Gustav Hasvord. The Short-Timers --------------------------------------------------------------- © Copyright Gustav Hasvord WWW: http://www.gustavhasford.com/ST.htm ? http://www.gustavhasford.com/ST.htm --------------------------------------------------------------- Dedicated to "Penny" John C. Pennington, Corporal Combat Photographer, First Marine Division KIA, June 9, 1968 Adieu to a Solider Adieu, O soldier, You of the rude campaigning, (which we shared,) The rapid march, the life of the camp, The hot contention of opposing fronts, the long manoeuvre, Red battles with their slaughter, the stimulus, the strong terrific game, Spell of all brave and manly hearts, the trains of time through you and like of you all fill'd, With war and war's expression. Adieu, dear comrade, Your mission is fulfill'd--but I, more warlike, Myself and this contentious soul of mine, Still on our campaigning bound, Through untried roads with ambushes opponents lined, Through many a sharp defeat and many a crisis, often baffled, Here marching, ever marching on, a war fight out--aye here, To fiercer, weightier battles give expression. Walt Whitman, Drum Taps, 1871 The Spirit of the Bayonet I think that Vietnam was what we had instead of happy childhoods. --Michael Herr, Dispatches The Marines are looking for a few good men... The recruit says that his name is Leonard Pratt. Gunnery Sergeant Gerheim takes one look at the skinny red-neck and immediately dubs him "Gomer Pyle." We think maybe he's trying to be funny. Nobody laughs. Dawn. Green Marines. Three junior drill instructors screaming, "GET IN LINE! GET IN LINE! YOU WILL NOT MOVE! YOU WILL NOT SPEAK!" Red brick buildings. Willow trees hung with with Spanish moss. Long, irregular lines of sweating civilians standing tall on yellow footprints painted in a pattern on the concrete deck. Parris Island, South Carolina, the United States Marine Corps Recruit Depot, an eight-week college for the phony-tough and the crazy-brave, constructed in a swamp on an island, symmetrical but sinister like a suburban death camp. Gunnery Sergeant Gerheim spits. "Listen up, herd. You maggots had better start looking like United States Marine Corps recruits. Do not think for one second that you are Marines. You just dropped by to pick up a set of dress blues. Am I right, ladies? Sorry 'bout that." A wiry little Texan in horn-rimmed glasses the guys are already calling "Cowboy" says, "Is that you, John Wayne? Is this me?" Cowboy takes off his pearl-gray Stetson and fans his sweaty face. I laugh. Years of high school drama classes have made me a mimic. I sound exactly like John Wayne as I say: "I think I'm going to hate this movie." Cowboy laughs. He beats his Stetson on his thigh. Gunnery Sergeant Gerheim laughs, too. The senior drill instructor is an obscene little ogre in immaculate khaki. He aims his index finger between my eyes and says, "You. Yeah--you. Private Joker. I like you. You can come over to my house and fuck my sister." He grins. Then his face goes hard. "You little scumbag. I got your name. I got your ass. You will not laugh. You will not cry. You will learn by the numbers. I will teach you." Leonard Pratt grins. Sergeant Gerheim puts his fists on his hips. "If you ladies leave my island, if you survive recruit training, you will be a weapon, you will be a minister of death, praying for war. And proud. Until that day you are pukes, you are scumbags, you are the lowest form of life on Earth. You are not even human. You people are nothing but a lot of little pieces of amphibian shit." Leonard chuckles. "Private Pyle think I am a real funny guy. He thinks Parris Island is more fun than a sucking chest wound." The hillbilly's face is frozen into a permanent expression of oat-fed innocence. "You maggots are not going to have any fun here. You are not going to enjoy standing in straight lines and you are not going to enjoy massaging your own wand and you are not going to enjoy saying 'sir' to individuals you do not like. Well, ladies, that's tough titty. I will speak and you will function. Ten percent of you will not survive. Ten percent of you maggots are going to go AWOL or will try to take your own life or will break your backs on the Confidence Course or will just go plain fucking crazy. There it is. My orders are to weed out all nonhackers who do not pack the gear to serve in my beloved Corps. You will be grunts. Grunts get no slack. My recruits learn to survive without slack. Because I am hard, you will not like me. But the more you hate me, the more you will learn. Am I correct, herd?" Some of us mumble, "Yes. Yeah. Yes, sir." "I can't hear you, ladies." "Yes, sir." "I still can't hear you, ladies. SOUND OFF LIKE YOU GOT A PAIR." "YES, SIR!" "You piss me off. Hit the deck." We crumple down onto the hot parade deck. "You got no motivation. Do you hear me, maggots? Listen up. I will give you motivation. You have no espirit de corps. I will give you espirit de corps. You have no traditions. I will give you traditions. And I will show you how to live up to them." Sergeant Gerheim struts, ramrod straight, hands on hips. "GET UP! GET UP!" We get up, sweating, knees sore, hands gritty. Sergeant Gerheim says to his three junior drill instructors: "What a humble herd." Then to us: "You silly scumbags are too slow. Hit the deck." Down. Up. Down. Up. "HIT IT!" Down. Sergeant Gerheim steps over our struggling bodies, stomps fingers, kicks ribs with the toe of his boot. "Jesus H. Christ. You maggots are huffing and puffing the way your momma did the first time your old man put the meat to her." Pain. "GET UP! GET UP!" Up. Muscles aching. Leonard Pratt is still sprawled on the hot concrete. Sergeant Gerheim dances over to him, stands over him, shoves his Smokey the Bear campaign cover to the back of his bald head. "Okay, scumbag, do it." Leonard gets up on one knee, hesitates, then stands up, inhaling and exhaling. He grins. Sergeant Gerheim punches Leonard in the Adam's apples--hard. The sergeant's big fist pounds Leonard's chest. Then his stomach. Leonard doubles over with pain. "LOCK THEM HEELS! YOU'RE AT ATTENTION!" Sergeant Gerheim backhands Leonard across the face. Blood. Leonard grins, locks his heels. Leonard's lips are busted, pink and purple, and his mouth is bloody, but Leonard only shrugs and grins as though Gunnery Sergeant Gerheim has just given him a birthday present. For the first four weeks of recruit training Leonard continues to grin, even though he receives more than his share of the beatings. Beatings, we learn, are a routine element of life on Parris Island. And not that I'm-only-rough-on-'um-because-I-love-'um crap civilians have seen in Jack Webb's Hollywood movie The D.I. and in Mr. John Wayne's The Sands of Iwo Jima. Gunnery Sergeant Gerheim and his three junior drill instructors administer brutal beatings to faces, chests, stomachs, and backs. With fists. Or boots--they kick us in the ass, the kidneys, the ribs, any part of our bodies upon which a black and purple bruise won't show. But even having the shit beat out of him with calculated regularity fails to educate Leonard the way it educates the other recruits in Platoon 30-92. In high school psychology they said that fish, cockroaches, and even one-celled protozoa can be brainwashed. But not Leonard. Leonard tries harder than any of us. He can't do anything right. During the day Leonard stumbles and falls, but never complains. At night, as the platoon sleeps in double-tiered metal bunks, Leonard cries. I whisper to him to be quiet. He stops crying. No recruit is ever allowed to be alone. On the first day of our fifth week, Sergeant Gerheim beats the hell out of me. I'm standing tall in Gerheim's palace, a small room at the far end of the squad bay. "Do you believe in the Virgin Mary?" "NO, SIR!" I say. It's a trick question. Any answer will be wrong, and Sergeant Gerheim will beat me harder if I reverse myself. Sergeant Gerheim punches me in the solar plexus with his elbow. "You little maggot," he says, and his fist punctuates the sentence. I stand to attention, heels locked, eyes front, swallowing groans, trying not to flinch. "You make me want to vomit, scumbag. You goddamn heathen. You better sound off that you love the Virgin Mary or I'm going to stomp your guts out." Sergeant Gerheim's face is about one inch from my left ear. "EYES FRONT!" Spit sprinkles my cheek. "You do love the Virgin Mary, don't you, Private Joker? Speak!" "SIR, NEGATIVE, SIR!" I wait. I know that he is going to order me into the head. The shower stall is where he takes the recruits he wants to hurt. Almost every day recruits march into the head with Sergeant Gerheim and, because the deck in the shower stall is wet, they accidentally fall down. They accidentally fall down so many times that when they come out they look like they've been run over by a cat tractor. He's behind me. I can hear him breathing. "What did you say, prive?" "SIR, THE PRIVATE SAID, 'NO, SIR!' SIR!" Sergeant Gerheim's beefy red face floats by like a cobra being charmed by music. His eyes drill into mine; they invite me to look at him; they dare me to move my eyes one fraction of an inch. "Have you seen the light? The white light? The great light? The guiding light--do you have the vision?" "SIR, AYE-AYE, SIR!" "Who's your squad leader, scumbag?" "SIR, THE PRIVATE'S SQUAD LEADER IS PRIVATE HAMER, SIR!" "Hamer, front and center." Hamer runs down the center of the squad bay, snaps to attention in front of Sergeant Gerheim. "AYE-AYE, SIR!" "Hamer, you're fired. Private Joker is promoted to squad leader." Hamer hesitates. "AYE-AYE, SIR!" "Go." Hamer does an about-face, runs back down the squad bay, falls back into line in front of his rack, snaps to attention. I say, "SIR, THE PRIVATE REQUESTS PERMISSION TO SPEAK TO THE DRILL INSTRUCTOR!" "Speak." "SIR, THE PRIVATE DOES NOT WANT TO BE A SQUAD LEADERS, SIR!" Gunnery Sergeant Gerheim puts his fists on his hips. He pushes his Smokey the Bear campaign cover to the back of his bald head. He sighs. "Nobody wants to lead, maggot, but somebody has to. You got the brain, you got the balls, so you get the job. The Marine Corps is not a mob like the Army. Marines die--that's what we're here for--but the Marine Corps will live forever, because every Marine is a leader when he has to be--even a prive." Sergeant Gerheim turns to Leonard. "Private Pyle, Private Joker is your new bunkmate. Private Joker is a very bright boy. He will teach you everything. He will teach you how to pee." I say, "SIR, THE PRIVATE WOULD PREFER TO STAY WITH HIS BUNKMATE, PRIVATE COWBOY, SIR!" Cowboy and I have become friends because when you're far from home and scared shitless you need all the friends you can get and you need them right away. Cowboy is the only recruit who laughs at all my jokes. He's got a sense of humor, which is priceless in a place like this, but he's serious when he has to be--he's dependable. Sergeant Gerheim sighs. "You queer for Private Cowboy's gear? You smoke his pole?" "SIR, NEGATIVE, SIR!" "Outstanding. Then Private Joker will bunk with Private Pyle. Private Joker is silly and he's ignorant, but he's got guts, and guts is enough." Sergeant Gerheim struts back to his "palace," a tiny room at the far end of the squad bay. "Okay, ladies, ready...MOUNT!" We all jump into our racks and freeze. "Sing." We sing: From the halls of Montezuma, To the shores of Tripoli, We will fight our country's battles, On land, and air, and sea. If the Army and the Navy Ever gaze on heaven's scenes, They will find the streets are guarded by United States Marines... "Okay, herd, readdddy...SLEEP!" Training continues. I teach Leonard everything I know, from how to lace his black combat boots to the assembly and disassembly of the M-14 semi-automatic shoulder weapon. I teach Leonard that Marines do not ditty-bop, they do not just walk. Marines run; they double-time. Or, if the distance to be covered is great, Marines hump, one foot after