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.

    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.

    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 shrapnel?"  No response.  "Rafter?  You hit?"
    Mr. Payback grunts.  "What's wrong, New Guy?  Did a few rounds make you nervous?"
    Rafter Man looks up with a new face.  His lips are twisted into a cold, sardonic smirk.  His labored breathing is broken by grunts.  He growls.  His lips are wet with saliva.  He's looking at Mr. Payback.  The object in Rafter Man's hand is a piece of flesh, Winslow's flesh, ugly yellow, as big as a John Wayne cookie, wet with blood.  We all look at it for a long time.
    Rafter Man puts the piece of flesh into his mouth, onto his tongue, and we thing he's going to vomit.  Instead, he grits his teeth.  Then, closing his eyes, he swallows.
    I turn off the lights.
 

    Dawn.  The heat of the day comes quickly, burning away the mud puddles left by the monsoon rain.  Rafter Man and I ditty-bop down to the Phu Bai landing zone.  We wait for a med-evac chopper.
    Ten minutes later a Jolly Green Giant comes in loaded.
    Corpsmen run up the ramp at the rear of the vibrating machine and reappear immediately, carrying canvas stretchers.  On the stretchers are bloody rags with men inside.  Rafter Man and I run into the chopper.  We lift a stretcher and run down the metal ramp.  The chopper is already beginning to lift off.
    We place the stretcher on the deck with the others, where the corpsmen are sorting the dead from the living, changing bandages, adjusting plasma bottles.
    Rafter Man and I run into the prop wash, running sideways beneath the thumping blades into a tornado of hot wind and stinging gravel.  We stop, hunched over, holding up our thumbs.
    The chopper pilot is an invading Martian in an orange flame-retardant flight suit and an olive-drab space helmet.  The pilot's face is a shadow behind a dark green visor.  He gives us a thumbs-up.  We run around to the cargo ramp and the door gunner gives us a hand up into the belly of the vibrating machine just as it lifts off.
    The flight to Hue is north eight miles.  Far below, Viet Nam is a patchwork quilt of greens and yellows.  It's a beautiful country, especially when seen from the air.  Viet Nam is like a page from a Marco Polo picture book.  The deck is pockmarked with shell holes, and napalm air strikes have charred vast patches of earth, but the land is healing itself with beauty.
    My ears pop.  I pinch my nose and puff out my cheeks.  Rafter Man imitates me.  We sit on bales of green rubber-impregnated canvas body bags.
    As we near Hue, the door gunner smokes marijuana and fires his M-60 machine gun at a farmer in the rice paddies below.  The door gunner has long hair, a bushy moustache, and is naked except for an unbuttoned Hawaiian sport shirt.  On the Hawaiian sport shirt are a hundred yellow hula dancers.
    The hamlet beneath us is in free fire zone--anybody can shoot at it at any time and for any reason.  We watch the farmer run in the shallow water.  The farmer knows only that his family needs some rice to eat.  The farmer knows only that the bullets are tearing him apart.
    He falls, and the door gunner giggles.
 

    The med-evac chopper sets down on a landing zone near Highway One, a mile south of Hue.  The LZ is cluttered with walking wounded, stretcher cases, and body bags.  Before Rafter Man and I are off the LZ our chopper has been loaded with wounded and is airborne again, flying back to Phu Bai.
    We wait for a rough rider convoy in front of a bombed-out gas station.  Hours pass.  Noon.  I take off my flak jacket.  I pull my old, ragged Boy Scout shirt out of my NVA rucksack.  I put on my Boy Scout shirt so that the sun won't roast the flesh from my bones.  On the frayed collar, corporal's chevrons that are so salty that the black enamel has worn off and the brass shows through.  Over the right breast pocket, a cloth rectangle which reads First Marine Division, CORRESPONDENT.  And in Vietnamese:  BAO CHI.
    Sitting on a bullet-riddled yellow oyster that says SHELL OIL, we drink Cokes that cost five dollars a bottle.  The mamasan who sells us the Cokes is wearing a conical white hat.  She bows every time we speak.  She squawks and chatters like an old black bird.  She flashes her black teeth at us.  She is very proud of her teeth.  Only a lifetime of chewing betel nuts can make teeth as black as hers.  We don't understand a word of her magpie chatter, but the hatred in the smile frozen on her face says clearly, "Oh well, Americans may be assholes but they are very rich."
