Gustav Hasford - The Short-Timers

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 I'm a person because I know there ain't no Santa Claus. There ain't no fucking Easter bunny. You know? Back in the World we thought that the future is always safe in a little gold box somewhere. Well, I'll live forever. I'm T.H.E. Rock."

Crazy Earl grunts. "Hey Skipper, what say we stuff some dope into your shotgun and toke it through the barrel?"

Mr. Shortround shakes his head. "No can do, Craze. We're moving most skosh."

Donlon is talking into his handset. "Sir, the C.O. wants the Actual."

Donlon gives the handset to Mr. Shortround. The Lieutenant talks to Delta Six, the commanding officer of Delta One-Five.

"Number ten. Just when we were scarfing up some of the bennies," says Crazy Earl. "Just when we were getting a little piece of slack..."

Lieutenant Shortround stands up and starts putting on his gear. "Moving, rich kids. Saddle up. Craze, get your people on their feet."

"Moving. Moving."

We all stand up, except for the NVA corporal who remains seated, a beer in his hand, a pile of money in his lap, his split lips curled back in a death grin.

Alice steps up with a machete in one hand and a blue canvas shopping bag in the other. He kneels. With two blows of the machete Alice chops off the NVA corporal's feet. He picks up each foot by the big toe and drops it into the blue shopping bag. "This gook was a very hard dude. Number one! Big Magic!"

The grunts stuff beer bottles, piasters, long-rats, and looted souvenirs into their baggy pockets, into Marine-issue field packs, and into NVA haversacks souvenired from enemy grunts they have wasted. The grunts pick up their weapons.

Moving. Moving. I walk behind Cowboy. Rafter Man walks behind me.

I say, "Well, I guess this Citadel shit is going to be oh so bad. But it could be worse. I mean, at least it's not Parris Island."