up.
Donlon says, "Hey, a tank! We can get it to--"
"No," says Cowboy. "Number ten! We don't need any help."
"That's affirmative," says Animal Mother.
I say, "A tank could flush him for us, Cowboy. Think about it. We can't
budge gook grunts without supporting arms."
Cowboy shrugs. "Oh, to hell with it."
I double-time down the road to meet the tank. I run past heaps of
rubble which were houses yesterday, bricks and stones and shattered wood
today.
The tank jerks to a halt. The turret whirs. The big ninety-millimeter
gun locks on me. For a long moment I think that the tank is going to blow me
away.
The top half of the blond tank commander appears in the turret hatch.
The lieutenant is wearing a flak jacket and an olive-drab football helmet
with a microphone that protrudes over his lip. He is a mechanical centaur,
half man, half tank.
I point out the mansions and I explain about the sniper, about how the
sniper wasted our bro and all that good shit.
Cowboy comes over and tells the lieutenant to "wait one" and then to
start wasting the mansions, one after another.
The blond tank commander is silent. He gives us a thumbs-up.
Cowboy sends Lance Corporal Stutten and his fire team around behind the
row of mansions.
Animal Mother sets up his M-60 on a low wall and opens fire, raking the
mansions at random. Every fifth round is a tracer.
The tank rolls up to the first mansion.
The rest of us double-time down an alley and cross the road a hundred
yards down the street, at the end of the row of mansions.
At the opposite end of the street sits the tank. The tank fires a round
of high explosives. The upper story of the first house is blown apart. The
roof collapses.
Animal Mother continues to fire from his position near the tank.
Cowboy double-times to the first house at our end of the street. He
steps carefully to the rear corner of the house, peeks around the corner.
Cowboy waits for Lance Corporal Stutten to pop a green smoke as a signal
that his fire team is in position as a blocking force.
We wait.
When green smoke begins to pour from a drainage ditch behind the first
house at the far end of the street Cowboy waves his hand and we all open
fire at the first house at our end of the street. One at a time, we run
across the street to the first house, joining Cowboy.
Cowboy waves his hand around the corner and Lance Corporal Stutten's
fire team opens up with their weapons on full automatic, pouring hundreds of
high-velocity copper-jacketed bullets into the rear of the first house at
their end of the street.
Animal Mother continues to chew up the fronts of all the mansions with
his black steel machine gun.
The tank fires a second round. The ground floor of the first house is
blown apart. The tank grinds forward twenty yards, stops, fires again. The
second story of the second house explodes.
Cowboy leads us into the mansion at our end of the street. Inside, we
leapfrog from corner to corner. Cowboy pops a frag and underhands it into
somebody's kitchen. The detonation rocks the whole house, numbs our ears.
Rafter Man steps forward. He gestures to Cowboy, jerks his thumb at the
ceiling. Cowboy holds up a circled thumb and index finger, "okay." Rafter
Man pops a frag and pitches it up a stairwell to the second story. The
explosion splits the plaster over our heads.
Outside, up the street, the tank fires again.
Cowboy punches me in the chest with his knuckles. Then he punches
Rafter Man and Alice. He aims his right index finger at Donlon, then at the
deck. Donlon nods and begins to silently point out the positions he wants
the men in the squad to take.
Cowboy waves his hand and we follow him up the stairs.
Upstairs, Alice kicks out a window and we all hop out onto the roof.
The tank is two houses away. It fires.
We drop our gear and jump the six-foot chasm between houses.
On the roof of the second house Cowboy stands up and signal Lance
Corporal Stutten, who waves back with his poncho. Bullets from Lance
Corporal Stutten's fire team stop hitting the rest of the house we're
standing on.
I double-time to the front of the house and I wave to Animal Mother.
Bullets from Animal Mother's machine gun stop hitting the front of the
house.
The tank fires. The shell bursts. Shrapnel whines over us.
We converge on a skylight. I drop a frag through the glass.