    There is a popular sea story which says that old Victor Charlie mamasans sell Cokes with ground-up glass in them.  Drinking, we wonder if that's true.
    Two Dusters, light tanks with twin 40mm guns, grind by.  The men in the Dusters ignore our thumbs.
    An hour later a Mighty Mite zooms by at eighty miles an hour, the maximum speed of the little jeep.  No luck.
    Then a convoy of six-bys appears, led by two M-48 Patton tanks.  Thirty big trucks roar by at full speed.  Two more Patton tanks are riding security at tail-end Charlie.
    The first tank speeds up as it passes us.
    The second tank slows down, bucks, jerks to a halt.  In the turret is a blond tank commander who is not wearing a helmet or a shirt.  He waves us on.  We put on our flak jackets.  We pick up our gear and swing it up onto the tank.  Then Rafter Man and I climb up onto a block of hot, vibrating metal.
    Down in a hatch by our feet is the driver.  His head protrudes just enough for him to see; his hands are on the controls.  The driver jerks the wobble stick and the tank lurches forward, bouncing, grinding, faster and faster and faster.  The roar of an eight-hundred-horsepower diesel engine accelerates to a rhythmic rumble of mechanical power.
    Rafter Man and I fall back against the hot turret.  We are hanging onto the long ninety-millimeter gun like monkeys.  The cool air of speed is delicious after hours in Viet Nam's one-hundred-and-twenty- degree yellow furnace.  Our sweat-soaked shirts are cold.  Flashing by:  Vietnamese hootches, ponds with white ducks in them, circular graves with chipped and faded paint, and endless shimmering pieces of emerald water newly planted with rice.
    It's a wonderful day.  I'm so happy that I am alive, in one piece, and short.  I'm in a world of shit, yes, but I am alive.  And I am not afraid.  Riding the tank gives me a thrilling sense of power and well-being.  Who dares to shoot at the man who rides the tiger?
    It's a beautiful tank.  Painted on the long barrel:  BLACK FLAG--We Exterminate Household Pests.  Flying on a radio antenna, a ragged Confederate flag.  Military vehicles are beautiful because they are built from functional designs which make them real, solid, without artifice.  The tank possesses the beauty of its hard lines; it is fifty tons of rolling armor on tracks like steel watchbands.  The tank is our protection, rolling on and on forever, clanking out the dark mechanical poetry of iron and guns.
    Suddenly the tank shifts to the left.  Rafter Man and I are thrown hard into the turret.  Metal grinds metal.  The tank hits a bump, shifting sharply to the right and jerking to a halt, throwing us forward.  Rafter Man and I hang onto the gun and say, "Son-of-a-bitch..."
    The blond tank commander climbs out of the turret hatch and jumps off the back of the tank.
    The tank driver has run the tank off the road.
    Fifty yards back a water buffalo is down on its back, legs out straight.  The water bo bellows, tosses its curved horns.  On the deck, in the center of the road, I see a tiny body, facedown.
    Chattering Vietnamese civilians pour out of the roadside hootches, staring and pointing.  The Vietnamese civilians crowd around to see how their American saviors have crushed the guts out of a child.
    The blond tank commander speaks to the Vietnamese civilians in French.  Then, walking back to the tanks, the blond tank commander is pursued by an ancient papasan.  There are tears in the papasan's eyes.  The withered old man shakes his bony little fists and throws Asian curses at the tank commander's back.  The Vietnamese civilians grow silent.  Another child is dead, and, although it is very sad and painful, they accept it.
    The blond tank commander climbs up onto his tank and reinserts his legs into the turret hatch.  "Iron Man, you fucking shitbird.  You will drive this machine like it's a tank and not a goddamn sports car.  You hit that little girl, you blind idiot.  Hell, I could see her through the fucking vision blocks.  She was standing on that water bo's back..."
