Gustav Hasford - The Short-Timers

Alice double-times up the road. "That sniper is still there. You can't see him, but he's there."

Cowboy doesn't say anything; he's looking at the long row of body bags. He takes a few steps. I walk along with him.

Mr. Shortround doesn't look like an officer anymore. He's naked, lying facedown on a bloody poncho. His skin is yellow. His eyes are dry in their sockets, Dead, Mr. Shortround is just another meat-bag with a hole in it.

Cowboy looks down at Mr. Shortround. He takes off his muddy Stetson.

Donlon steps up to Mr. Shortround. There are tears in Donlon's eyes. He fumbles with his handset. Donlon says, "We're mean Marines, sir." He hurries away, fumbling with the handset.

Alice walks up to the row of body bags and kicks Mr. Shortround's corpse. "Go easy, bro."

The squad files by.

I kneel. I fold the poncho over Mr. Shortround's small body. I feel a great need to say something to the green plastic lump with the human feet. I say, "Well, you're short, sir."

I think about what I have just said and I know that making a bad pun was a stupid thing to do. But then anything you could say to a dead officer who was killed by one of his own men would have to be pretty ridiculous.

Rafter Man and I double-time to catch up with the squad.

We hump past scented lotus ponds, through landscaped gardens, over bridges linking delicately structured pagodas.

All around the beautiful gardens invisible gunships rip into the peace and quiet like dogs fighting in a church.

Cowboy holds up his right hand. The squad stops. Alice aims an index finger at a street of big mansions.

Cowboy looks at me, then at the squad. Cowboy pulls me aside. We walk ahead for a few steps. "That sniper opened up on us in a gook graveyard. Some guys in One-One told us they found gold bars in the Emperor's palace. They had all they could hump, so we was going to souvenir the rest." Cowboy wipes sweat from his eyes. "T.H.E. Rock was walking point. The sniper shot T.H.E. Rock's foot off. Shot it off. The Hardass Squad went out to get him, one at a time. That sniper shot all their feet off. We were hiding behind graves, those old round graves like baseball mounds, and we had nine grunts down in the street...." Cowboy pulls a red bandanna from his back pockets and wipes his sweaty face. "Mr. Shortround wouldn't let us go get them. It made him sick, but he held us back. Then the sniper started shooting off fingers, toes, ears--everything. The guys in the road were crying and begging and we were all growling like animals, but Mr. Shortround held us back. Then Animal Mother started to go for them and the Skipper grabbed Animal Mother's collar and hit him in the face. Animal Mother was so mad I thought he was going to kill us all. But before he could do anything the sniper started putting rounds into the guys in the street. He didn't miss more than a couple of times. He popped T.H.E. Rock's head off and then he put a round through each guy's head. They were all moaning and praying and then it was quiet and they were dead and it was like we were dead too..."

I don't know what to say.

Cowboy spits, his face a sweaty stone. "After the NVA pulled out, the lifers sent in the Arvin Black Panthers to take the Forbidden City. Shit. Nothing left but rear guard squads. We stomped the NVA and they stomped us and then the lifers send in the Arvins, like the goddamn Arvins did it. Mr. Shortround said it was their country, said we was only helping out, said it would boost the morale of the Vietnamese people. Well, fuck the Vietnamese people. The horrible hogs in hard, hungry Hotel Company ran up an American flag. Like on Iwo Jima. But some poge officers ordered them to take it down. The snuffies had to run up the stinking Vietnamese flag, which is yellow, which is the right color for these chickenshit people. We're getting slaughtered in this city. And we can't even run up a fucking flag. I just can't hack this shit, bro. My job is to get my people back to the World in one piece." Cowboy coughs, spits, wipes his nose with the back of his hand. "Under fire, these are the best human beings in the world. All they need is for somebody to throw hand grenades at them for the rest of their lives...These guys depend on me. I can't send my people out to get that sniper, Joker. I might lose the whole squad."

I wait until I'm sure that Cowboy has finished talking and then I say, "That sounds like a personal problem to me, Cowboy. I can't tell you what to do. If I was a human being instead of a Marine, maybe I'd know." I scratch my armpit. "You're the honcho. You're the sergeant around here and you give the orders. You make the decisions. I could never do it. I could never run a rifle squad. Never happen, bro. I just don't have the balls."

Cowboy thinks about it. Then he grins. "You're right, Joker. You shitbird. You're right. I've got to get my program squared away. I wish Gunny Gerheim was here. He'd know what to do." Cowboy thinks about it. He grins. "Shit." He walks back to the squad. "Moving..."

The squad hesitates. Crazy Earl has always been the one to say what is.

Animal Mother stands up. He sets his M-60 machine gun into his hip. He doesn't speak. He looks at the dirty faces of the squad. He moves out.

The squad collects its gear and gets to its feet.

Cowboy waves his hand and Mother takes the point.

We are discussing the best way to search the street house to house when a tank rumbles up.

Donlon says, "Hey, a tank! We can get it to--"

" No ," says Cowboy. "Number ten! We don't need any help."

"That's affirmative," says Animal Mother.

I say, "A tank could flush him for us, Cowboy. Think about it. We can't budge gook grunts without supporting arms."

Cowboy shrugs. "Oh, to hell with it."

I double-time down the road to meet the tank. I run past heaps of rubble which were houses yesterday, bricks and stones and shattered wood today.

The tank jerks to a halt. The turret whirs. The big ninety-millimeter gun locks on me. For a long moment I think that the tank is going to blow me away.

The top half of the blond tank commander appears in the turret hatch. The lieutenant is wearing a flak jacket and an olive-drab football helmet with a microphone that protrudes over his lip. He is a mechanical centaur, half man, half tank.

I point out the mansions and I explain about the sniper, about how the sniper wasted our bro and all that good shit.

Cowboy comes over and tells the lieutenant to "wait one" and then to start wasting the mansions, one after another.

The blond tank commander is silent. He gives us a thumbs-up.

Cowboy sends Lance Corporal Stutten and his fire team around behind the row of mansions.

Animal Mother sets up his M-60 on a low wall and opens fire, raking the mansions at random. Every fifth round is a tracer.

The tank rolls up to the first mansion.

The rest of us double-time down an alley and cross the road a hundred yards down the street, at the end of the row of mansions.

At the opposite end of the street sits the tank. The tank fires a round of high explosives. The upper story of the first house is blown apart. The roof collapses.

Animal Mother continues to fire from his position near the tank.

Cowboy double-times to the first house at our end of the street. He steps carefully to the rear corner of the house, peeks around the corner. Cowboy waits for Lance Corporal Stutten to pop a green smoke as a signal that his fire team is in position as a blocking force.

We wait.

When green smoke begins to pour from a drainage ditch behind the first house at the far end of the street Cowboy waves his hand and we all open fire at the first house at our end of the street. One at a time, we run across the street to the first house, joining Cowboy.

Cowboy waves his hand around the corner and Lance Corporal Stutten's fire team opens up with their weapons on full automatic, pouring hundreds of high-velocity copper-jacketed bullets into the rear of the first house at their end of the street.