The grenade explodes in an invisible room below. Concussion shatters
the skylight.
We drop through the ragged rectangular hole into somebody's library.
Shrapnel has mangled leatherbound books. I pick up a small leatherbound book
for a souvenir. The author is Jules Verne; the title is in French. I stuff
the book into my thigh pocket and reach to the front of my flak jacket for
another grenade.
We work our way through the house, fragging every hallway, every room.
But we can't find the sniper.
The tank fires into the second story of the house next door.
I say, "No time."
Cowboy shrugs. "He wasted T.H.E. Rock."
I take a few steps down the stairs. Cowboy holds up his hand. "Listen."
Animal Mother's M-60 is ripping up the roof over our heads.
I say, "Is Mother dinky-dow? Crazy?"
Cowboy shakes his head. "No. Mother is a prick, but he's a good grunt."
We run back to the library.
We drag a heavy antique desk to the ruined skylight and Cowboy climbs
up onto it and lifts himself back onto the roof.
The crack of a Simonov sniper's carbine pierces the muted rhythm of
Mother's machine gun.
Cowboy falls back through the skylight. Alice, who has climbed up onto
the desk, catches Cowboy and eases him down to the desktop.
I pop a frag. I climb up onto the desk and take hold of the roof with
my left hand. I let the spoon fly. The spoon phinnnnings away and rattles
across the floor. I hold the sweaty green oval for three seconds and,
lifting myself up, I flip it up and back so that it rolls across the roof
directly over us. The frag bursts, spraying seven hundred and fifty pieces
of steel wire across the roof. The ceiling splits. Alice hugs Cowboy.
Plaster and splintered wood bounce off my helmet.
Rafter Man jumps up onto the desk and lift himself up onto the roof.
Surprised, I pull myself up after him.
The tank fires into the ground floor of the house next door.
Rafter Man and I crawl on our bellies on the roof.
Behind us, Alice lifts Cowboy over his head like a wrestler, deposits
him gently upon the roof. Then Alice climbs up. He picks Cowboy up in his
arms as though Cowboy were an oversized baby.
Doc Jay calls to us from the roof of the first house.
Alice pulls a tent rope from a thigh pocket and ties it under Cowboy's
arms. He flips the other end of the rope to Doc Jay. Doc Jay gets a good
grip on the rope and braces himself as Alice lowers Cowboy into the chasm
between the houses. Doc Jay pulls in the slack as Cowboy falls. Cowboy's
limp body swings over and thuds into the wall beneath Doc Jay's feet. Doc
Jay grits his teeth, pulls Cowboy up. Alice looks back at me, but I wave him
on. He leaps over to the first house.
Doc Jay gathers up all of our gear and Alice throws Cowboy over his
shoulder and they start back down.
Rafter Man has crawled up to the crest of the roof. He peeks over the
crest.
Bang. A hiss.
I crawl up beside Rafter Man. I take a peek. From behind a low chimney
at the opposite corner of the roof a thin black line protrudes.
We hear the incredibly loud clanking of the tank as it rolls on the
street below. It stops.
Animal Mother and Lance Corporal Stutten stop firing.
"Let's go," I say. I grab Rafter Man's shoulder. "The tank can waste
the gook."
Rafter Man doesn't look at me. He pulls away.
I turn away and I duck walk to the edge of the roof. I stand up and am
about to jump across when the house explodes beneath me.
I fall on my back.
The sniper is moving.
Rafter Man jumps over the crest of the roof and slides down the incline
on his ass.
I try to stand up. But all of my bones have shifted one inch to the
left.
Suddenly a foot steps on my chest, pinning me. The sniper looks down,
surprised. The sniper sees that I'm helpless, glances back at Rafter Man,
gets ready to jump across to the other roof.
Rafter Man runs back up the incline and slides back down on his ass,
ten yards away.
I reach for my grease gun.
The sniper turns toward Rafter Man and raises her SKS carbine.