the other, one step at a time, for as long as necessary. Marines work hard. Only shitbirds try to avoid work, only shitbirds try to skate. Marines are clean, not skuzzy. I teach Leonard to value his rifle as he values his life. I teach him that blood makes the grass grow. "This here gun is one mean-looking piece of iron, sure enough." Leonard's clumsy fingers snap his weapon together. I'm repulsed by the look and feel of my own weapon. The rifle is cold and heavy in my hands. "Think of your rifle as a tool, Leonard. Like an ax on the farm." Leonard grins. "Okay. You right, Joker." He looks at me. "I'm sure glad you're helping me, Joker. You're my friend. I know I'm slow. I always been slow. Nobody ever helped me..." I turn away. "That sounds like a personal problem," I say. I keep my eyes on my weapon. Sergeant Gerheim continues the siege of Leonard Pratt, Private. He gives Leonard extra push-ups every night, yells at him louder than he yells at the rest of us, calls his mother more colorful names. Meanwhile, the rest of us are not forgotten. We suffer, too. We suffer for Leonard's mistakes. We march, we run, we duck walk, and we crawl. We play war in the swamp. Near the site of the Ribbon Creek Massacre, where six recruits drowned during a disciplinary night march in 1956, Sergeant Gerheim orders me to climb a willow tree. I'm a sniper. I'm supposed to shoot the platoon. I hang on a limb. If I can see a recruit well enough to name him, he's dead. The platoon attacks. I yell, "HAMER!" and Hamer falls dead. The platoon scatters. I scan the underbrush. A green phantom blinks through a shadow. I see its face. I open my mouth. The limb cracks. I'm falling... I collide with the sandy deck. I look up. Cowboy is standing over me. "Bang, bang, you're dead," he says. And then he laughs. Sergeant Gerheim looms over me. I try to explain that the limb broke. "You can't talk, sniper. You are dead. Private Cowboy just took your life." Sergeant Gerheim promotes Cowboy to squad leader. During our sixth week, Sergeant Gerheim orders us to double-time around the squad bay with our penises in our left hands and our weapons in our right hands, singing: This is my rifle, this is gun; one is for fighting and one is for fun. And: I don't want no teen-aged queen; all I want is my M-14. Sergeant Gerheim orders us to name our rifles. "This is the only pussy you people are going to get. Your days of finger-banging ol' Mary Jane Rottencrotch through her pretty pink panties are over. You're married to this piece, this weapon of iron and wood, and you will be faithful." We run. And we sing: Well, I don't know But I been told Eskimo pussy Is mighty cold... Before chow, Sergeant Gerheim tells us that during World War I Blackjack Pershing said, "The deadliest weapon in the world is a Marine and his rifle." At Belleau Wood the Marines were so vicious that the German infantrymen called them Teufel-Hunden--"devil dogs." Sergeant Gerheim explains that it is important for us to understand that it is our killer instinct which must be harnessed if we expect to survive in combat. Our rifle is only a tool; it is a hard heart that kills. Our will to kill must be focused the way our rifle focuses a firing pressure of fifty thousand pounds per square inch to propel a piece of lead. If our rifles are not properly cleaned the explosion will be improperly focused and our rifles will shatter. If our killer instincts are not clean and strong, we will hesitate at the moment of truth. We will not kill. We will become dead Marines. And then we will be in a world of shit because Marines are not allowed to die without permission; we are government property. The Confidence Course: We go hand over hand down a rope strung at a forty-five degree angle across a pond--the slide-for-life. We hang upside down like monkeys and crawl headfirst down the rope. Leonard falls off the slide-for-life eighteen times. He almost drowns. He cries. He climbs the tower. He tries again. He falls off again. This time he sinks. Cowboy and I dive into the pond. We pull Leonard out of the muddy water. He's unconscious. When he comes to, he cries. Back at the squad bay Sergeant Gerheim fits a Trojan rubber over the mouth of a canteen and throws the canteen at Leonard. The canteen hits Leonard on the side of the head. Sergeant Gerheim bellows, "Marines do not cry!" Leonard is ordered to nurse on the canteen every day after chow. During bayonet training Sergeant Gerheim dances an aggressive ballet. He knocks us down with a pugil stick, a five-foot pole with heavy padding on both ends. We play war with the pugil sticks. We beat each other without mercy. Then Sergeant Gerheim orders us to fix bayonets. Sergeant Gerheim demonstrates effective attack techniques to a recruit named Barnard, a soft-spoken farm boy from Maine. The beefy drill instructor knocks out two of Private Barnard's teeth with a rifle butt. The purpose of the bayonet training, Sergeant Gerheim explains, is to awaken our killer instincts. The killer instinct will make us fearless and aggressive, like animals. If the meek ever inherit the earth the strong will take it away from them. The weak exist to be devoured by the strong. Every Marine must pack his own gear. Every Marine must be the instrument of his own salvation. It's hard, but there it is. Private Barnard, his jaw bleeding, his mouth a bloody hole, demonstrates that he has been paying attention. Private Barnard grabs his rifle and, sitting up, bayonets Sergeant Gerheim through the right thigh. Sergeant Gerheim grunts. Then he responds with a vertical butt stroke, but misses. So he backhands Private Barnard across the face with his fist. Whipping off his web belt, Sergeant Gerheim ties a crude tourniquet around his bloody thigh. Then he makes the unconscious Private Barnard a squad leader. "Goddamn it, there's one little maggot who knows that the spirit of the bayonet is to kill! He'll make a damn fine field Marine. He ought to be a fucking general." On the last day of our sixth week I wake up and find my rifle in my rack. My rifle is under my blanket, beside me. I don't know how it got there. My mind isn't on my responsibilities and I forget to remind Leonard to shave. Inspection. Junk on the bunk. Sergeant Gerheim points out that Private Pyle did not stand close enough to his razor. Sergeant Gerheim orders Leonard and the recruit squad leaders into the head. In the head, Sergeant Gerheim orders us to piss into a toilet bowl. "LOCK THEM HEELS! YOU ARE AT ATTENTION! READDDDDY...WHIZZZZ..." We whiz. Sergeant Gerheim grabs the back of Leonard's neck and forces Leonard to his knees, pushes his head down into the yellow pool. Leonard struggles. Bubbles. Panic gives Leonard strength; Sergeant Gerheim holds him down. After we're sure that Leonard has drowned, Sergeant Gerheim flushes the toilet. When the water stops flowing, Sergeant Gerheim releases his hold on Leonard's neck. Sergeant Gerheim's imagination is both cruel and comprehensive, but nothing works. Leonard continues to fuck up. Now, whenever Leonard makes a mistake, Sergeant Gerheim does not punish Leonard. He punishes the whole platoon. He excludes Leonard from the punishment. While Leonard rests, we do squat-thrusts and side-straddle hops, many, many of them. Leonard touches my arm as we move through the chow line with our metal trays. "I just can't do nothing right. I need some help. I don't want you boys to be in trouble. I--" I move away. The first night of our seventh week of training the platoon gives Leonard a blanket party. Midnight. The fire watch stands by. Private Philips, the House Mouse, Sergeant Gerheim's "go-fer," pads barefoot down the squad bay to watch for Sergeant Gerheim. In the dark, one hundred recruits walk to Leonard's rack. Leonard is grinning, even in his sleep. The squad leaders hold towels and bars of soap. Four recruits throw a blanket over Leonard. They grip the corners of the blanket so that Leonard can't sit up and so that his screams will be muffled. I hear the hard breathing of a hundred sweating bodies and I hear the fump and thud as Cowboy and Private Barnard beat Leonard with bars of soap slung in towels. Leonard's screams are like the braying of a sick mule, heard far away. He struggles. The eyes of the platoon are on me. Eyes are aimed at me in the dark, eyes like rubies. Leonard stops screaming. I hesitate. The eyes are on me. I step back. Cowboy punches me in the chest with his towel and a bar of soap. I sling the towel, drop in the soap, and then I beat Leonard, who has stopped moving. He lies in silence, stunned, gagging for air. I beat him harder and harder and when I feel tears being flung from my eyes, I beat him harder for it. The next day, on the parade deck, Leonard does not grin. When Gunnery Sergeant Gerheim asks, "What do we do for a living, ladies?" and we reply, "KILL! KILL! KILL!," Leonard remains silent. When our junior drill instructor asks, "Do we love the Crotch, ladies? Do we love our beloved Corps?" and the platoon responds with one voice, "GUNG HO! GUNG HO! GUNG HO!." Leonard is silent. On the third day of our seventh week we move to the rifle range and shoot holes in paper targets. Sergeant Gerheim brags about the marksmanship of ex-Marines Charles Whitman and Lee Harvey Oswald. By the end of our seventh week Leonard has become a model recruit. We decide that Leonard's silence is a result of his new intense concentration. Day by day, Leonard is more motivated, more squared away. His manual of arms is flawless now, but his eyes are milk glass. Leonard cleans his weapon more than any recruit in the platoon. Every night after chow Leonard caresses the scarred oak stock with linseed oil the way hundreds of earlier recruits have caressed the same piece of wood. Leonard improves at everything, but remains silent. He does what he is told, but he is no longer part of the platoon. We can see that Sergeant Gerheim resents Leonard's attitude. He reminds Leonard that the motto of the Marine Corps is Semper Fidelis--"Always Faithful." Sergeant Gerheim reminds Leonard that "Gung ho" is Chinese for "working together." It is a Marine Corps tradition, Sergeant Gerheim says, that Marines never abandon their dead or wounded. Sergeant Gerheim is careful not to come down too hard on Leonard as long as Leonard remains squared away. We have already lost seven recruits on Section Eight discharges. A Kentucky boy named Perkins stepped to the center of the squad bay and slashed his wrists with his bayonet. Sergeant Gerheim was not happy to see a recruit bleeding upon his nice clean squad bay. The recruit was ordered to police the area, mop up the blood, and replace the bayonet in its sheath. While Perkins mopped up the blood, Sergeant Gerheim called a school circle and poo-pooed the recruit's shallow slash across his wrists with a bayonet. The U.S.M.C.