Gustav Hasford - The Short-Timers

Animal Mother continues to chew up the fronts of all the mansions with his black steel machine gun.

The tank fires a second round. The ground floor of the first house is blown apart. The tank grinds forward twenty yards, stops, fires again. The second story of the second house explodes.

Cowboy leads us into the mansion at our end of the street. Inside, we leapfrog from corner to corner. Cowboy pops a frag and underhands it into somebody's kitchen. The detonation rocks the whole house, numbs our ears.

Rafter Man steps forward. He gestures to Cowboy, jerks his thumb at the ceiling. Cowboy holds up a circled thumb and index finger, "okay." Rafter Man pops a frag and pitches it up a stairwell to the second story. The explosion splits the plaster over our heads.

Outside, up the street, the tank fires again.

Cowboy punches me in the chest with his knuckles. Then he punches Rafter Man and Alice. He aims his right index finger at Donlon, then at the deck. Donlon nods and begins to silently point out the positions he wants the men in the squad to take.

Cowboy waves his hand and we follow him up the stairs.

Upstairs, Alice kicks out a window and we all hop out onto the roof.

The tank is two houses away. It fires.

We drop our gear and jump the six-foot chasm between houses.

On the roof of the second house Cowboy stands up and signal Lance Corporal Stutten, who waves back with his poncho. Bullets from Lance Corporal Stutten's fire team stop hitting the rest of the house we're standing on.

I double-time to the front of the house and I wave to Animal Mother. Bullets from Animal Mother's machine gun stop hitting the front of the house.

The tank fires. The shell bursts. Shrapnel whines over us.

We converge on a skylight. I drop a frag through the glass.

The grenade explodes in an invisible room below. Concussion shatters the skylight.

We drop through the ragged rectangular hole into somebody's library. Shrapnel has mangled leatherbound books. I pick up a small leatherbound book for a souvenir. The author is Jules Verne; the title is in French. I stuff the book into my thigh pocket and reach to the front of my flak jacket for another grenade.

We work our way through the house, fragging every hallway, every room. But we can't find the sniper.

The tank fires into the second story of the house next door.

I say, "No time."

Cowboy shrugs. "He wasted T.H.E. Rock."

I take a few steps down the stairs. Cowboy holds up his hand. "Listen."

Animal Mother's M-60 is ripping up the roof over our heads.

I say, "Is Mother dinky-dow ? Crazy?"

Cowboy shakes his head. "No. Mother is a prick, but he's a good grunt."

We run back to the library.

We drag a heavy antique desk to the ruined skylight and Cowboy climbs up onto it and lifts himself back onto the roof.

The crack of a Simonov sniper's carbine pierces the muted rhythm of Mother's machine gun.

Cowboy falls back through the skylight. Alice, who has climbed up onto the desk, catches Cowboy and eases him down to the desktop.

I pop a frag. I climb up onto the desk and take hold of the roof with my left hand. I let the spoon fly. The spoon phinnnnings away and rattles across the floor. I hold the sweaty green oval for three seconds and, lifting myself up, I flip it up and back so that it rolls across the roof directly over us. The frag bursts, spraying seven hundred and fifty pieces of steel wire across the roof. The ceiling splits. Alice hugs Cowboy. Plaster and splintered wood bounce off my helmet.

Rafter Man jumps up onto the desk and lift himself up onto the roof.

Surprised, I pull myself up after him.

The tank fires into the ground floor of the house next door.

Rafter Man and I crawl on our bellies on the roof.

Behind us, Alice lifts Cowboy over his head like a wrestler, deposits him gently upon the roof. Then Alice climbs up. He picks Cowboy up in his arms as though Cowboy were an oversized baby.

Doc Jay calls to us from the roof of the first house.

Alice pulls a tent rope from a thigh pocket and ties it under Cowboy's arms. He flips the other end of the rope to Doc Jay. Doc Jay gets a good grip on the rope and braces himself as Alice lowers Cowboy into the chasm between the houses. Doc Jay pulls in the slack as Cowboy falls. Cowboy's limp body swings over and thuds into the wall beneath Doc Jay's feet. Doc Jay grits his teeth, pulls Cowboy up. Alice looks back at me, but I wave him on. He leaps over to the first house.

Doc Jay gathers up all of our gear and Alice throws Cowboy over his shoulder and they start back down.

Rafter Man has crawled up to the crest of the roof. He peeks over the crest.

Bang . A hiss.

I crawl up beside Rafter Man. I take a peek. From behind a low chimney at the opposite corner of the roof a thin black line protrudes.

We hear the incredibly loud clanking of the tank as it rolls on the street below. It stops.

Animal Mother and Lance Corporal Stutten stop firing.

"Let's go," I say. I grab Rafter Man's shoulder. "The tank can waste the gook."

Rafter Man doesn't look at me. He pulls away.

I turn away and I duck walk to the edge of the roof. I stand up and am about to jump across when the house explodes beneath me.

I fall on my back.

The sniper is moving.

Rafter Man jumps over the crest of the roof and slides down the incline on his ass.

I try to stand up. But all of my bones have shifted one inch to the left.

Suddenly a foot steps on my chest, pinning me. The sniper looks down, surprised. The sniper sees that I'm helpless, glances back at Rafter Man, gets ready to jump across to the other roof.

Rafter Man runs back up the incline and slides back down on his ass, ten yards away.

I reach for my grease gun.

The sniper turns toward Rafter Man and raises her SKS carbine.

The sniper is the first Victor Charlie I've seen who was not dead, captured, or far, far away. She is a child, no more than fifteen years old, a slender Eurasian angel with dark, beautiful eyes, which, at the same time, are the hard eyes of a grunt. She's not quite five feet tall. Her hair is long and black and shiny, held together by rawhide cord tied in a bow. Her shirt and shorts are mustard-colored khaki and look new. Slung diagonally across her chest, separating her small breasts, is a white cloth tube fat with sticky reddish rice. Her B.F. Goodrich sandals have been cut from discarded tires. Around her tiny waist hangs a web belt from which dangle homemade hand grenades with hollow wooden handles, made by stuffing black powder into Coca-Cola cans, a knife for cleaning fish, and six canvas pouches containing banana clips for the AK-47 assault rifle slung on her back.

Bang. Rafter Man is firing his M-16. Bang. Bang.

The sniper lowers her weapon. She looks at Rafter Man. She looks at me. She tries to raise her weapon.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bullets shock flesh. Rafter Man is firing. Rafter Man's bullets are punching the life out of the sniper.

The sniper falls off the roof.

The tank fires into the ground floor beneath us. The house shakes.

I stand up. I feel like a dead man's shit. I walk to the front of the house. I wave to the blond tank commander. He swings a fifty-caliber machine gun around and aims it at me. I step into full view on the edge of the roof. I wave an "all clear."

The tank commander gives me a thumbs-up.

I pop a green smoke grenade and I drop it on the roof.

I limp over to the skylight and I climb back down into the library.

Rafter Man has already jumped into the library and is running down the shrapnel-scarred stairs.

Down on the street I watch as the tank rolls up to the last house still standing. I wave another "all clear" and the tank commander gives me another smile and another thumbs-up and then the tank fires, blasting the top floor. If fires again, blasting the ground floor.