Gustav Hasford - The Short-Timers

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 some thing, any thing. 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 ner vous. 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?"