--approved method of recruit suicide is to get alone and take a razor blade and slash deep and vertical, from wrist to elbow, Sergeant Gerheim said. Then he allowed Perkins to double-time to sick bay. Sergeant Gerheim leaves Leonard alone and concentrates on the rest of us. Sunday. Magic show. Religious services in the faith of your choice--and you will have a choice--because religious services are specified in the beautiful full-color brochures the Crotch distributes to Mom and Dad back in hometown America, even though Sergeant Gerheim assures us that the Marine Corps was here before God. "You can give your heart to Jesus but your ass belongs to the Corps." After the "magic show" we eat chow. The squad leaders read grace from cards set in holders on the tables. Then: "SEATS!" We spread butter on slices of bread and then sprinkle sugar on the butter. We smuggle sandwiches out of the mess hall, risking a beating for the novelty of unscheduled chow. We don't give a shit; we're salty. Now, when Sergeant Gerheim and his junior drill instructors stomp us we tell them that we love it and to do it some more. When Sergeant Gerheim commands: "Okay, ladies, give me fifty squat-thrusts. And some side-straddle hops. Many, many of them," we laugh and then do them. The drill instructors are proud to see that we are growing beyond their control. The Marine Corps does not want robots. The Marine Corps wants killers. The Marine Corps wants to build indestructible men, men without fear. Civilians may choose to submit or to fight back. The drill instructors leave recruits no choice. Marines fight back or they do not survive. There it is. No slack. Graduation is only a few days away and the salty recruits of Platoon 30-92 are ready to eat their own guts and then ask for seconds. The moment the Commandant of the Marine Corps gives us the word, we will grab the Viet Cong guerrillas and the battle-hardened North Vietnamese regulars by their scrawny throats and we'll punch their fucking heads off. Sunday afternoon in the sun. We scrub our little green garments on a long concrete table. For the hundredth time, I tell Cowboy that I want to slip my tube steak into his sister so what will he take in trade? For the hundredth time, Cowboy replies, "What do you have?" Sergeant Gerheim struts around the table. He is trying not to limp. He criticizes our utilization of the Marine Corps scrub brush. We don't care; we're too salty. Sergeant Gerheim won the Navy Cross on Iwo Jima, he says. He got it for teaching young Marines how to bleed, he says. Marines are supposed to bleed in tidy little pools because Marines are disciplined. Civilians and members of the lesser services bleed all over the place like bed wetters. We don't listen. We swap scuttlebutt. Laundry day is the only time we are allowed to talk to each other. Philips--Sergeant Gerheim's black, silver-tongued House Mouse--is telling everybody about the one thousand cherries he has busted. I say, "Leonard talks to his rifle." A dozen recruits look up. They hesitate. Some look sick. Others look scared. And some look shocked and angry, as though I'd just slapped a cripple. I force myself to speak: "Leonard talks to his rifle." Nobody moves. Nobody says anything. "I don't think Leonard can hack it anymore. I think Leonard is a Section Eight." Now guys all along the table are listening. They look confused. Their eyes seem fixed on some distant object as though they are trying to remember a bad dream. Private Barnard nods. "I've been having this nightmare. My...rifle talks to me." He hesitates. "And I've been talking back to it..." "There it is," says Philips. "Yeah. It's cold. It's a cold voice. I thought I was going plain fucking crazy. My rifle said--" Sergeant Gerheim's big fist drives Philip's next word down his throat and out of his asshole. Philips is nailed to the deck. He's on his back. His lips are crushed. He groans. The platoon freezes. Sergeant Gerheim puts his fists on his hips. His eyes glare out from under the brim of his Smokey the Bear campaign cover like the barrels of a shotgun. "Private Pyle is a Section Eight. You hear me? If Private Pyle talks to his piece it is because he's plain fucking crazy. You maggots will belay all this scuttlebutt. Don't let Private Joker play with your imaginations. I don't want to hear another word. Do you hear me? Not one word." Night at Parris Island. We stand by until Sergeant Gerheim snaps out his last order of the day: "Prepare to mount....Readdy...MOUNT!" Then we're lying on our backs in our skivvies, at attention, our weapons held at port arms. We say our prayers: I am a United States Marine Corps recruit. I serve in the forces which guard my country and my way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense, so help me God...GUNG HO! GUNG HO! GUNG HO! Then the Rifleman's Creed, by Marine Corps Major General W.H. Rupertus: This is my rifle. There are many like it but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I master my life. My rifle, without me, is useless. I must fire my rifle true. I must shoot straighter than my enemy who is trying to kill me. I must shoot him before he shoots me. I will. Leonard is speaking for the first time in weeks. His voice booms louder and louder. Heads turn. Bodies shift. The platoon voice fades. Leonard is about to explode. His words are being coughed up from some deep, ugly place. Sergeant Gerheim has the night duty. He struts to Leonard's rack and stands by, fists on hips. Leonard doesn't see Sergeant Gerheim. The veins in Leonard's neck are bulging as he bellows: MY RIFLE IS HUMAN, EVEN AS I, BECAUSE IT IS MY LIFE. THUS I WILL LEARN IT AS A BROTHER. I WILL LEARN ITS ACCESSORIES, ITS SIGHTS, ITS BARREL. I WILL KEEP MY RIFLE CLEAN AND READY, EVEN AS I AM CLEAN AND READY. WE WILL BECOME PART OF EACH OTHER. WE WILL... BEFORE GOD I SWEAR THIS CREED. MY RIFLE AND MYSELF ARE THE MASTER OF OUR ENEMY. WE ARE THE SAVIORS OF MY LIFE. SO BE IT, UNTIL VICTORY IS AMERICA'S AND THERE IS NO ENEMY BUT PEACE! AMEN. Sergeant Gerheim kicks Leonard's rack. "Hey--you--Private Pyle..." "What? Yes? YES, SIR!" Leonard snaps to attention in his rack. "AYE-AYE, SIR!" "What's that weapon's name, maggot?" "SIR, THE PRIVATE'S WEAPON'S NAME IS CHARLENE, SIR!" "At ease, maggot." Sergeant Gerheim grins. "You are becoming one sharp recruit, Private Pyle. Most motivated prive in my herd. Why, I may even allow you to serve as a rifleman in my beloved Corps. I had you figured as a shitbird, but you'll make a good grunt." "AYE-AYE, SIR!" I look at the rifle on my rack. It's a beautiful instrument, gracefully designed, solid and symmetrical. My rifle is clean, oiled, and works perfectly. It's a fine tool. I touch it. Sergeant Gerheim marches down the length of the squad bay. "THE REST OF YOU ANIMALS COULD TAKE LESSONS FROM PRIVATE PYLE. He's squared away. You are all squared away. Tomorrow you will be Marines. READDDY...SLEEP!" Graduation day. A thousand new Marines stand tall on the parade deck, lean and tan in immaculate khaki, their clean weapons held at port arms. Leonard is selected as the outstanding recruit from Platoon 30-92. He is awarded a free set of dress blues and is allowed to wear the colorful uniform when the graduating platoons pass in review. The Commandant General of Parris Island shakes Leonard's hand and gives him a "Well done." Our series commander pins a RIFLE EXPERT badge on Leonard's chest and our company commander awards Leonard a citation for shooting the highest score in the training battalion. Because of a special commendation submitted by Sergeant Gerheim, I'm promoted to Private First Class. After our series commander pins on my EXPERT'S badge, Sergeant Gerheim presents me with two red and green chevrons and explains that they're his old PFC stripes. When we pass in review, I walk right guide, tall and proud. Cowboy receives an EXPERT'S badge and is selected to carry the platoon guidon. The Commanding General of Parris Island speaks into a microphone: "Have you seen the light? The white light? The great light? The guiding light? Do you have the vision?" And we cheer, happy beyond belief. The Commanding General sings. We sing too: Hey, Marine, have you heard? Hey, Marine... L.B.J. has passed the word. Hey, Marine... Say good-bye to Dad and Mom. Hey, Marine... You're gonna die in Viet Nam. Hey, Marine, yeah! After the graduation ceremony our orders are distributed. Cowboy, Leonard, Private Barnard, Philips, and most of the other Marines in Platoon 30-92 are ordered to ITR--the Infantry Training Regiment--to be trained as grunts, infantrymen. My orders instruct me to report to the Basic Military Journalism School at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana, after I graduate from ITR. Sergeant Gerheim is disgusted by the fact that I am to be a combat correspondent and not a grunt. He calls me a poge, an office pinky. He says that shitbirds get all the slack. Standing at ease on the parade deck, beneath the monument to the Iwo Jima flag raising, Sergeant Gerheim says, "The smoking lamp is lit. You people are no longer maggots. Today you are Marines. Once a Marine, always a Marine..." Leonard laughs out loud. Our last night on the island. I draw fire watch. I stand by in utility trousers, skivvy shirt, spit-shined combat boots, and a helmet liner which has been painted silver. Sergeant Gerheim gives me his wristwatch and a flashlight. "Good night, Marine." I march up and down the squad bay between two perfectly aligned rows of racks. One hundred young Marines breathe peacefully as they sleep--one hundred survivors from our original hundred and twenty. Tomorrow at dawn we'll all board cattle-car buses for the ride to Camp Geiger in North Carolina. There, ITR--the infantry training regiment. All Marines are grunts, even though some of us will learn additional military skills. After advanced infantry training we'll be allowed pogey bait at the slop chute and we'll be given weekend liberty off the base and then we'll receive assignments to our permanent duty stations. The squad bay is as quiet as a funeral parlor at midnight. The silence is disturbed only by the soft creak-creak of bedsprings and an occasional cough. It's almost time for me to wake my relief when I hear a voice. Some recruit is talking in his sleep. I stop. I listen. A second voice. Two guys must be swapping scuttlebutt. If Sergeant Gerheim hears them it'll be my ass. I hurry toward the sound. It's Leonard. Leonard is talking to his rifle. But there is also another voice. A whisper. A cold, seductive moan. It's the voice of a woman. Leonard's rifle is not slung on his rack. He's holding his rifle, hugging it. "Okay, okay. I love you!" Very softly: "I've given you the best months of my life. And now you--" I snap on my flashlight. Leonard ignores me. "I LOVE YOU! DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND? I CAN DO IT. I'LL DO ANYTHING!" Leonard's words reverberate down the squad bay. Racks squeak. Someone rolls over. One recruit sits up, rubs his eyes. I watch the far end of the squad bay. I wait for the light to go on inside Sergeant Gerheim's palace. I touch Leonard's shoulder. "Hey, shut your mouth, Leonard. Sergeant Gerheim will break my back." Leonard sits up. He looks at me. He strips off his skivvy shirt and ties it around his face to blindfold himself. He begins to field-strips his weapon. "This is the first time I've ever seen her naked." He pulls off the blindfold. His fingers continue to break down the rifle into components. Then, gently, he fondles each piece. "Just look at that pretty trigger guard. Have you ever seen a more beautiful piece of metal?" He starts snapping the steel components back together. "Her connector assembly is so beautiful..." Leonard continues to babble as his trained fingers reassemble the black metal hardware. I think about Vanessa, my girl back home. We're on a river bank, wrapped in an old sleeping bag, and I'm fucking her eyes out. But my favorite fantasy has gone stale. Thinking about Vanessa's thighs, her dark nipples, her fully lips doesn't give me a hard-on anymore. I guess it must be the saltpeter in our food, like they say. Leonard reaches under his pillow and comes out with a loaded magazine. Gently, he inserts the metal magazine into his weapon, into Charlene. "Leonard...where did you get those live rounds?" Now a lot of guys are sitting up, whispering, "What's happening?" to each other. Sergeant Gerheim's light floods the far end of the squad bay. "OKAY, LEONARD, LET'S GO." I'm determined to save my own ass if I can, certain that Leonard's is forfeit in any case. The last time Sergeant Gerheim caught a recruit with a live round--just one round--he ordered the recruit to dig a grave ten feet long and ten feet deep. The whole platoon had to fall out for the "funeral." I say, "You're in a world of shit now, Leonard." The overhead lights explode. The squad bay is washed with light. "WHAT'S THIS MICKEY MOUSE SHIT? JUST WHAT IN THE NAME OF JESUS H. CHRIST ARE YOU ANIMALS DOING IN MY SQUAD BAY?" Sergeant Gerheim comes at me like