    The driver turns, his face hard.  "I didn't see them, skipper.  What do they think they're doing, crossing in front of me like that?  Don't these zipperheads know that tanks got the right-of-way?"  The driver's face is coated with a thin film of oil and sweat; iron has entered into his soul and he has become a component of the tank, sweating oil to lubricate its meshing gears.
    The blond tank commander says, "You fuck up one more time, Iron Man, and you will be a grunt."
    The driver turns back to the front.  "Aye-aye, sir.  I'll watch the road, Lieutenant."
    Rafter Man asks, "Sir, did we kill that girl?  Why was that old man yelling at you?"  Rafter Man looks sick.
    The blond tank commander takes a green ballpoint pen and little green notebook out of his hip pocket.  He writes something in the notebook.  "The little girl's grandfather?  He was yelling about how he needs his water bo.  He wants a condolence award.  He wants us to pay him for the water bo."
    Rafter Man doesn't say anything.
    The blond tank commander yells at Iron Man:  "Drive, you blind son-of-a-bitch."
    And the tank rolls on.
 

    On the outskirts of Hue, the ancient Imperial Capital, we see the first sign of the battle--a cathedral, centuries old, now a bullet-peppered box of ruined stone, roof caved in, walls punctured by shells.
    Entering Hue, the third largest city in Viet Nam, is a strange new experience.  Our was has been in the paddies, in hamlets where the largest structure was a bamboo hut.  Seeing the effects of war upon a Vietnamese city makes me feel like a New Guy.
    The weather is dreary but the city is beautiful.  Hue has been beautiful for so long that not even war and bad weather can make it ugly.
    Empty streets.  Every building in Hue has been hit with some kind of ordnance.  The ground is still wet from last night's rain.  The air is cool.  The whole city is enveloped in a white mist.  The sun is going down.
    We roll past a tank which has been gutted by B-40 rocket-propelled grenades.  On the barrel of the shattered ninety-millimeter gun:  BLACK FLAG.
    Fifty yards down the road we pass two wasted six-bys.  One of the big trucks has been knocked onto its side.  The cab of the truck is a broken mass of jagged, twisted steel.  The second six-by has burned and is only a skeleton of black iron.  The windshields of both trucks have been strung with bright necklaces of bullet holes.
    As we roll past Quoc Hoc High School I punch Rafter Man on the arm.  "Ho Chi Minh went there," I say.  "I wonder if Uncle Ho played varsity basketball.  I wonder who Uncle Ho took to the senior prom."
    Rafter Man grins.
    Shots pop, far away.  Single rounds.  Short bursts of automatic weapons.  The fighting has stopped, for the moment.  The shots we hear are just some grunt trying to get lucky.
    Near the University of Hue the tank grinds to a halt and Rafter Man and I hop off.  The University of Hue is now a collection point for refugees on their way to Phu Bai.  Whole families with all of their possessions have occupied the classrooms and corridors since the battle began.  The refugees are too tired to run anymore.  The refugees look cold and drained the way you look after death sits on your face and smothers you for so long that you get tired of screaming.  Outside, the women cook pots of rice.  All over the deck there are piles of human shit.
    We wave good-bye to the blond tank commander and his tank grumbles and rolls away.  The tank's steel cleats crush some bricks which have been thrown into the street by explosions.
    Rafter Man and I stare across the River of Perfumes.  We stare at the Citadel.  The river is ugly.  The river is muddy.  The steel suspension bridge--The Bridge of the Golden Waters--is down, blown by enemy frogmen.  Torn girders jut out of the dark water like the broken bones of a sea serpent.
    A hand grenade explodes, far away, inside the Citadel.
 

    Rafter Man and I head for the MAC-V, Military Assistance Command--Viet Nam, compound.
    "This is a beautiful place," says Rafter Man.
    "It was.  It really was.  I've been here a few times for award ceremonies.  General Cushman was here.  I took his picture and he took a picture of me taking a picture of him.  And Ky was here, all duded up in his black silk flight jacket with silver general's stars all over it and a black cap with silver general's stars all over that, too.  Ky had these pearl-handled pistols and wore a purple ascot.  He looked like a Japanese playboy.  He had his program squared away, that Ky.  He believed in a Viet Nam for the Vietnamese.  I guess that's why we kicked him out.  But he was beautiful that day.  You should have seen all the schoolgirls in their ao dai, purple and white, carrying their little parasols..."
