Gustav Hasford - The Short-Timers

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."