a mad dog. His voice cuts the squad bay in half: "MY BEAUTY SLEEP HAS BEEN INTERRUPTED, LADIES. YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS. YOU HEAR ME, HERD? IT MEANS THAT ONE RECRUIT HAS VOLUNTEERED HIS YOUNG HEART FOR A GODDAMN HUMAN SACRIFICE!' Leonard pounces from his rack, confronts Sergeant Gerheim. Now the whole platoon is awake. We all wait to see what Sergeant Gerheim will do, confident that it will be worth watching. "Private Joker. You shitbird. Front and center." I move my ass. "AYE-AYE, SIR!" "Okay, you little maggot, speak. Why is Private Pyle out of his rack after lights out? Why is Private Pyle holding that weapon? Why ain't you stomping Private Pyle's guts out?" "SIR, it is the Private's duty to report to the drill instructor that Private...Pyle...has a full magazine and has locked and loaded, SIR." Sergeant Gerheim looks at Leonard and nods. He sighs. Gunnery Sergeant Gerheim looks more than a little ridiculous in his pure white skivvies and red rubber flip-flop shower shoes and hairy legs and tattooed forearms and a beer gut and a face the color of raw beef, and, on his bald head, the green and brown Smokey the Bear campaign cover. Our senior drill instructor focuses all of his considerable powers of intimidation into his best John-Wayne-on Suribachi voice: "Listen to me, Private Pyle. You will place your weapon on your rack and--" "NO! YOU CAN'T HAVE HER! SHE'S MINE! YOU HEAR ME? SHE'S MINE! I LOVE HER!" Gunnery Sergeant Gerheim can't control himself any longer. "NOW YOU LISTEN TO ME, YOU FUCKING WORTHLESS LITTLE PIECE OF SHIT. YOU WILL GIVE ME THAT WEAPON OR I'M GOING TO TEAR YOUR BALLS OFF AND STUFF THEM DOWN YOUR SCRAWNY LITTLE THROAT! YOU HEAR ME, MARINE? I'M GOING TO PUNCH YOUR FUCKING HEART OUT!" Leonard aims the weapon at Sergeant Gerheim's heart, caresses the trigger guard, then caresses the trigger... Sergeant Gerheim is suddenly calm. His eyes, his manner are those of a wanderer who has found his home. He is a man in complete control of himself and of the world he lives in. His face is cold and beautiful as the dark side surfaces. He smiles. It is not a friendly smile, but an evil smile, as though Sergeant Gerheim were a werewolf baring its fangs. "Private Pyle, I'm proud--" Bang. The steel buttplate slams into Leonard's shoulder. One 7.62-millimeter high-velocity copper-jacketed bullet punches Gunnery Sergeant Gerheim back. He falls. We all stare at Sergeant Gerheim. Nobody moves. Sergeant Gerheim sits up as though nothing has happened. For one second, we relax. Leonard has missed. Then dark blood squirts from a little hole in Sergeant Gerheim's chest. The red blood blossoms into his white skivvy shirt like a beautiful flower. Sergeant Gerheim's bug eyes are focused upon the blood rose on his chest, fascinated. He looks up at Leonard. He squints. Then he relaxes. The werewolf smile is frozen on his lips. My menial position of authority as the fire watch on duty forces me to act. "Now, uh, Leonard, we're all your bros, man, your brothers. I'm your bunkmate, right? I--" "Sure," says Cowboy. "Go easy, Leonard. We don't want to hurt you." "Affirmative," says Private Barnard. Leonard doesn't hear. "Did you see the way he looked at her? Did you? I knew what he was thinking. I knew. That fag pig and his dirty--" "Leonard..." "We can kill you. You know that." Leonard caresses his rifle. "Don't you know that Charlene and I can kill you all?" Leonard aims his rifle at my face. I don't look at the rifle. I look into Leonard's eyes. I know that Leonard is too weak to control his instrument of death. It is a hard heart that kills, not the weapon. Leonard is a defective instrument for the power that is flowing through him. Sergeant Gerheim's mistake was in not seeing that Leonard was like a glass rifle which would shatter when fired. Leonard is not hard enough to harness the power of an interior explosion to propel the cold black bullet of his will. Leonard is grinning at us, the final grin that is on the face of death, the terrible grin of the skull. The grin changes to a look of surprise and then to confusion and then to terror as Leonard's weapon moves up and back and then Leonard takes the black metal barrel into his mouth. "NO! Not--" Bang. Leonard is dead on the deck. His head is now an awful lump of blood and facial bones and sinus fluids and uprooted teeth and jagged, torn flesh. The skin looks plastic and unreal. The civilians will demand yet another investigation, of course. But during the investigation the recruits of Platoon 30-92 will testify that Private Pratt, while highly motivated, was a ten percenter who did not pack the gear to be a Marine in our beloved Corps. Sergeant Gerheim is still smiling. He was a fine drill instructor. Dying, that's what we're here for, he would have said--blood makes the grass grow. If he could speak, Gunnery Sergeant Gerheim would explain to Leonard why the guns that we love don't love back. And he would say, "Well done." I turn off the overhead lights. I say, "Prepare to mount." Then: "MOUNT!" The platoon falls into a hundred racks. I feel cold and alone. I am not alone. All over Parris Island there are thousands and thousands of us. And, all around the world, hundreds of thousands. I try to sleep... In my rack, I pull my rifle into my arms. She talks to me. Words come out of the wood and metal and flow into my hands. She tells me what to do. My rifle is a solid instrument of death. My rifle is black steel. Our human bodies are bags of blood, easy to puncture and quick to drain, but our hard tools of death cannot be broken. I hold by weapon at port arms, gently, as though she were a holy relic, a magic wand wrought with interlocking pieces of silver and iron, with a teakwood stock, golden bullets, a crystal bolt, jewels to sight with. My weapon obeys me. I'll hold Vanessa, my rifle. I'll hold her. I'll just hold her for a little while. I will hide in this dark dream for as long as I can. Blood pours out of the barrel of my rifle and flows up on to my hands. The blood moves. The blood breaks up into living fragments. Each fragment is a spider. Millions and millions of tiny red spiders of blood are crawling up my arms, across my face, into my mouth... Silence. In the dark, a hundred men are breaking in unison. I look at Cowboy, then at Private Barnard. They understand. Cold grins of death are frozen on their faces. They nod. The newly minted Marines in my platoon stand to attention, horizontal in their racks, their weapons at port arms. The Marines wait, a hundred young werewolves with guns in their hands. I lead: This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine... Body Count I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked... --Allen Ginsberg, Howl A psychotic is a guy who's just found out what's going on. --William S. Burroughs Tet: The Year of the Monkey. Rafter Man and I spend the Vietnamese lunar New Year's Eve, 1968, at the Freedom Hill PX near Da Nang. I've been ordered to write a feature article on the Freedom Hill Recreation Center on Hill 327 for Leatherneck magazine. I'm a combat correspondent assigned to the First Marine Division. My job is to write upbeat news features which are distributed to the highly paid civilian news correspondents who shack up with their Eurasian maids in big hotels in Da Nang. The ten correspondents in the First Division's Informational Services Office are reluctant public relations men for the war in general and for the Marine Corps in particular. This morning my commanding officer decided that a really inspiring piece could be written about Hill 327, an angle being the fact that Hill 327 was the first permanent position occupied by American forces. Major Lynch thinks I rate some slack before I return to the ISO office in Phu Bai. My last three field operations were real shit-kickers; in the field, a Marine correspondent is just another rifleman. Rafter Man tags along behind me like a kid. Rafter Man is a combat photographer. He has never been in the shit. He thinks I'm one hard field Marine. We go into a movie theater that looks like a warehouse and we watch John Wayne in The Green Berets, a Hollywood soap opera about the love of guns. We sit way down front, near some grunts. The grunts are sprawled across their seats and they've propped muddy jungle boots onto the seats in front of them. They are bearded, dirty, out of uniform, and look lean and mean, the way human beings look after they've survived a long hump in the jungle, the boonies, the bad bush. I prop my boots on the seats and we watch John Wayne leading the Green Beanies. John Wayne is a beautiful soldier, clean-shaven, sharply attired in tailored tiger-stripe jungle utilities, wearing boots that shine like black glass. Inspired by John Wayne, the fighting soldiers from the sky go hand-to-hand with all of the Victor Charlies in Southeast Asia. He snaps out an order to an Oriental actor who played Mr. Sulu on "Star Trek." Mr. Sulu, now playing an Arvin officer, delivers a line with great conviction: "First kill...all stinking Cong...then go home." The audience of Marines roars with laughter. This is the funniest movie we have seen in a long time. Later, at the end of the movie, John Wayne walks off into the sunset with a spunky little orphan. The grunts laugh and whistle and threaten to pee all over themselves. The sun is setting in the South China Sea--in the East--which makes the end of the movie as accurate as the rest of it. Most of the zoomies in the audience are clean-shaven office poges who never go into the field. The poges wear spit-shined boots and starched utilities and Air Force sunglasses. The poges stare at the grunts as though the grunts were Hell's Angels at the ballet. After the screen loses it color and the overhead lights come on, one of the poges says, "Fucking grunts...they're nothing but animals..." The grunts turn around. One grunt stands up. He walks over to where the poges are sitting. The poges laugh and punch each other and mock the grunt's angry face. Then they are silent. They stare at the grunt's face. He's smiling now. He's smiling like a man who knows a terrible secret. The zoomie poges do not ask the grunt to explain why he is smiling. They don't want to know. Another grunt jumps up, punches the smiling grunt on the arm, says, "Hey, fuck it, Mother. It ain't no big thing. We don't want to waste these assholes." The smiling Marine takes a step forward, but the smaller man stands in his path. The poges take advantage of the smiling grunt's delay. They walk backwards up the aisle until they reach the door, then stumble out into sunlight. I say, "Well, no shit. And they say grunts are killers. You ladies do not look like killers to me." The smiling grunt is not smiling anymore. He says, "Okay, you son-of-a-bitch..." "Stand by, Mother," says the small Marine. "I know this shitbird." Cowboy and I grab each other and wrestle and punch and pound each other on the back. We say, "Hey, you old mother-fucker. How you been? What's happening? Been getting any? Only your sister. Well, better my sister than my mom, although mom's not bad." "Hey, Joker, I was hoping I'd never see you again, you piece of shit. I was hoping that Gunny Gerheim's ghost would keep you on Parris Island for-ev-er and that he would give you motivation." I laugh. "Cowboy, you shitbird. You look real mean. If I didn't know that you're a born poge I'd be scared." Cowboy grunts. "This is Animal Mother. He is mean." The big Marine is picking his nose. "You better motherfucking believe it." A belt of machine-gun bullets crisscross the Marine's chest so that he looks like a big Mexican bandit. I say, "This is Rafter Man. He's not a walking camera store. He's a photographer." "You a photographer?" I shake my head. "I'm a combat correspondent." Animal Mother sneers, exposing rotten canine teeth. "You seen much 'combat'?" "Hey, don't give me any shit, asshole. My payback is a motherfucker. I got twice as