    "Where are they now?  The girls?"
    "Oh, dead, I guess.  Did you know that there's a legend that Hue rose from a pool of mud as a lotus flower?"
    "Look at that!"
    A squad of Arvins are looting a mansion.  The Arvins of the Army of the Republic of Viet Nam look funny because all of their equipment is too big for them.  In baggy uniforms and oversized helmets they look like little boys playing war.
    I say, "Decent.  Number one.  We got some slack, Rafter.  Remember this, Rafter Man, any time you can see an Arvin you are safe from Victor Charlie.  The Arvins run like rabbits at the first sign of violence.  An Arvin infantry platoon is about as lethal as a garden club of old ladies throwing marshmallows.  Don't believe all that scuttlebutt about Arvins being cowards.  They just hate the Green Machine more than we do.  They were drafted by the Saigon government, which was drafted by the lifers who drafted us, who were drafted by the lifers who think that they can buy the war.  And Arvins are not stupid.  The Arvins are not stupid when they are doing something they enjoy, like stealing.  Arvins sincerely believe that jewels and money are essential military supplies.  So we're safe until the Arvins start yelling, 'Beaucoup VC, beaucoup VC!' and then run away.  But be careful.  Arvins are always shooting at chickens, other people's pigs, and trees.  Arvins will shoot anything except transistor radios, Coca-Colas, sunglasses, money, and the enemy."
    "Don't they get money from their government?"
    I grin.  "Money is their government."
    The sun is gone.  Rafter Man and I double-time.  A sentry challenges us; I tell him to go to hell.
    Fifty-six days and a wake-up.
 

    In the morning we wake up inside the MAC-V compound, a white two-story building with bullet-pocked walls.  The compound has been enclosed behind a wall of sandbags and concertina wire.
    We gather up our gear and prepare to leave while a light colonel reads a statement made by the military mayor of Hue.  The statement is a denial that there is looting in Hue and a warning that looters will be shot on sight.  A dozen civilian war correspondents sit on the deck, wiping sleep from their eyes, half-listening, yawning.  Then the light colonel adds a personal comment.  Someone has awarded a Purple Heart to a big white goose that got wounded while the compound was under attack.  The light colonel feels that the civilian correspondents do not understand that war is serious business.
    Outside, I point to a wasted NVA hanging in the wire.  "Was is serious business, son, and this is our gross national product."  I kick the corpse, triggering panic in the maggots in the hollow eye sockets and in the grinning mouth and in each of the bullet holes in his chest.  "Gross?"
    Rafter Man kneels down to get a better look.  "Yes, he is confirmed."
    A CBS camera crew appears, surrounded by star-struck grunts who strike combat-Marine poses, pretending to be what they are.  They all want Walter Cronkite to meet their sisters.  In white short-sleeved shirts the CBS cameramen hurry off to photograph death in living color.
    I stop a master sergeant.  "Top, we want to get into the shit."
    The master sergeant is writing on a piece of yellow paper on a clipboard.  He doesn't look up, but jerks his thumb over his shoulder.  "Across the river.  One-Five.  Get a boat ride by the bridge."
    "One-Five?  Outstanding.  Thanks, Top."
    The master sergeant walks away, writing on the yellow paper.  He ignores four skuzzy grunts who run into the compound, each man holding up one corner of a poncho.  On the poncho is a dead Marine.  The grunts are screaming for a corpsman and when they put the poncho down, very gently, a pool of dark blood pours out onto the concrete deck.
    Rafter Man and I hurry down to the River of Perfumes.  We talk to a baby-faced Navy ensign who souvenirs us a ride on a Vietnamese gunboat ferrying reinforcements to the Vietnamese Marines.
    As we skim down the river Rafter Man asks, "Are these guys any good?"
    I nod.  "The best the Arvins got.  They're not as tough as the Korean Marines, though.  The ROK's are so hard that they got muscles in their shit.  The Blue Dragon Brigade.  I was on an op with them down by Hoi An."
