Gustav Hasford - The Short-Timers

Cowboy grins. He says, "There it is."

We see the great walls of the Citadel. With zigzagging ramparts thirty feet high and eight feet thick, surrounded by a moat, the fortress looks like an ancient castle from a fairy tale about dragons who guard treasure and knights on white horses and princesses in need of assistance. The castle is black stone against a cold gray sky, with dark towers populated by shadows that are alive.

The Citadel is actually a small walled city constructed by French engineers as protection for the home of Gia Long, Emperor of the Annamese Empire. When Hue was the Imperial Capital, the Citadel protected the Emperor and the royal family and the ancient treasure of the Forbidden City from pirates raiding from the South China Sea.

We are big white American boys in steel helmets and heavy flak jackets, armed with magic weapons, laying siege to a castle in modern times. One-Five has changed a lot since the days when it was the first battalion to hit the beach at Guadacanal.

Metal birds flash in and shit steel eggs all over the place. F-4 Phantom jet fighters are dropping napalm, high explosives, and Willy Peter--white phosphorus. With bombs we are expressing ourselves; we are writing our history in shattered blocks of stone.

Black roses of smoke bloom inside the Citadel.

We ditty-bop Indian-file along both sides of the road, twenty yards between each man. The lines pop and snick as cocking levers are snapped back and bolts sent home, chambering rounds. Safeties are clicked off. Selector switches are thumbed to the full automatic position. Those Marines armed with M-14's fix bayonets.

Machine guns start typing out history. First our guns, then theirs. Snipers on the wall fire a round here and there, sighting us in.

War is a catalogue of sounds. Our ears direct our feet.

A bullet crunches into a wall.

Somebody starts singing:

M.I.C...K.E.Y...M.O.U.S.E.

The machine guns are exchanging a steady fire now, like old friends having a conversation. Thumps and thuds puncture the rhythm of the bullets.

The snipers zero in on us. Each shot becomes a word spoken by death. Death is talking to us. Death wants to tell us a funny secret. We may not like death but death likes us. Victor Charlie is hard but he never lies. Guns tell the truth. Guns never say, "I'm only kidding." War is ugly because the truth can be ugly and war is very sincere.

I say out loud: "You and me, God--right?"

I send guard-mail directives to my personal Tactical Area of Responsibility, which extends to the perimeters of my skin. Dear Feet, tiptoe through the tulips. Balls, hang in there. Legs, don't do any John Waynes. My body is serviceable. I intend to maintain my body in the excellent condition in which it was issued.

In the silence of our hearts we speak to our werewolf weapons; our weapons reply.

Cowboy is listening to me mutter to myself. "John Wayne? Hey, Joker's right. This ain't real. This is just a John Wayne movie. Joker can be Paul Newman. I'll be a horse."

"Yeah."

"Crazy Earl says, "Can I be Gabby Hayes?"

"The Rock can be a rock," says Donlon, the radioman.

Alice says, "I'll be Ann-Margret."

"Animal Mother can be a rabid buffalo," says Stutten, honcho of the third fire team.

The walls are assaulted by werewolf laughter.

"Who'll be the Indians?"

The little enemy folks audition for the part--machine-gun bullets rip across a wall to starboard.

Lieutenant Shortround calls up his squad leaders with a hand signal--he holds up his right hand and twirls it. Three squad leaders, including Crazy Earl, double-time to him. He talks to them, points at the wall. The squad leaders double-time back to their squads to confer with their fire team leaders.

Lieutenant Shortround blows a whistle and then we're all running like big-assed birds. We don't want to to this. We are all afraid. But if you stayed behind you would be alone. Your friends are going; you go too. You're not a person anymore. You don't have to be who you are anymore. You're part of an attack, one green object in a line of green objects, running toward a breach in the Citadel wall, running through hard noise and bursting metal, running, running, running...you don't look back.

We double-time, werewolves with guns, panting. We run as though impatient to sink into the darkness that is opening up to swallow us. Something snaps and we're past the point of no return. We're going through the broken wall. We're running fast and we aren't going to stop. Nothing can stop us.

The air is being torn.

The deck shifts beneath your feet. The asphalt sucks at your feet like sand on the beach.

Green tracer bullets dissect the sky.

Bullets hit the street. The impact of the bullets is the sound of a covey of quail taking flight. And sparks. You feel the shock of bullets punching through bricks. Splinters of stone sting your face.

People tell you what to do.

Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving. If you stop moving, if you hesitate, your heart will stop beating. Your legs are machines winding you up like a mechanical toy. If your legs stop moving, your taut spring will run down and you will fall over, a lump without motion.

You feel like you could run around the world. Now the asphalt is a trampoline and you are fast and graceful, a green jungle cat.

Sounds. Cardboard being torn. Head-on collisions. Trains derailing. Walls falling into the sea.

Metal hornets swarm overhead.

Pictures: The dark eyes of guns; the cold eyes of guns. Pictures blink and blur, a wall, tiny men, shattered blocks of stone.

Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving...

Your feet take you up...up...over the rubble of the wall...up...up...you're loving it...climbing, you're not human, you're an animal, you feel like a god...you scream: "DIE! DIE! DIE, YOU MOTHERFUCKERS! DIE! DIE! DIE!"

Hornets try to swarm into you--you swat them aside.

Boots crunch in powdered stone. Equipment flaps, clangs, and rattles. People curse.

"Oh, fuck ."

Keep moving.

Your Boy Scout shit is wet with sweat. Salty sweat wiggles into your eyes and onto your lips. Your right index finger is on the trigger of your M-16. Here I come, you say to yourself, here I come with a gun full of bullets. How many rounds left in this magazine? How many days left to my rotation date? Am I carrying too much gear? Where are they? And where the hell are my feet?

A face. The face moves. Your weapon sights in. Your M-16 automatic rifle vibrates. The face is gone.

Keep moving.

And then you feet no longer touch the ground, and you wonder what's happening to you. Your body relaxes, then goes rigid. You hear the sound of a human body erupting, the ugly sound of a human body being torn apart by high-speed metal. The pictures blinking before your eyes slow down like a silent film on a defective reel. Your weapon floats our of your hands and suddenly you are alone. You are floating. Up. Up. You are being lifted up by a wall of sound. The pictures blink faster and faster and suddenly the filmstrip snaps and the wall of sound slams into you--total, terrible sound. The deck is enormous as you fall. You merge with the earth. Your flak jacket absorbs much of the impact. Your helmet falls off your head and spins. You're on your back, crushed by sound. You think: Is that the sky?

"CORPSMAN," someone says, far away. "CORPSMAN!"

You're on your back. All around you boots dance by, pounding and crunching. Dirt clods and pieces of stone fall from the sky, into your mouth, your eyes. You spit out stone. You hold up one of your hands. You try to tell the pounding boots: Hey, don't step one me.

Your palms are hot. Your legs are broken. With one of your hands you touch yourself, your face, your thighs, you search your broken guts for warm, wet cavities.