many operations as any grunt in Eye Corps. I'm just scarfing up some bennies. My office is up in Phu Bai." "Yeah?" Cowboy punches me in the chest. "That's our area. One-Five. Delta Company--the baddest of the bad, the leanest of the lean, the meanest of the mean. We hitched down here this morning. We rate some slack 'cause our squad wasted beaucoup Victor Charlies. Man, we are life takers and heartbreakers. Just ask for the Lusthog Squad, first platoon. We shoot them full of holes, bro. We fill them full of lead." I grin. "Sergeant Gerheim would be proud to hear it." "Yeah," Cowboy says, nodding his head. "Yeah, I guess so." He looks away. "I hate Viet Nam. They don't even have horses here. Why, there's not one horse in all of Viet Nam." Cowboy turns away and introduces us to his squad: Alice, a black man as big as Animal Mother; Donlon, the radioman; Lance Corporal Stutten, honcho of the third fire team; Doc Jay, the squad's Navy corpsman; T.H.E. Rock; and the leader of the Lusthog Squad, Crazy Earl. Crazy Earl is carrying an M-16 Colt automatic rifle slung on his shoulder, but in his hands is a Red Ryder BB gun. He's as skinny as a death-camp survivor, and his face consists of a long, pointed nose with a hollow cheek on each side. His eyes are magnified by thick lenses and one arm of his gray Marine-issue eyeglasses has been wired back on with too much wire. He says, "Saddle up," and the grunts start picking up their gear, their M-16's and M-79 grenade launchers and captured AK-47 assault rifles, their ruck-sacks, flak jackets, and helmets. Animal Mother picks up an M-60 machine gun and sets the butt into his hip so that the black barrel slants up at a forty-five-degree angle. Animal Mother grunts. Crazy Earl turns to Cowboy and says, "We better be moving, bro. Mr. Shortround will punch our hearts out if we're late." Cowboy is picking up his gear. "That's affirmative, Craze. But you got to talk to Joker, man. We were on the island together. He'll write you up and make you famous." Crazy Earl looks at me. There is no expression on his face. "There it is. They call me Crazy Earl. Gooks love me until I blow them away. Then they don't love me anymore." I grin. "There it is." Crazy Earl grins, gives me a thumbs-up, says, "Moving, Cowboy," and then leads his squad out of the theater. Cowboy punches me on the shoulder. "That's my fearless leader, bro. I'm the first fire-team leader. I'll be squad leader soon. I'm just waiting for Craze to get wasted. Or maybe he'll just go plain fucking crazy. That's how Craze got to be honcho. Ol' Stoke, he was our honcho before Craze. Ol' Supergrunt. Went stark raving. Pretty soon it'll be my turn." "Hey, you keep your shit together, Cowboy. You know you're a fool. You know you can't take care of yourself. Remember how easy it was for me to zap you when Sergeant Gerheim made me play sniper? I mean, the Crotch ought to fly your mom over here so that she can go into the bush with you." Cowboy takes a few steps toward the door, turns, waves goodbye, grins. I give him the finger. After Cowboy and his squad are gone, Rafter Man and I watch a "Pink Panther" cartoon. Then we pick up our weapons and head for the PX, which looks like another warehouse. We buy junk food; pogey bait. As we wait to pay for our pogey bait with military payment certificates, Rafter Man tries to find some words. "Joker, I want...I want to go out. I want to go out into the field. I been in country for almost three months. Three months. All I do is take hand-shake shots at award ceremonies. That's number ten, the worst. I'm bored. A high-school girl could do my job." He gives MPC's to a pretty Vietnamese cashier. Outside, an apprentice Viet Cong forces me to submit to a boot shine while his older sister exhibits her breasts to Rafter Man. "Relax, Rafter. You owe it to yourself. You'll be in the field soon enough." "Come on, Joker, cut me a huss. How can I teach geography if I never see the world? Take me to Phu Bai. Okay?" "Right," I say. "And then you'll get yourself wasted the first day you're in the field and it'll be my fault. Your mom will find me after I rotate back to the World. Your mom will beat the shit out of me. That's a negative, Rafter. I'm not a sergeant, I'm only a corporal. I'm not responsible for your scrawny little ass." "Yes you are. I'm only a lance corporal." Rafter Man and I stop by the USO and exchange a few off-color jokes with the round-eyed Red Cross girls, who give us donuts. We ask the Red Cross girls if they expect us to satisfy our lust with a donut and they explain that a donut hole is all we rate. In the USO there are barrels and barrels of letters which have been written to us by children back in the World: Dear Soldiers in Red Alert: We have learned that men in Vietnam alive or dead are the bravest. We are all trying to help you all to come home to your house. We'll buy bonds. We help the Red Cross to help soldiers. We'll help you and your allies to come back. If possible, we'll send you gifts. From Your Country, Cheri Dear Friend in Battle: I am eight years old. I have one brother. I have one sister. It must be sad over there. Sincerely, Jeff Dear American: I wish I could see you instead of talking on this Card. We have a dog, and it is so cute. It is black and has long hair. My name is Lori. I will always remember you in my prayers. Tell everyone I love them and I love you too, so good-bye. Your Friend, Lori Rafter Man reads the letters out loud. He can still be touched by them. To me, the letters are like shoes for the dead, who do not walk. As dusk approaches, Rafter Man and I hitchhike back to the ISO hootch in the First Marine Division HQ area. Rafter Man writes a letter to his mother. I take my black Magic Marker and I make a thick X over the number 59 on the shapely thigh of a the life-sized nude woman I've drawn on the plywood partition behind my rack. There is a smaller version of the same woman on the back of my flak jacket. Almost every Marine in Viet Nam carries a short-timer's calendar of his tour of duty--the usual 365 days--plus a bonus of 20 days for being a Marine. Some are drawn on flak jackets with Magic Markers. Some are drawn on helmets. Some are tattoos. Others are mimeographed drawings of Snoopy, his beagle body cut up by pale blue ink, or a helmet on a pair of boots--"The Short-Timer." The designs vary, but the most popular design is a big-busted woman-child cut up into pieces like a puzzle. Each day another fragment of her delicious anatomy is inked out, her crotch being reserved, of course, for those last few days in country. Sitting on my rack, I type out my story about Hill 327, the serviceman's oasis, about how all of us fine young American boys are assured our daily ration of pogey bait and about how those of us who are lucky enough to visit the rear areas get to see Mr. John Wayne karate-chop Victor Charlie to death in a Technicolor cartoon about some other Viet Nam. The article I actually write is a masterpiece. It takes talent to convince people that war is a beautiful experience. Come one, come all to exotic Viet Nam, the jewel of Southeast Asia, meet interesting, stimulating people of an ancient culture...and kill them. Be the first kid on your block to get a confirmed kill. I fall into my rack. I try to sleep. The setting sun pours orange across the rice paddies beyond our wire. Midnight. Down in Dogpatch, in the ville, the gooks are shooting off fireworks to celebrate the Vietnamese New Year. Rafter Man and I sit on the tin roof of our hootch so that we can watch the more impressive fireworks on the Da Nang airfield. One hundred-and-twenty-two-millimeter rockets are falling from the dark sky. I open a B-3 unit and we eat John Wayne cookies, dipping them in pineapple jam. Chewing. Rafter Man says, "I thought this was supposed to be a truce on account of Tet is their big holiday." I shrug. "Well, I guess it's hard not to shoot somebody you've been trying to shoot for a long time just because it's a holiday." A sudden swooosssh... Incoming. I jump off the roof. Rafter Man stands up, his mouth open. He looks down at me like I'm crazy. "What--" A rocket hits the deck fifty yards away. Rafter Man falls off the roof. I jerk Rafter Man to his feet. I shove him. He falls into a sandbagged bunker. All around the hill orange machine-gun tracers flash up into the sky. Outgoing mortars. Outgoing artillery. Incoming rockets. All kinds of noise. Illumination rounds pop high above the rice paddies. The flares sway down, glowing, suspended beneath little parachutes. I listen for a few moments and then I grab Rafter Man and I pull him into our hootch. "Get your piece." I pick up my M-16. I snap in a magazine. I throw a bandolier of full magazines to Rafter Man. "Lock and load, recruit. Lock and load." "But that's against regulations." "Do it." Outside, headquarters personnel from the surrounding hootches are stumbling into rifle pits on the perimeter. They crouch down in the damp holes in their skivvies. They stare out through the wire. Down on the airfield in Da Nang Victor Charlie's rockets are raining down on the concrete corrals where the Marine Air Wing parks its F-4 Phantom fighter bombers. The rockets blink like flashbulbs. The flashbulbs pop. And then the sound of drums. The Informational Services Office on the hill is a carnival with green performers--many, many of them. The lifers are all being fearless leaders. The New Guys are about to wet their pants. Everyone is talking. Everyone is pacing and looking, pacing and looking. Most of these guys have never been in the shit. Violence doesn't excite them the way it excites me because they don't understand it the way I do. They're afraid. Death is not yet their friend. So they don't know what they're supposed to say. They don't know what they're expected to do. Major Lynch, our commanding officer, marches in and squares us away. He tells us that Victor Charlie has used the Tet holiday to launch an offensive all over Viet Nam. Every major military target in Viet Nam has been hit. In Saigon, the United States Embassy has been overrun by suicide squads. Khe Sanh is standing by to be overrun, a second Dien Bien Phu. The term "secure area" no longer has any meaning. Only fifty yards up the hill, near the commanding general's private quarters, a Viet Cong sapper squad has blown apart a communications center with a satchel charge. Our "defeated" enemy is lashing out with a power that is shocking. Everybody starts talking at once. Major Lynch is calm. He stands in the center of chaos and tries to give us orders. Nobody listens. He makes us listen. His words snap out like bullets from a machine gun. "Zip up those flak jackets. Put on that helmet, Marine. Load your weapons but do not put a round in the chamber. Everybody will shut the fuck up. Joker!" "Aye-aye, sir." Major Lynch stands in front of the Marine Corps flag--blood red, with an eagle, globe, and anchor of gold, U.S.M.C. and Semper Fidelis. He taps my chest with his finger. "Joker, you will take off that damned button. How is it going to look if you get killed wearing a peace symbol?" "Aye-aye, sir!" "Get up to Phu Bai. Captain January will need all his people." Rafter Man steps forward. "Sir? Could I go with Joker?" "What? Sound off." "I'm Compton, sir. Lance Corporal Compton. From Photo. I want to get into the shit." "Permission granted. And welcome aboard." The major turns, starts yelling at the New Guys. I say, "Sir, I don't think that--" Major Lynch turns back to me, irritated. "You still here? Vanish, Joker, most ricky-tick. And take the New Guy with you. You're responsible for him." The major turns and starts snapping out orders for the defense of the First Marine Division's Informational Services Office. Chaos at the Da Nang airfield; enemy rockets have wasted hootches, Marines, and Phantom jets. I talk to a poge in thick glasses. The poge is reading a comic book. By using my voice as an instrument of command I