The sniper is the first Victor Charlie I've seen who was not dead,
captured, or far, far away. She is a child, no more than fifteen years old,
a slender Eurasian angel with dark, beautiful eyes, which, at the same time,
are the hard eyes of a grunt. She's not quite five feet tall. Her hair is
long and black and shiny, held together by rawhide cord tied in a bow. Her
shirt and shorts are mustard-colored khaki and look new. Slung diagonally
across her chest, separating her small breasts, is a white cloth tube fat
with sticky reddish rice. Her B.F. Goodrich sandals have been cut from
discarded tires. Around her tiny waist hangs a web belt from which dangle
homemade hand grenades with hollow wooden handles, made by stuffing black
powder into Coca-Cola cans, a knife for cleaning fish, and six canvas
pouches containing banana clips for the AK-47 assault rifle slung on her
back.
Bang. Rafter Man is firing his M-16. Bang. Bang.
The sniper lowers her weapon. She looks at Rafter Man. She looks at me.
She tries to raise her weapon.
Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bullets shock flesh. Rafter Man is
firing. Rafter Man's bullets are punching the life out of the sniper.
The sniper falls off the roof.
The tank fires into the ground floor beneath us. The house shakes.
I stand up. I feel like a dead man's shit. I walk to the front of the
house. I wave to the blond tank commander. He swings a fifty-caliber machine
gun around and aims it at me. I step into full view on the edge of the roof.
I wave an "all clear."
The tank commander gives me a thumbs-up.
I pop a green smoke grenade and I drop it on the roof.
I limp over to the skylight and I climb back down into the library.
Rafter Man has already jumped into the library and is running down the
shrapnel-scarred stairs.
Down on the street I watch as the tank rolls up to the last house still
standing. I wave another "all clear" and the tank commander gives me another
smile and another thumbs-up and then the tank fires, blasting the top floor.
If fires again, blasting the ground floor.
The tank commander's great mechanical body grumbles contentedly and
rumbles away.
Cowboy double-times to meet me. He punches me on the arm. "Look!"
Cowboy touches his right ear, carefully. "Look!" There's a neat little round
hole through his right ear and a semicircular nick on the top of his left
ear. "See? A cheap Heart! The round went through the helmet from behind,
spun all the way around my head, then came out and hit me in the arm..."
Cowboy holds up his right forearm, which has already been bandaged. "Did you
see that tank? Was that tank bad? What a honey."
Doc Jay catches up to Cowboy, grabs him roughly, pushes him down.
Cowboy sits on a splintered tree stump while Doc Jay tears the waxy brown
wrapper off a compress bandage and ties the bandage around Cowboy's bloody
head.
Alice and I walk around to the rear of the house.
We find Rafter Man standing over the sniper, drinking a bottle of
Coca-Cola. Rafter Man grins. He says, "Things go better with Coke."
Animal Mother walks up and Rafter Man says, "Look at her! Look at her!"
We all stand over the sniper. The sniper is drawing her breath with
great effort. Guts that look like colorful plastic have squirted out through
bullet holes. The back of the sniper's right leg and her right buttock have
been torn off. She grits her teeth and then makes a sound like a dog that
has been run over.
Lance Corporal Stutten leads his fire team to the sniper. "Look at
that," says Lance Corporal Stutten. "It's a girl. She's all busted up."
"Look at her!" Rafter Man is saying. He struts around the moaning lump
of torn meat. "Look at her! Am I bad? Am I a menace? Am I a life taker? Am I
a heart breaker?"
Alice kneels and unbuckles the sniper's web belt and jerks it from
under her body. The sniper whimpers. She speaks to us in French. Alice
tosses the bloody belt to Rafter Man.
The sniper begins to pray in Vietnamese.
Rafter Man asks, "What's she saying?"
I shrug. "What difference does it make?"
Animal Mother spits. "It's gonna get dark. We better hump back to the
company area."
I say, "What about the gook?"
"Fuck her," says Animal Mother. "Let her rot."
"We can't just leave her here," I say.
