Next thing I know, the lieutenant and the rest of the squad are running past me and the One Squad
breaks loose and then it‟s all over. Five minutes, maybe. I was thinking, Jesus, I did more in the last
five minutes than I ever did in my whole life. I mean, it was such a high. And to still be in one piece!
There wasn‟t anybody left. Women, kids, old people, VC. The entire village was blitzed. Nobody
seemed to pay any attention to that; it was just business as usual. Then they brought in a
flamethrower and scorched the whole place. I didn‟t look at the civilians, I just looked the other way.
I figure, this is the way it‟s done, but it doesn‟t change how I feel about it.
Otherwise we were all feeling pretty good because none of our guys was hurt.
“You okay?” the lieutenant says after he makes the body count, and I says, “Yeah, I feel good.” And I
did.
“You looked okay in there,” he says.
I wasn‟t a virgin anymore and I was still alive. Jesus, I felt good.
It took me a long time to get used to it, that I had killed those people and it was okay, that it was what
they expected me to do. For a while I kept dreaming they would come at night and arrest me.
The 38th day: Doc Ziegler doesn‟t even believe in all this. He‟s a medic, doesn‟t carry any
weapons. He says he would have gone to Canada but his old man had a bad heart and Doc figured it
would kill him if Doc jumped the border. So he said, “Fuck it!” when he got his notice. “I can put up
with anything for a year,” he says. Among other things, Doc supplies the speed, He doesn‟t do it
himself, says he doesn‟t need it since he doesn‟t carry a weapon. But he smokes pot a lot. Morning,
noon, and night. Hell, I don‟t think I‟ve ever seen Doc unstoned. But when there‟s trouble he can
move with the best of them. What the hell, if it makes it easier. He‟s been on the line a month longer
than me and he acts like he was born here.
Carmody is the best officer I ever knew. All he thinks about is what‟s out there. He never talks about
home, his wife, nothing. Just business and his men. He was a green shavetail when he got to Nam ten
months ago. He has a funny sense of humor, like no matter what you ask him, he‟s got a one-liner for
you. I asked him once where he was from.
“My old man had the poorest farm in Oklahoma,” he says. “Our hog was so skinny, if you put a dime
on its nose, its back feet would rise up off the ground.”
Then there‟s Jesse Hatch, who used to drive a truck all over the country, one of those big semis; and
Donny Flagler, who‟s like me, just out of college. Both of them are black guys. And there‟s Jim
Jordan, who was in law school; his old man was a senator and still couldn‟t get him deferred. Jordan
is one pissed-off guy. He‟s a short-timer, has two months to go, a first-class pain in the ass. Hatch is
the M-60 man; he can really handle that mother. Flagler is our radio. None of us are regulars, but
after a month out here, I feel like one.
The 42nd day: We get orders to take this knob for an LZ. Charlie is all over the place. He won‟t
give it up. They have the high ground; they sit up there and lob mortars down on us all after-fuckin‟-
noon. Carmody gets on the radio and calls in the Hueys. He wants them to blitz the place so we can
rush it, only it‟s raining and a little foggy, and they‟re giving him some stand-down shit and he starts
yelling:
“1 want some air in here, now! Don „t gimme any of that fog shit. Nobody‟s told us to go home
because it‟s raining. Get me some goddamn air support fast!”
He slams the phone down.
Listen, kid, if you can‟t get a chopper in when you fuckin‟ need one, forget it. That‟s the edge. You
don‟t have the edge, you‟re in trouble. We can‟t beat these motherfuckers at this kind of game, for
Christ sake, they been doing it for fifteen fuckin‟ years. When you need air, get nasty.”
That‟s the way he was, always teaching me something.
About ten minutes later these two Hueys come over and really waste that knob. Carmody doesn‟t wait
for shit, we‟re off up the hill while the Hueys are still chewing it u - Six or eight 50-millimeter and 20-
millimeter cannons working. Good God, there were VC‟s flying all over the place in bits and pieces.
A boot with a foot in it hit me in the shoulder and splashed blood down my side. I was getting sick.
Then the gooks broke and ran and we took the knob and sat up there picking them off as they went
down the other side. We must‟ve shot ten, twelve of them in the back. After a while I stopped counting.
It didn‟t seem right. Maybe I‟ve seen too many cowboy movies, but shooting all those people in the
back seemed to be pushing it. But then, I‟ve only been on the line two months. I‟m still learning.
The 56th day: Last night a bunch of sappers jumped this airstrip eight or nine kliks north of here and
pillaged two cargo planes. They got ahold of some of our own Bouncing Bettys. What you got there is
a daisy cutter, a 60-millimeter mortar round, and it‟s rigged so it jumps u about waist high when you
trip it, and it goes off there, at groin level, cuts you in half
We‟re always real careful about mines, but the motherfuckers have these Bettys all over the fucking
place. A couple of places they rigged phony trip lines so you‟d see the line and move out of the way
and they‟d have another trip line next to it and you‟d nick that and it was all over.
I hear it go off. Nobody screams or anything, it just goes boomf! and shakes some leaves off the trees
where I am. I run back. It‟s maybe a hundred meters. Flagler‟s laying there and he‟s blown in half.
Two parts of him. I can‟t believe it. I start shaking. I sit down and shake all over. Then Doc comes up
and gives me a downer.
Carmody is taking it the worst. He just keeps swearing over and over. Later in the day we catch up
with a couple of VC. We don‟t know whether they rigged the Bouncing Bettys, but we tie the two of