    A shot pops from the shore.  The bullet buzzes over.
    The gunboat crew opens up with a fifty-caliber machine gun and a forty mike-mike cannon.
    Rafter Man watches with joy in his eyes as the bullets knock up thin stalks of water along the river bank.  He holds his piece at port arms, first to fight.
 

    The Strawberry Patch, a large triangle of land between the Citadel and the River of Perfumes, is a quiet suburb of Hue.  We get off the gunboat at the Strawberry Patch and wander around with the Vietnamese Marines until we see a little Marine with an expensive pump shotgun slung across his back, a case of C rations on his shoulder, and DEADLY DELTA on his flak jacket.
    I say, "Hey, bro, where's One-Five?"
    The little Marines turns, smiles.
    I say, "You need a huss with that?"
    "No thanks, Marine.  You people One-One?"
    "No, sir," I say.  Officers do not wear rank insignia in the field but snuffies learn to fix a man's rank by his voice.  "We're looking for One-Five.  I got a bro in the First Platoon.  They call him Cowboy.  He wears a cowboy hat."
    "I'm Cowboy's platoon commander.  The Lusthog Squad is in the platoon area up by the Citadel."
    We walk along with the little Marine.
    "I'm Joker, sir.  Corporal Joker.  This is Rafter Man.  We work for Stars and Stripes."
    "My name is Bayer.  Robert M. Bayer the third.  My people call me Shortround, for obvious reasons.  You here to make Cowboy famous?"
    I laugh.  "Never happen."
 

    The gray sky is clearing.  The white mist is moving away, exposing Hue to the sun.
    First Platoon's area is within sight of the massive walls of the Citadel.  While First Platoon waits for the attack to begin, the Lusthog Squad is partying.
    Crazy Earl points a forefinger at the three of us.  "Resupply!  Number one!"  Then:  "Hey, cowpuncher, the Joker is on deck."
    Cowboy looks up and grins.  He's holding a large brown bottle of tiger piss--Vietnamese beer.  "Well, no shit.  It's the Joker and his New Guy.  Lai dai, bros, come on, sit and share, sit and share."
    Rafter Man and I sit down in the dirt and Cowboy throws loose stacks of Vietnamese piasters into our laps.  I laugh, surprised.  I pick up the brightly colored bills, large bills, in large denominations.  Cowboy shoves bottles of tiger piss into our hands.
    "Hey, Skipper!" says Cowboy.  "Souvenir me spaghetti and meatballs, okay?  Every time we chow down I pull ham and mothers--the Breakfast of Champions.  I hate fucking ham and lima beans."
    The little Marine rips open one case of C's, pulls out a cardboard box, pitches it to Cowboy.
    Cowboy catches the box, squints at the label.  "Number one.  Thanks, Skipper."
    Crazy Earl throws another stack of piasters into my lap.
    Every man in the squad has a pile of money.
    "Man, we finally got paid," says Crazy Earl.  "You know what I am saying, gentlemen?  We been slave-labor mercenaries and now we are rich.  We got a million P's here, gentlemen.  Yes, that's beaucoup P's."
    I say, "Sir, where'd this money--"
    Mr. Shortround shrugs.  "Money?  I don't see any money."  He takes off his helmet.  On the back of the helmet:  Kill a Commie for Christ.  Mr. Shortround lights a cigarette.  "About half a million P's.  Maybe a thousand dollars per man in American money."
    Cowboy says, "You got to write about our John Wayne lieutenant."  Cowboy punches Mr. Shortround on the arm.  "Mr. Shortround is a mustang.  When the Crotch made him a lieutenant he was just a corporal, just a snuffy like us.  He's very little, but he is oh so bad."  Cowboy tilts his head back and sucks in a long swallow of tiger piss.  Then:  "We were taking this railroad terminal.  That's where the safe was.  We blew it open with a block of C-4.  The gooks were coming down on us with automatic weapons, B-40's, even a fucking mortar.  The Lieutenant got six confirmed.  Six!  He wasted those zipperheads like a born killer."
    "There are NVA here," says Crazy Earl.  "Many, many of them."