Animal Mother takes a giant step toward me, puts his face up close to
mine. "Hey, asshole, Cowboy is down. You're fresh out of friends,
motherfucker. I'm running this squad. I was a platoon sergeant before they
busted me. I say we leave the gook for the mother-loving rats."
Rafter Man is buckling on his NVA belt. The belt has a dull-silver
buckle with a star engraved in the center. "Joker is a sergeant."
Animal Mother is surprised. He stares at Rafter Man, then at me. Then:
"That don't cut no shit out here. This is the field, motherfucker. You ain't
a grunt. You don't pack the gear to be a grunt. You want to fuck with me?
Huh? You want to throw some hands?"
I say, "I wouldn't run this squad for a million dollars. I'm just
saying that we can't leave the gook like this."
"I don't care," says Animal Mother. "Go on and waste her."
I say, "No. Not me."
"Then we saddle up and move...now."
I look at the sniper. She whimpers. I try to decide what I would want
if I were down, half dead, hurting bad, surrounded by my enemies. I look
into her eyes, trying to find the answer. She sees me. She recognizes me--I
am the one who will end her life. We share a bloody intimacy. As I lift my
grease gun she is praying in French. I jerk the trigger. Bang. One round
enters the sniper's left eye and as the bullet exits it tears off the back
of her head.
The squad is silent.
Then Alice grunts, flashes a big grin. "Man, you are one hard dude. How
come you ain't a grunt?"
Cowboy and Doc Jay are standing beside me.
Cowboy says, "Mother, I'm serviceable. Joker, that's a well done.
You're hard.'
Animal Mother spits. He takes a step, kneels, zips out his machete.
With one powerful blow he chops off her head. He picks the head up by its
long black hair and holds it high. He laughs and says, "Rest in pieces,
bitch." And he laughs again. He walks around and sticks the bloody ball of
gore into all our faces. "Hard? Now who's hard? Now who's hard,
motherfuckers?"
Cowboy looks at Animal Mother and sighs. "Joker is hard, Mother.
You...you're just mean."
Animal Mother pauses, spits, throws the head into a ditch.
Cowboy says, "Let's move. We done our job."
Animal Mother picks up his M-60 machine gun, lays it across his
shoulders, struts over to me. He smiles. "You know, Shortround never did see
the frag that wasted him, that little kike." Animal Mother unhooks a hand
grenade from the front of his flak jacket and pushes it into my chest--hard.
Mother looks around, then smiles at me again. "Nobody shits on the Animal,
motherfucker. Nobody."
I hook the grenade onto my flak jacket.
Alice picks up the sniper's rifle. "Hey, number one souvenir!"
Rafter Man is standing over the sniper's decapitated corpse. He aims
his M-16 and fires a long burst of automatic fire into the body. Then he
says, "That's mine, Alice." He takes the SKS from Alice and examines it
closely. He looks down and admires his new belt. "I shot her first, Joker.
She'd have died. That's one confirmed for me."
I say, "Sure, Rafter. You wasted her."
Rafter Man says, "I did. I wasted her. I fucking blew her away." He
looks at his NVA rifle belt again. He holds up the SKS. "Wait until Mr.
Payback sees this!"
Alice is down on his knees beside the corpse. With his machete he chops
off the sniper's feet. He puts the feet into his blue canvas shopping bag.
He chops off the sniper's finger and takes her gold ring.
We wait until Rafter Man takes photographs of the dead gook and we wait
until Alice takes photographs of Rafter Man posing with his SKS set in his
hip and his foot on the mutilated remains of the enemy sniper.
Then, as we're moving out, Rafter Man sees a reflection of his face in
the jagged teeth of a shattered window, sees the new smile upon his face.
Rafter Man stares at himself for a long time and then, dropping the carbine,
Rafter Man just walks off down the road, not looking back, not responding to
our questions.
Cowboy waves his hand and we move out. Nobody says anything about
Rafter Man.
We hump back to the Forbidden City and set in for the night.