convince the poge that I'm an officer and that I'm on a personal errand for the Commandant of the Marine Corps. Rafter Man and I are given a priority rating and have to wait only nine hours before we're stuffed into the cavernous belly of a C-130 Hercules cargo plane with a hundred Marine Corps lifers. Thousands of feet below, Viet Nam is a narrow stripe of dried dragon shit upon which God has sprinkled toy tanks and airplanes and a lot of trees, flies, and Marines. As we descend for a landing at Phu Bai Combat Base, Rafter Man hugs his three black-body Nikons like metal babies. I laugh. "When the grunts see that the famous Rafter Man is here, they'll just know that the war must be over." Rafter Man grins. Rafter Man won his nickname the night he fell out of the rafters at the Thunderbird Club, the enlisted men's slop chute back in the First Marine Division headquarters area. An Australian comedian and two fat Korean belly dancers were entertaining an SRO audience. Rafter Man was hammered, but so was I, so I couldn't stop him. We were back near the entrance and Rafter Man decided that the only way he was going to get a good look at the seminude belly dancers was to climb up into the rafters and crawl out above the mass of green Marines. General Motors and his staff had stopped by to catch the show. They did that sometimes. General Motors liked to keep in touch with his Marines. Rafter Man fell off the rafters like a green bomb, crashing through the general's table, spilling beer, smashing pretzels, and knocking the general and four of his staff officers on their brass behinds. Hundreds of enlisted men, having assumed that Rafter Man was some kind of unconventional mortar round, were one mass of green laundry. Then heads began to pop up. The staff officers jerked Rafter Man to his feet and started yelling for the M.P.'s. General Motors raised his hand and there was silence. Unlike many Marine Corps generals, General Motors looked exactly like a Marine Corps general, eyes as gray as gun metal, a face that was tough but sensitive--a Cro-Magnon holy man's face. His jungle utilities were starched, razor-creased, with shirt-sleeves rolled up neatly. Rafter Man stood there, staring at the general, grinning like a goddamn fool. He wobbled. He tried to walk but he couldn't. He was having enough trouble just standing in one place. General Motors ordered the broken table cleared away. Then he offered Rafter Man his chair. Rafter Man hesitated, looked at the general, then at the staff officers, who were still pissed off, then at me, then he looked at the general again. He grinned and sat down on the metal folding chair. The general nodded, then sat down on the floor next to Rafter Man. With a wave of his hand he ordered the staff officers to sit on the floor behind him, which they did, still pissed off. With another wave of his hand the general ordered the performers to go on with the show. The Australian comedian and the sweating belly dancers hesitated. Rafter Man stood up. He wobbled, then sank down to the deck beside the general. He put his arm around the general's shoulders. General Motors looked at him without expression. Rafter Man said, "Hey, bro, I can fly. Did you see me fly?" He paused. "You think...am I drunk? I mean, am I hammered or am I hammered?" He looked around. "Joker? Where's Joker?" But I was still stumbling over angry poges. "Joker's my bro, sir. We enlisted personnel are tight, you know? Indubitably. I am in love with those sexy women. I roger that..." His face got serious. "Who'll take me through the wire? Sir? Where's Joker?" He looked around, but didn't see me. "I'll fall in the wire. Or blow myself up. Sir? SIR? I'll step on a mine. I got to find my bro, sir. I don't want to fall into the wire, not again. JOKER!" General Motors looked at Rafter Man and smiled. "Don't worry, son. Marines never abandon their wounded." Rafter Man looked at the general the way drunks look at people who say things they don't understand. Then he smiled. He nodded. "Aye-aye, sir." The Australian comedian and the meaty belly dancers resumed their act, which consisted primarily of double-takes from the comedian every time one of the belly dancers slung a big tender breast out of her tiny golden costume. The act was a smashing success. By the time the show was over, Rafter Man could stand only if he had a wall to hold onto. General Motors took Rafter Man's arm and put it over his shoulders and helped Rafter Man out of the E.M. club and, leaving the staff officer's behind, helped Rafter Man to stagger down the hill, along the narrow path through the tangle-foot and the concertina wire. As the enlisted men left the Thunderbird Club, they watched this small event and they smiled and nodded and said, "Decent. Number one." And: "There it is." Now the C-130 Hercules propjet is taxiing to a stop. The heavy cargo door drops and slams into the runway. Rafter Man and I hop out with our fellow passengers. There are three damaged C-130's pushed together on the port side of the airfield. On the starboard side of the airfield is the gutted carcass of another C-130, charred, still smoking. Men in tinfoil spacesuits are squirting the torn metal with white foam. Rafter Man and I ditty-bop off the airfield and we hump down a freshly oiled dirt road until we come to the perimeter of Phu Bai Combat Base, about a mile from the airfield and thirty-four miles from the DMZ. Phu Bai is a vast mud puddle cut into sections by perfectly aligned rows of frame hootches. The largest structure at Phu Bai is HQ for the Third Marine Division. The big wooden building stands as a symbol of our power and as a temple of those who love the power. We stop at the guard bunker. A big dumb M.P. orders us to clear our weapons. I click the magazine out of my M-16. Rafter Man does the same. I stare back at the big dumb M.P. to assert my principles. He is scribbling on a clipboard with a stubby yellow pencil. Suddenly the M.P. punches Rafter Man in the chest with his walnut baton. "You a New Guy?" Rafter Man nods. "I got a working party for you. You're going to fill sandbags for my bunkers." The M.P. hooks his thumb toward the guard bunker in the center of the road. A big bite has been taken out of the bunker. A mortar shell has blasted through one layer of sandbags and has split open a second layer, spilling sand. I say, "He's with me." Sneering, the sergeant draws himself up inside his crisp, clean stateside utilities, his white helmet liner with Military Police stenciled in red, his white rifle belt with its gold buckle bearing the eagle, globe and anchor, his shiny new forty-five automatic pistol, and his black spit-shined stateside shoes. The big dumb M.P. is smugly enthroned in his power to exact the trivial. "He'll do what I say, motherfucker. Cor-poral." He thumps his black metal collar chevrons with the tip of his walnut baton. "I'm a sergeant." I nod. "Affirmative. That's affirmative, you fucking lifer. But this man is only a lance corporal. And he takes his orders from me." The big dumb M.P. shrugs. "Okay. Okay, motherfucker. You can tell him what to do. You can fill my sandbags, corporal. Many, many of them." I look at the deck. An explosion is building up inside me. I experience fear, and a terrible strain, as the pressure grows and grows, and then release, relief. "No, you dumb redneck. Negative, you fucking pig. No, I'm not going to fall out for any Mickey Mouse working party. You know why? Huh?" I slam the magazine back into my M-16 and I snap the bolt, chambering a round. I'm smiling now. I'm smiling as I jam the flash supressor into the big dumb M.P.'s jelly belly and then I wait for him to make one sound, any sound, or just the slightest movement and then I'm going to pull the trigger. The big dumb M.P.'s mouth falls open. He doesn't have anything else to say. I don't think he wants me to fill his sandbags anymore. The clipboard and the pencil fall. Then, walking backward, the big dumb M.P. retreats into his bunker, mouth open, hands up. Rafter Man is too scared to say anything for a while. I say, "You'll get used to this place. You'll change. You'll understand." Rafter Man remains quiet. We walk. Then, "You weren't bluffing. You would have killed that guy. For nothing." I say, "There it is." Rafter Man is looking at me as though he's seeing something new. "Is everybody like that? I mean, you were laughing. Like..." "It's not the kind of thing you can talk about. There's no way to explain stuff like that. After you've been in the shit, after you've got your first confirmed kill, you'll understand." Rafter Man is silent. His questions are silent. "At ease," I say. "Don't kid yourself, Rafter Man, this is a slaughter. In this world of shit you won't have time to understand. What you do, you become. You better learn to flow with it. You owe it to yourself." Rafter Man nods, but he doesn't reply. I know how he feels. The Informational Services Office for Task Force X-Ray, a unit assigned to cover elements of the First Division temporarily operating in the Third Division's area, is a small frame hootch, constructed with two-by-fours and slave labor. Nailed to the screen door is a red sign with yellow letters: TFX-ISO. Roofed with sheets of galvanized tin and walled with fine-mesh screening, the hootch is designed to protect us from the heat. The Seabees have nailed green plastic ponchos along the side of the hootch. These dusty flaps are rolled up during the furnace of the day and are rolled down at night to keep out the fierce monsoon rain. Chili Vendor and Daytona Dave are doing fleetniks in front of the ISO hootch. Chili Vendor is a tough Chicano from East L.A. and Daytona Dave is an easy-going surf bum from a wealthy family in Florida. They have absolutely nothing in common. They are the best of friends. About a hundred grunts have stuffed themselves into every available piece of shade in the area. Each grunt has been given a fleetnik, a printed form with spaces for all the necessary biographical data required to send a photograph of the grunt to his hometown newspaper. Daytona Dave is taking the photographs with a black-body Nikon while Chili Vendor says, "Smile, scumbag. Say, 'shit.' Next." The grunt next in line kneels down beside a little Vietnamese orphan of undetermined sex. Chili Vendor slaps a rubber Hershey bar into the grunt's hand. "Smile, scumbag. Say, 'shit.' Next." Daytona Dave snaps the picture. Chili Vendor snatches the grunt's fleetnik with one hand and the rubber Hershey bar with the other. "Next!" The orphan says, "Her, Marine number one! You! You! You give me chop-chop? You souvenir me?" The orphan grabs at the Hershey bar and jerks it out of Chili Vendor's hand. He bites the Hershey bar; it's rubber. He tries to tear off the wrapper; he can't. "Chop-chop number ten!" Chili Vendor snatches the rubber Hershey bar out of the orphan's hands and tosses it to the next grunt in the line. "Keep moving. Don't you guys want to be famous? Some of you dudes probably wasted this kid's family, but back in your hometown you gonna be the big strong Marine with a heart of gold." I say in my John Wayne voice: "Listen up, pilgrim. You skating again?" Chili Vendor turns, sees me and grins. "Hey, Joker, que pasa? This might be skating, man, it fucking might be. These gook orphans are hard-core. I think half of them are Viet Cong Marines." The orphan is walking away, grumbling, kicking the road. Then, as though to prove Chili Vendor's point, the orphan pauses. He turns around and gives us the finger with both hands. Then he walks on. Daytona Dave laughs. "That kid runs an NVA rifle company. Somebody blow him away." I grin. "You ladies are doing an outstanding job. You're both born poges." Chili Vendor shrugs. "Hey, bro, the Crotch don't send beaners into the field. We're too tough. We make the grunts look bad." "You guys getting hit?" "That's affirmative," says Daytona Dave. "Every night. A few rounds. They're just fucking with us. Of course, I've got so many confirmed kills I lost count. Nobody believes me because the gooks drag off their dead. I do believe that those little yellow enemy folks eat their casualties. Blood trails all over the place, but no confirmed kills. So here I am, a hero, and Captain January has got me doing Mickey Mouse shit with this uppity wetback." "CORPORAL JOKER!" "SIR!" Later, people. Come on, Rafter." Chili Vendor punches Daytona Dave in the chest. "Doubletime up to the ville and souvenir me one cute orphan, man, but be sure you get a dirty one, a really skuzzy one." "JOKER!" "AYE-AYE, SIR!" Captain January is in his plywood cubicle in the back of the ISO hootch. Captain January is the kind of officer who chews an unlit pipe because he thinks that a pipe will help to make him a father figure. He's playing cut-throat Monopoly with Mr. Payback. Mr. Payback has more T.I.