was invincible. You‟d think I‟d know better after six months out here.
The 254th day: It‟s almost six weeks since Carmody took it. I wish the hell I would have time to thank
the lieutenant. If he had just come around for a minute or two. Shit, you just take too much for granted
out here.
I‟ve been acting squad leader ever since. They made me a sergeant. Doe, Gunner, me, we‟re the only
old-timers left. Jordan beat the rap and rotated back to the World. The night before he left we got him
so drunk, shit, he was out cold. So we tie him to the back of this PT-boat and drag him back up to the
base, which is about eight or nine kliks. He almost drowned. By the time we got to the base, he was
sober. So we got him drunk all over again. He was a wreck when he got on the chopper to Cam Ranh.
I‟ll bet he‟s still got a hangover. Something to remember us by.
Can you beat that, six months and I‟m an old-timer. I never even told the lieutenant I liked him.
The 268th day: I got called down to Dau Tieng today, which is division HQ, and I talked with this
captain who seems to run the whole show in this sector. He tells rue I‟m recommended for a Silver
Star for this thing up at Hi Pien. It was a rescue mission and I guess I looked pretty good that day.
He asks me how I feel about the war. Can you imagine? How does anybody feel about the war, for
Christ sakes.
“I‟ve had better times,” I said. “Like the time I had my appendix out.”
The captain has real dark eyes, like he needs sleep and could use a week or two in the sun, and he got
a kick out of that.
“I mean, how do you feel about the war politically,” he says.
“I don‟t know about that,” I say to him. “I‟m not interested in political bullshit. I‟m here because I
was sent here. I don‟t even know what the hell we‟re doing over here, Captain. Right now it looks like
all we‟re doing is getting our ass kicked.”
“Does that concern you? I mean, that we seem to be getting our ass whipped?”
“You some kind of shrink or something?” I ask him.
He laughs again and says no, he‟s not a shrink.
So I say to him, “Nobody‟s over here to lose.”
Then he asks me how old I am and I tell him I‟m twenty-one and he says to me, “You‟re a damn good
line soldier.”
“I‟ll tell you, Captain, I‟m almost a short-timer. I got six months left to pull and I got two objectives
in life. Get me back whole, get my men back whole. I don‟t think about anything past that. There isn‟t
anything past that. You start thinking about what‟s past that and you‟re a dead man.”
“I‟m going to field-commission you,” he says, just like that.
“Shit no,” I says. “Don‟t do that to me, Captain. Gimme a break. What do you want from me?”
“I need a lieutenant on that squad and you‟re the best man for the job”
“Look, gimme six stripes, okay, that way I outrank anybody else on the squad. I‟ll stay right there, do
the same shit I been doing, but I don‟t want a goddamn bar, man. Bars get you killed. I‟m walking
away from this, Captain. I‟m not dying in this swamp. You hand a bar to me, it‟s like a fuckin‟ hex.”
So he gives me six stripes and a night on the town, which is kind of a joke, and the next day I‟m back
at Hi Pien and nothing is changed. It‟s the same old shit.
The 287th day: We had this nut colonel who came up on the line. He was an old campaigner, you
could tell. He knew all the tricks and he just ignored them. He didn‟t even make a lot of sense when he
talked. I don‟t think he was wrapped real tight anymore.
Later in the day he was going to grab a medevac out and we‟re standing on the LZ on top of this knoll
and he takes a leak right down the side of the hill, and just like that the VC start popping away at us. I
don‟t know where they came from, and he‟s laughing, and I‟m telling him, “Colonel, you better watch
out, we seem to have Charlie all over the place.”
“Piss on „em,” he says.
All of a sudden 9-millimeters were busting all around us. They must‟ve busted fifty caps and the
ground around his feet was churning up like little fountains. He finished, zipped up, and shot them a
bird. Then the Huey comes in and he climbs aboard and they dust off. I thought, There‟s a guy needs
to get off the line, bad.
“That crazy son of a bitch‟ll get somebody killed,” Doe says. “He doesn‟t give a shit anymore.”
“What the hell‟re they gonna do with him?” I say. “He‟s too crazy to send back to the World.”
“I don‟t know, send him to the crazy colonel place,” Doe says, and we all laugh about that.
The 306th day: Gunner was over in Saigon for a week off. and F. and he meets this ordnance guy
and they hang out and get drunk and raise some hell. Anyway, the ordnance guy shows Gunner how
to take the timer out of a hand grenade and when Gunner comes back, he sits around every night,
taking the timers out of M-4‟s and then loading them into ammo packs. He puts five or six to each
bag.
A couple of nights later we‟re sitting on this LZ and the VC jump us. Gunner says follow him. He
leaves the bags behind, we give them about thirty meters, hole in, and when they take the position we
start a counter. Next thing I know there‟s hand grenades going off all over the place, gooks
screaming, all this chaos. Then we went back and jumped them and took the position back. We wasted
about twenty. Half of them only had one arm.
We did this a couple of times, moving off LZ‟s and what have you. Gunner keeps a couple of bags of
these grenades around all the time now. Every time we move out we leave a couple behind. It‟s like
our trademark. Fuckin‟ monkeys never learn. It works like a charm every time.