I mark the short-timer's calendar on my flak jacket--fifty-five days
and a wake-up left in country.
Later, in the dark, Rafter Man comes back.
The fighting continues all around us all night, sputters of violence
here and there, a mortar round, a curse, a scream.
We sleep like babies.
The sun that rises in Hue on the morning of February 25, 1968,
illuminates a dead city. United States Marines have liberated Hue to the
ground. Here, in the heart of the ancient imperial capital of Viet Nam, a
living shrine to the Vietnamese people on both sides, green Marines in the
green machine have liberated a cherished past. Green Marines in the green
machine have shot the bones of sacred ancestors. Wise, like Solomon, we have
converted Hue into rubble in order to save it.
The next morning Delta Six cuts us some slack and we spend the day
hunting gold bars in the emperor's palace.
We enter the throne room of the old emperors. The throne is blood red,
studded with inlaid mirrors.
I wish I could live in the Imperial Palace. Bright pieces of porcelain
make the walls vivid. The roof is orange tile. There are stone dragons,
ceramic urns, brass cranes standing on the backs of turtles, and many other
fine objects of undetermined origin and function but obviously of great
value and great beauty and very old.
I walk out into the emperor's magnificent garden. I find Alice and
Rafter Man looking at some crispy critters. It's impossible to determine
which army the men were from. Napalm leaves less than bones. I say, "The
aroma of roasted flesh is, admittedly, an acquired taste."
Alice laughs. "This is such a fucking waste. I mean, this place is like
a magic temple, you know? The gooks love this place. Blowing it away is
like, oh, blowing away the White House. Except that nobody gives a shit
about the White House and this place is ten times as old."
I shrug.
"It's crazy," Alice says. "It's just plain fucking crazy. I wish I was
back in the World."
I say, "No, back in the World is the crazy part. This, all this world
of shit, this is real."
Cowboy comes around later and says that Delta's company commander has
passed the word to regroup on the beach at the Strawberry Patch.
We march. We look at the rubble we have made. We get tired of looking
at it; there's so much of it.
Twilight.
What's left of Delta Company, 1st Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment,
First Marine Division, is sprawled all over the beach down by the River of
Perfumes. The bearded grunts are sleeping, cooking chow, bragging, comparing
souvenirs, and reenacting every moment of the battle, real and imagined,
every man a hero beyond belief.
The Lusthog Squad is wasted. We have nailed our names into the pages of
history enough for today. Canteens come out. It's too hot to cook so we eat
cold C's.
Some of the guys are getting to their feet.
Donlon stands up, shouts, "LOOK!"
Five hundred yards north there is an island in the River of Perfumes.
On the island a semicircle of miniature tanks is converging upon a frantic
colony of ants. The ants drop their gear and sling their AK-47 assault
rifles over their backs and they jump into the river. The ants swim for it.
All of the tanks open fire with ninety-millimeter shells and with
fifty-caliber machine guns.
Some of the ants sink.
Cobra gunships buzz out of a horizon that is the color of lead and
swoop in for the kill.
The ants swim faster.
The hovering gunships chop up the brown water with their machine guns.
The ants swim, dive, or, in their panic, drown.
Delta Company gets onto its feet.
Three Cobra gunships zoom down to within a few yards of the river and
the helmeted door gunners machine-gun the ants as they flop in the water,
trapped in a syncopated hurricane of hot air beating down from the swirling
rotor blades, trapped in the water while their red life runs out through
bullet holes.
Only one ant reaches the river bank. The ant opens fire at the gunships
as they hover over the water like monsters feeding.
Someone says, "See that shit? He's hard-core."
One gunship detaches itself from the blood feast and skims across the
River of Perfumes. The chopper drops bullets all over the beach, all around
the ant.
The ant runs off the beach.
The gunship zooms back to feed on the ants in the water.
The ant runs onto the beach and opens fire.
The gunship banks sharply and comes in low, rockets swooshing from
under its belly and machine guns chattering.