Gustav Hasford - The Short-Timers

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."