    "That's affirmative," says Cowboy.  "And they are as hard as slant-eyed drill instructors.  They are highly motivated individuals."
    Crazy Earl holds his bottle by the neck and smashes it across a fallen statue of a fat, smiling, bald-headed gook.  "This ain't a war, it's a series of overlapping riots.  We blow them away.  They come up behind us before we're out of sight and shoot us in the ass.  I know a guy in One-One that shot a gook and then tied a satchel charge to him and blew him into little invisible pieces because shooting gooks is a waste of time--they come back to life.  But these gooks piss you off so bad that you get to shoot something, anything.  Bros, half the confirmed kills I got are civilians and the other half is water buffaloes."  Earl pauses, burps, drawing the burp out as long as he can.  "You should have seen Animal Mother wasting those Arvins.  As soon as we hit the shit the Arvins started di-di mau-ing for the rear and Animal Mother spit and then blew them away."
    "I miss Stumbling Stewey," says Alice, the black giant.  He explains to me and Rafter Man:  "Stumbling Stewey was our honcho before Stoke, the Supergrunt.  Stumbling Stewey was real nervous, you know?  Very nervous.  I mean, he was nervous.  The only way the dude could relax was throwing hand grenades.  He was always popping frags all over the area.  Then he started holding on to them right up to the last second.  So one day ol' Stumbling Stewey pulled the pin and just stood there, staring, just staring and staring at that little ol' olive-drab egg in his hand..."
    Crazy Earl nods, burps.  "I was just a New Guy the day Stumbling Stewey blew himself away and Stoke the Supergrunt took the squad.  Stoke made me assistant squad leader.  He could see that I didn't know nothing, and all that good shit, but he said he liked my personality."  Crazy Earl takes a swallow from another bottle of beer.  "Hey, Cowboy, get your horse!  Quick!  My crabs are having a rodeo!"
    Donlon, the radioman, says, "I hope we stay here.  This street fighting is decent duty.  We can see them here.  We got cover, resupply, even some areas where you can cut a few Z's without digging a hole.  No rice paddies full of slope shit to swim in.  No immersion foot.  No jungle rot.  No leeches falling from the trees."
    Crazy Earl flips a beer bottle into the air and the bottle arches down and smashes upon a broken wall.  "Affirmative, but we blow up all these shrines and temples and the gooks  got lots of shit to hide under and we have to dig them out."
    Everybody gets a little high.  Crazy Earl goes into a long, detailed sea story about how the Montagnard Tribesmen are in fact Viet Cong cavemen.  "We said we were going to bomb them back to the Stone Age and we do not lie."
    Cowboy suggests that Montagnards are actually Viet Cong Indians and that the secret to winning the war is to issue each grunt a horse.  Then Victor Charlie would have to hump while Marines could ride.
    Crazy Earl puts his arm across the shoulders of the man next to him.  The man has a bush cover pulled down over his face, a beer in his hand, a pile of money in his lap.  "This is my bro," says Crazy Earl, removing the bush cover from the man's face.  "This is his party.  He is the guest of honor.  You see, today is his birthday."
    Rafter Man looks at me, his mouth open.  "Sarge..."
    I say, "Don't call me Sarge."
    The man next to Crazy Earl is a dead man, a North Vietnamese corporal, a clean-cut Asian kid about seventeen years old with ink-black hair, cropped short.
    Crazy Earl hugs the North Vietnamese corporal.  He grins.  "I made him sleep."  Crazy Earl puts his forefinger to his lips and whispers, "Shhh.  He's resting now."
    Before Rafter Man can start asking questions Animal Mother and another Marine double-time up the road, carrying a large cardboard box between them.  They drop the box and reach inside.  They throw plastic bags to each of us.  "Resupply!  Resupply!  Get your red-hot bennies.  Scarf it up!"
    Cowboy snatches up his bag and rips it open.  "Long-rats.  Outstanding!"
    I pick up my bag and I show it to Rafter Man.  "This is number one chow, Rafter.  The Army eats this shit on humps.  Add water and you got real food."
    Lieutenant Shortround says, "Okay, Mother, where'd you souvenir the chow?"