--time in--than any other snuffy in our unit. Captain January isn't Captain Queeg, but then he's not Humphrey Bogart, either. He picks up his little silver shoe and moves it to Baltic Avenue, tapping each property along the way. "I'll buy Baltic. And two houses." Captain January reaches for the white and purple deed to Baltic Avenue. "That's another monopoly, Sergeant." He positions tiny green houses on the board. "Joker, you've scarfed up beaucoup slack in Da Nang and I am sure that now you are squared away to get back into the field. Hump up to Hue. The NVA have overrun the city. One-One is in the shit." I hesitate. "Sir, would the Captain happen to know who killed my story on that howitzer crew who wasted a whole squad of NVA with one beehive round? In Da Nang some poges told me that a colonel shit-canned my story. Some colonel said that beehive rounds were a figment of my imagination because the Geneva Convention classified them as 'inhumane' and American fighting men are incapable of being inhumane." Mr. Payback grunts. "Inhumane? That's a pretty word for it. Ten thousand feathered stainless steel darts. Those flechette canisters do convert gooks into lumps of shitty rags. There it is." "Oh, damn," says Captain January. He slaps a card onto the field desk. "Go to jail--go directly to jail--do not pass go--do not collect two hundred dollars." The captain puts his little silver shoe into jail. "I know who killed your beehive story, Joker. What I don't know is who has been tipping off hostile reporters every time we get an adverse incident--like that white Victor Charlies recon wasted last week, the one the snuffies call 'The Phantom Blooper.' General Motors is ready to bust me down to a grunt because of that leak in our security. You talk; I'll talk. Do we have a deal?" "No. No, Captain. It's not important." "Number one! Snake eyes! No sweat, Joker. I've got a big piece of slack for you." Captain January picks up a manila guard mail envelope and pulls out a piece of paper with fancy writing on it. "Congratulations, Sergeant Joker." He hands me the paper. TO ALL WHO SHALL SEE THESE PRESENTS, GREETING: KNOW YE THAT REPOSING SPECIAL TRUST AND CONFIDENCE IN THE FIDELITY OF JAMES T. DAVIS, 2306777/4312, I DO APPOINT HIM A SERGEANT IN THE UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS... I stare at the piece of paper. Then I put the order on Captain January's field desk. "Number ten. I mean, no way, sir." Captain January stops his little silver shoe in mid-stride. "What did you say, Sergeant?" "Sir, I rose by sheer military genius to the rank of corporal, as they say, like Hitler and Napoleon. But I'm not a sergeant. I guess I'm just a snuffy at heart." "Sergeant Joker, you will belay the Mickey Mouse shit. You won a meritorious promotion on Parris Island. You've got an excellent record in country. You've got high enough time-in-grade. You rate this promotion. This is the only war we've got, Sergeant. Your career as a Marine--" "No, sir. We bomb these people, then we photograph them. My stories are paper bullets fired into the fat black heart of Communism. I've fought to make the world safe for hypocrisy. We have met the enemy and he is us. War is good business--invest your son. Viet Nam means never having to say you're sorry. Arbeit Macht Frei--" "Sergeant Joker!" "Negative, Captain. Number ten. I'm a corporal. You can send me to the brig, sir--I know that. Lock me up in Portsmouth Naval Prison until I rot, but let me rot as a corporal, sir. You know I do my job. I write that the Nam is an Asian Eldorado populated by a cute, primitive but determined people. War is a noisy breakfast food. War is fun to eat. War can give you better checkups. War cures cancer--permanently. I don't kill. I write. Grunts kill; I only watch. I'm only young Dr. Goebbels. I'm not a sergeant." I add: "Sir." Captain January's silver shoe lands on Oriental Avenue. There is a tiny red plastic hotel on Oriental Avenue. Captain January grimaces and then counts out thirty-five dollars in MPC. He hands Mr. Payback the small colorful bills and then hands him the dice. "Sergeant, you will be wearing chevrons indicating your proper rank the next time I see your or I will definitely jump on your program. Do you want to be a grunt? If not, you will remove that unauthorized peace button from your duty uniform." I don't say anything. Captain January looks at Rafter Man. "Who's this? Sound off, Marine." Rafter Man stutters. I say, "This is Lance Corporal Compton, sir. The New Guy in Photo." "Outstanding. Welcome aboard, Marine. Joker, make sleeping sounds here tonight and head up to the Hue in the morning. Walter Cronkite is due here tomorrow so we'll be busy. I'll need Chili Vendor and Daytona here. But your job is important, too. General Motors called me about this personally. We need some good, clear photographs. And some hard-hitting captions. Get me photographs of indigenous civilian personnel who have been executed with their hands tied behind their backs, people buried alive, priests with their throats cut, dead babies--you know what I want. Get me some good body counts. And don't forget to calculate your kill ratios. And Joker..." "Yes, sir?" "Don't even photograph any naked bodies unless they're mutilated." "Aye-aye, sir." "And Joker..." "Yes, sir?" "Get a haircut." "Aye-aye, sir." As Mr. Payback release his little silver car Captain January says, "Three houses! Three houses! Park fucking Place! That's...eighty dollars!" Mr. Payback counts out all of his money. "That breaks me, Captain. I owe you seven bucks." Captain January rakes up the pile of MPC, a shit-eating grin on his face. "You do not understand a business, Mr. Payback. If we had Marine generals who understood business this war would be over. The secret to winning this war is in public relations. Harry S. Truman once said that the Marine Corps has a propaganda machine almost equal to Stalin's. He was right. In war, truth is the first casualty. Correspondents are more effective than grunts. Grunts merely kill the enemy. All that matters is what we write, what we photograph. History may be written with blood and iron but it's printed with ink. Grunts are good show business but we make them what they are. The lesser services like to joke about how every Marine platoon goes into battle accompanied by a platoon of Marine Corps photographers. That's affirmative. Marines fight harder because Marines have bigger legends to live up to." Captain January slaps a large package on the floor by his desk. "And this is the final product of all our industry. My wife likes to show an interest in my work. She asked me for a souvenir. I'm sending her a gook." Rafter Man's expression is so funny that I have to look away to avoid laughing out loud. "Sir?" "Yes, Sergeant?" "Where's the Top?" "The First shirt went to Da Nang for some in-country R & R. You can see him after you come back from Hue." Captain January looks at his wristwatch. "Seventeen hundred. Chow time." On the way to chow Rafter Man and I meet Chili Vendor and Daytona Dave and Mr. Payback at the ISO enlisted men's hootch. I give Rafter Man a utility jacket with 101st Airborne patches all over it. My own Army jacket has First Air Cavalry insignia. I select two salty sets of Army collar chevrons and we pin them on. Now we're Spec-5's--Army sergeants. Chili Vendor and Daytona Dave and Mr. Payback are all buck sergeants from the Ninth Infantry Division. We go to chow down in the Army mess hall. The Army eats real food. Cake, roast beef, ice cream, chocolate milk--all the bennies. Our own mess hall serves Kool-Aid and shit-on-a-shingle--chipped beef on toast--with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dessert. "When's the Top due back?" Chili Vendor says, "Oh, maybe tomorrow. January on your program again?" I nod. "That fucking lifer. He's crazy. He's just plain fucking crazy. He gets crazier every time I see him. Now he's mailing a gook stiff home to his wife." Daytona says, "There it is. But then the Top is a lifer, too." "But the Top is decent. I mean, maybe the Crotch is his home, and he makes us do a good job, but he don't harass us with Mickey Mouse shit. He cuts the snuffies some slack when he can. The Top's not a lifer; he's a career Marine. Lifers are a breed. A lifer is anybody who abuses authority he doesn't deserve to have. There are plenty of civilian lifers." The Army mess sergeant with the big cigar spot-checks I.D.'s. The Army mess sergeant with the big cigar takes the shiny mess trays out of our hands and throws us out of his mess hall. We retreat to the Marine mess hall where we eat shit-on-a-shingle and drink lukewarm Kool-Aid and we talk about how the Army could have at least souvenired us some leftovers since that's all the Marine Corps ever gets anyway. After chow we play tag back to our hootch. Laughing and breathing hard, we take a moment to pull down the green plastic ponchos nailed on the outside of the hootch. During the night the ponchos will keep light in and rain out. We lie on our racks and swap scuttlebutt. On the ceiling, the combat correspondent's motto in six-inch block letters: FIRST TO GO, LAST TO KNOW, WE WILL DEFEND TO THE DEATH OUR RIGHT TO BE MISINFORMED. Mr. Payback performs his sea stories for Rafter Man: "The only difference between a sea story and a fairy tale is that a fairy tale begins with 'Once upon a time...' and a sea story begins with 'This is no shit.' Well, New Guy, listen up, because this is no shit. January orders me to play Monopoly. All fucking day. Every day of the fucking week. There's nothing lower than a lifer. They fuck me over, man, but I don't say a word. I do not say a word. Payback is a motherfucker, New Guy. Remember that. When Luke the gook zaps you in the back and Phantoms bury him in napalm canisters, that's payback. When you shit on people it comes back to you, sooner or later, only worse. My whole program is a mess because of lifers. But Payback will come, sooner or later. I'd walk a mile for a payback." I laugh. "Payback, you hate lifers because you are a lifer." Mr. Payback lights up a joint. "You're the one who's tight with the lifers, Joker. Lifers take care of their own." "Negative. The lifers are afraid to talk to me, I got so many ops." "Operations? Shit." Mr. Payback turns to Rafter Man. "Joker thinks that the bad bush is down the road in the ville. He's never been in the shit. It's hard to talk about it. Like on Hastings--" Chili Vendor interrupts: "You weren't on Operation Hastings, Payback. You weren't even in country." "Oh, eat shit and die, you fucking Spanish American. You poge. I was there, man. I was in the shit with the grunts, man. Those guys have got guts, you know? They are very hard individuals. When you've been in the shit with grunts you're tight with them from then on, you know?" I grunt. "Sea stories." "Oh, yeah? How long have you been in country, Joker? Huh? How much T.I. you got? How much fucking time in? Thirty months, poge. I got thirty months in country. I been there, man." I say, "Don't listen to any of Mr. Payback's