    Animal Mother spits.  He grins, baring rotten teeth.  "I stole it."
    "You stole it, sir."
    "Yeah, I stole it...sir."
    "That's looting.  They shoot people for that."
    "I stole it from the Army...sir."
    "Outstanding.  It is part of your duty as a Marine to harass our sister services.  Carry on."
    Cowboy punches the Marine who helped Animal Mother carry the cardboard box.  "This is T.H.E. Rock.  Make him famous.  He wears that rock around his neck so that when the dinks zap him they'll know who he is."
    T.H.E. Rock grins.  "You fucking alcoholic.  I wish you'd stop telling people about my rock."  He pulls out a rawhide cord and shows us his rock, a quartz crystal mounted in brass.
    Animal Mother props his M-60 machine gun against a wall and sits down, cross-legged.  "Man, I almost got me some eatin' pussy."
    T.H.E. Rock says, "That's affirmative.  Mother was chasing a little gook girl with his dick hanging out...."
    Lieutenant Shortround pulls his K-bar from its sheath and cuts a chunk from a block of C-4 plastic explosive he has extracted from a Claymore mine.  He puts the piece of C-4 into a little stove he has made by punching air holes into an empty C rations can.  He strikes a match and lights the C-4.  He fills a second can with water from his canteen and then holds the can of water over the blue flame.  "Mother, you know what I told you last week."
    A Phantom F-4 jet roars over and unloads a few rocket pods into the Citadel.  Explosions rock the deck.
    T.H.E. Rock looks at Animal Mother as he explains:  "She was just a baby, sir.  Thirteen or fourteen."
    Animal Mother grins, spits.  "If she's old enough to bleed, she's old enough to butcher."
    Mr. Shortround looks at Animal Mother, but doesn't say anything.  He takes a white plastic spoon out of his shirt pocket and puts it into the can of boiling water.  Then he takes a tinfoil packet of cocoa out of his thigh pocket, tears it open, pours the brown powder into the can of boiling water.  He takes hold of the white plastic spoon and begins to stir the hot chocolate slowly.  "Animal Mother?  Do you hear me?  I'm talking to you."
    Animal Mother glares at the lieutenant.  Then, "Oh, I was just fooling around, Lieutenant."
    Mr. Shortround stirs his hot chocolate.
    I say, "Animal Mother, how come you think you're so bad?"
    Animal Mother looks at me, surprised.  "Hey, motherfucker, don't even talk to me.  You ain't a grunt.  You want your face stomped in?  Huh?  You want to battle?"
    I pick up my M-16.
    Animal Mother reaches for his M-60.
    Cowboy says, "Man, if there's one thing I can't stand, it's violence.  I mean, if you got to blow Mother away, that's outstanding.  Nobody likes Mother anyway.  Shit, he don't even like himself.  But you got to get a real gun, not that toy M-16.  If it's Mattel, it's swell."  Cowboy unhooks a frag from his flak jacket and tosses it to me.  "Here.  Use this."
    I catch the hand grenade.  I toss it up into the air a few times, catching it, still looking at Animal Mother.  "No, I'm going to get me an M-60 and then me and this motherfucker are going to have one duel--"
    "Stow it, Joker," Mr. Shortround interrupts:  "Animal Mother, listen up.  You harass one more little girl and I'm going to put my little silver bar in my pocket and then you and I are going to throw some hands."
    Animal Mother grunts, spits, picks up a bottle of tiger piss.  He hooks a tooth into the metal cap and forces the bottle up.  The cap pops off.  He takes a swallow, then looks at me.  He mutter, "Fucking poge..."  He takes another couple of swallows and then says very loud, "Cowboy, you remember when we was set up in that L-shaped ambush up by Khe Sanh and blew away that NVA rifle squad?  You remember that little gook bitch that was guiding them?  She was a lot younger than the one I saw today."  He takes another swallow.  "I didn't get to fuck that one either.  But that's okay.  That's okay.  I shot her motherfucking face off."  Animal Mother burps.  He looks at me and smirks.  "That's affirmative, poge.  I shot her motherfucking face off."
    Alice shows me a necklace of little bones and tries to convince me that they're magic Voodoo bones from New Orleans, but they look like dry old chicken bones to me.
    "We...are animals," I say.
    After a couple of minutes Crazy Earl says, "Grunts ain't animals.  We just do our job.  We're shot at and missed, shit on and hit.  The gooks are grunts, like us.  They fight, like us.  They got lifer poges running their country and we got lifer poges running ours.  But at least the gooks are grunts, like us.  Not the Viet Cong.  The VC are some dried-up old mamasans with rusty carbines.  The NVA, man, we are tight with the NVA.  We kill each other, no doubt about it, but we're tight.  We're hard."  Crazy Earl tosses an empty beer bottle to the deck and picks up his Red Ryder air rifle.  He fires the air rifle at the bottle and the BB ricochets off the bottle with a faint ping.  "I love the little commie bastards, man.  I really do.  Grunts understand grunts.  These are great days we are living, bros.  We are jolly green giants, walking with the earth with guns.  The people we wasted here today are the finest individuals we will ever know.  When we rotate back to the World we're gonna miss having somebody around who's worth shooting.  There ought to be a government for grunts.  Grunts could fix the world up.  I never met a grunt I didn't like, except Mother."
    I say, "Never happen.  It would make too much sense.  It's better that we save Viet Nam from the people who live here.  Of course, they love us; we'll kill them if they don't.  When you've got them by the balls their hearts and minds will follow."
    Donlon says, "Well, we're rich and we got beaucoup beer and beaucoup chow.  Now all we need is the Bob Hope show."
    I stand up.  The beer has gone to my head.  "I'll be Bob Hope."  I hesitate.  I touch my face.  "Oh, wow, my nose ain't big enough."  Mild laughter.
    A hundred yards away a heavy machine gun fires a long burst.  Scattered small arms fire replies.
    I do impressions.
    "Friends, I am Bob Hope.  You all remember me, I'm sure.  I was in some movies with Bing Crosby.  Well, I'm here in Viet Nam to entertain you.  The folks back home don't care enough about you to bring you back to the World so you won't get wasted, but they do care enough to send comedians over here so that at least you can die laughing.  So have you heard the one about the Viet Nam veteran who came home and said, 'Look, Mom, no hands!'"
    The squad laughs.  They say:  "Do John Wayne!"
    Doing my John Wayne voice, I tell the squad a joke:  "Stop me if you're heard this.  There was a Marine of nuts and bolts, half robot--weird but true--whose every move was cut from pain as though from stone.  His stoney little hide had been crushed and broken.  But he just laughed and said, 'I've been crushed and broken before.'  And sure enough, he had the heart of a bear.  His heart functioned for weeks after it had been diagnosed by doctors.  His heart weighed half a pound.  His heart pumped seven hundred thousand gallons of warm blood through one hundred thousand miles of veins, working hard--hard enough in twelve hours to lift one sixty-five ton boxcar one foot off the deck.  He said.  The world would not waste the heart of a bear, he said.  On his clean blue pajamas many medals hung.  He was a walking word of history, in the shop for a few repairs.  He took it on the chin and was good.  One night in Japan his life came out of his body--black--like a question mark.  If you can keep your head while others are losing theirs perhaps you have misjudged the situation.  Stop me if you've heard this..."
    Nobody says anything.
    "The war is ruining my sense of humor," I say.  I squat.
    Cowboy nods.  "There it is.  All I'm doing is counting my days, just counting my days.  A hundred days and a wake-up and I'll be on that big silver Freedom Bird, flying back to the World, back to the block, back to the Lone Star State, back to the land of the big PX.  And I'll have medals all over myself.  And I won't be fucked up.  No, when you get fucked up they send you to Japan.  You go to Japan and somebody pins a medical discharged to what's left of you and all that good shit."
    "I'd rather be wasted," I say.  "Hire the handicapped--they're fun to watch."
    Cowboy grins.
    T.H.E. Rocks says, "You know, my mom writes me a lot of letters about what a brave boy T.H.E. Rock is.  T.H.E. Rock is not a boy; he's a person."  He drinks beer.  "I know