bullshit, Rafter Man. Sometimes he thinks he's John Wayne." "That's affirmative," says Mr. Payback. "You listen to Joker, New Guy. He knows ti ti--very little. And if he ever does know anything it'll be because he learned it from me. You just know he's never been in the shit. He ain't got the stare." Rafter Man looks up. "The what?" "The thousand-yard stare. A Marine gets it after he's been in the shit for too long. It's like you've really seen...beyond. I got it. All field Marines got it. You'll have it, too." Rafter Man says, "I will?" Mr. Payback takes a few hits off the joint and then passes it to Chili Vendor. "I used to be an atheist, when I was a New Guy, a long time ago..." Mr. Payback takes his Zippo lighter out of his shirt pocket and hands it to Rafter Man. "See? It says, 'You and me, God--right?'" Mr. Payback giggles. He seems to be trying to focus his vision on some distant object. "Yes, nobody is an atheist in a foxhole. You'll be praying." Rafter Man looks at me, grins, hands the lighter back to Mr. Payback. "There sure is a lot of stuff to learn." I'm whittling a piece of ammo crate with my K-bar jungle knife. I'm carving myself a wooden bayonet. Daytona Dave says, "Remember that gook kid that tried to eat the candy bar? It bit me. I was down in the ville, scarfing up some orphans and that little Victor Charlie ambushed me. Ran up and bit the shit out of my hand." Daytona holds up his left hand, revealing a little red crescent of tooth marks. "The kids says that our chop-chop is number ten. I bet I get rabies." Chili Vendor grins. He turns to Rafter Man. "There it is, New Guy. You'll know you're salty when you stop throwing C-ration cans to the kids and start throwing the cans at them." I say, "I got to get back into the shit. I ain't heard a shot fired in anger in weeks. I'm bored to death. How are we ever going to get used to being back in the World? I mean, a day without blood is like a day without sunshine." Chili Vendor says, "No sweat. The old mamasan that does our laundry tells us things even the lifers in Intelligence don't know. She says that in Hue the whole fucking North Vietnamese army is dug in deep inside an old fortress they call the Citadel. You won't come back, Joker. Victor Charlie is gonna shoot you in the heart. The Crotch will ship your scrawny little ass home in a three-hundred-dollar aluminum box all dressed up like a lifer in a blouse from a set of dress blues. But no white hat. And no pants. They don't give you any pants. Your friends from school and all of the relatives you never liked anyway will be at your funeral and they'll call you a good little Christian and they'll say you were a hero to get wasted defeating Communism and you'll just lie there with a cold ass, dead as a mackerel." Daytona Dave sits up. "You can be a hero for a little while, sometimes, if you can stop thinking about your own ass long enough, if you give a shit. But civilians don't know what to do, so they put up statues in the park for pigeons to drop turds on. Civilians don't know. Civilians don't want to know." I say, "You guys are bitter. Don't you love the American way of life?" Chili Vendor shakes his head. "No Victor Charlie ever raped my sister. Ho Chi Minh never bombed Pearl Harbor. We're prisoners here. We're prisoners of the war. They've taken away our freedom and they've given it to the gooks, but the gooks don't want it. They'd rather be alive than free." I grunt. "There it is." With my magic marker I "X" out a section of thigh on the nude woman outlined on the back of my flak jacket. The number 58 disappears. Fifty-seven days and a wake-up left in country. Midnight. The boredom becomes unbearable. Chili Vendor suggests that we kill time by wasting our furry little friends. I say, "Rat race!" Chili Vendor hops off his canvas cot and into a corner. He breaks up a John Wayne cookie. In the corner, six inches off the desk, we've nailed a piece of ammo crate to form a triangular pocket. There's a little hole in the charred board. Chili Vendor puts the cookie fragments under the board. Then he snaps off the lights. I toss Rafter Man one of my booties. Of course, he doesn't know what to do with it. "What--" Shhhh. We wait in ambush, enjoying the anticipation of violence. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. Then the Viet Cong rats crawl out of their holes. We freeze. The rats skitter along the rafters, climb down the screening, then hop onto the plywood deck, making little thumps, moving through the darkness without fear. Chili Vendor waits until the skittering converges in the corner. Then he jumps out of his rack and flips on the overhead lights. With the exception of Rafter Man we're all on our feet in the same second, forming a semicircle across the corner. The rats zip and zing, their tiny pink feet clawing for traction on the plywood. Two or three escape--so brave, or so terrified--in such situations motives are immaterial--that they run right over out feet and between our legs and through the deadly gauntlet of carefully aimed boots and stabbing bayonets. But most of the rats herd together under the board. Mr. Payback takes a can of lighter fluid from his bamboo footlocker. He squirts lighter fluid into the little hole in the board. Daytona Dave strikes a match. "Fire in the hole!" He pitches the burning match into the corner. The board foomps into flame. Rats explode from beneath the board like shrapnel from a rodent grenade. The rats are on fire. The rats are little flaming kamikaze animals zinging across the plywood deck, running under racks, over gear, around in circles, running faster and faster and in no particular direction except toward some place where there is no fire. "GET SOME!" Mr. Payback is screaming like a lunatic. "GET SOME! GET SOME!" He chops a rat in half with his machete. Chili Vendor holds a rat by the tail and, while it shrieks, pounds it do death with a boot. I throw my K-bar at a rat on the other side of the hootch. The big knife misses the rat, sticks up in the floor. Rafter Man doesn't know what to do. Daytona Dave charges around and around with fixed bayonet, zeroing in on a burning rat like a fighter pilot in a dogfight. Daytona follows the rat's crazed, erratic course around and around, over all obstacles, gaining on him with every step. He butt-strokes the rat and then bayonets him, again and again and again. "That's one confirmed!" And, as suddenly as it began, the battle is over. After the rat race everyone collapses. Daytona is breathing hard and fast. "Whew. That was a good group. Real hard-core. I thought I was going to have a fucking heart attack." Mr. Payback coughs, grunts. "Hey, New Guy, how many confirmed did you get?" Rafter Man is still sitting on his canvas cot with my boot in his hand. "I...none. I mean, it happened so fast." Mr. Payback laughs. "Well, sometimes it's fun to kill something you can see. You better get squared away, New Guy. Next time the rats will have guns." Daytona Dave is wiping his face with a dirty green skivvy shirt. "The New Guy will do okay. Cut him some slack. Rafter ain't got the killer instinct, that's all. Now me, I got about fifty confirmed. But everybody knows that gook rats drag off their dead." We all throw things at Daytona Dave. We rest for a while and then we gather up the barbecued rats and take them outside to hold a funeral in the dark. Some guys from utilities platoon who live next door come out of their hootch to pay their respects. Lance Corporal Winslow Slavin, honcho of the combat plumbers, struts up in a skuzzy green flight suit. The flight suit is ragged, covered with paint stains and oil splotches. "Only six? Shit. Last night my boys got seventeen. Confirmed." I say, "Sounds like a squad of poges to me. Poges kill poges. These rats are Viet Cong field Marines. Hard-core grunts." I pick up one of the rats. I turn to the combat plumbers. I hold up the rat and I kiss it. Mr. Payback laughs, picks up one of the dead rats, bites off the tip of its tail. Then, swallowing, Mr. Payback says, "Ummm....love them crispy critters." He grins. He bends over, picks up another dead rat, offers it to Rafter Man. Rafter Man is frozen. He can't speak. He just looks at the rat. Mr. Payback laughs. "What's wrong, New Guy? Don't you want to be a killer?" We bury the enemy rats with full military honors--we scoop out a shallow grave and we dump them in. We sing: So come along and sing our song And join our fam-i-ly M.I.C....K.E.Y....M.O.U.S.E. Mickey Mouse, Mickey Mouse... "Dear God," says Mr. Payback, looking up into the ugly sky. "These rats died like Marines. Cut them some slack. Ah-men." We all say, "Ah-men." After the funeral we insult the combat plumbers a few more times and then we return to our hootch. We lie awake in our racks. We discuss the battle and the funeral for a long time. Then we try to sleep. An hour later. It's raining. We roll up in our poncho liners and pray for morning. The monsoon rain is cold and heavy and comes without warning. Wind-blown water batters the ponchos hung around the hootch to protect us from the weather. The terrible falling of the shells... Incoming. "Oh, shit," somebody says. Nobody moves. Rafter Man asks, "Is that---" I say, "There it is." The crumps start somewhere outside the wire and walk in like the footsteps of a monster. The crumps are becoming thuds. Thud. Thud. THUD. And then it's a whistle and a roar. BANG. The rain's rhythmic drumming is broken by the clang and rattle of shrapnel falling on our tin roof. We're all out of our racks with our weapons in our hands like so many parts of the same body--even Rafter Man, who has begun to pick up on things. Pounded by cold rain, we double-time to our bunker. On the perimeter M-60 machine guns are banging and the M-70 grenade launchers are blooping and mortar shells are thumping out of the tubes. Star flares burst all along the wire, beautiful clusters of green fire. Inside our damp cave of sandbags we huddle elbow-to-elbow in wet skivvies, feeling the weight of the darkness, as helpless as cavemen hiding from a monster. "I hope they're just fucking with us," I say. "I hope they're not going to hit the wire. I'm not ready for this shit." Outside our bunker: BANG, BANG, BANG. And falling rain. Each of us is waiting for the next shell to nail him right on the head--the mortar as an agent of existential doom. A scream. I wait for a time of silence and I crawl out to take a look. Somebody is down. The whistle of an incoming round forces me to retreat into the bunker. I wait for the shell to burst. BANG. I crawl out, stand up, and I run to the wounded man. He's one of the combat plumbers. "You utilities platoon? Where's Winslow?" The man is whining. "I'm dying! I'm dying!" I shake him. "Where's Winslow?" "There." He points. "He was coming to help me..." Rafter Man and Chili Vendor come out and Rafter Man helps me carry the combat plumber to our bunker. Chili Vendor double-times off to get a corpsman. We leave the combat plumber with Daytona and Mr. Payback and double-time through the rain, looking for Winslow. He's in the mud outside his hootch, torn to pieces. The mortar shells stop falling. The machine guns on the perimeter fade to short bursts. Even so, the grunts standing line continue to pop green star clusters in case Victor Charlie plans to launch a ground attack. Somebody throws a poncho over Winslow. The rain taps the green plastic sheet. I say, "It took a lot of guts to do what Winslow did. I mean, you can see Winslow's guts and he sure had a lot of them." Nobody says anything. After the green ghouls from graves registration stuff Winslow into a body bag and take him away, we go back to our hootch. We flop on our racks, wasted. I say, "Well, Rafter, now you've heard a shot fired in anger." Soaking wet in green skivvies, Rafter Man is sitting on his rack. He has something in his hand. He's staring at it. I sit up. "Hey, Rafter. What's that? You souvenir yourself a piece of