Gustav Hasford - The Short-Timers

Alice laughs. "This is such a fucking waste. I mean, this place is like a magic temple, you know? The gooks love this place. Blowing it away is like, oh, blowing away the White House. Except that nobody gives a shit about the White House and this place is ten times as old."

I shrug.

"It's crazy," Alice says. "It's just plain fucking crazy. I wish I was back in the World."

I say, "No, back in the World is the crazy part. This, all this world of shit, this is real."

Cowboy comes around later and says that Delta's company commander has passed the word to regroup on the beach at the Strawberry Patch.

We march. We look at the rubble we have made. We get tired of looking at it; there's so much of it.

Twilight.

What's left of Delta Company, 1st Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment, First Marine Division, is sprawled all over the beach down by the River of Perfumes. The bearded grunts are sleeping, cooking chow, bragging, comparing souvenirs, and reenacting every moment of the battle, real and imagined, every man a hero beyond belief.

The Lusthog Squad is wasted. We have nailed our names into the pages of history enough for today. Canteens come out. It's too hot to cook so we eat cold C's.

Some of the guys are getting to their feet.

Donlon stands up, shouts, "LOOK!"

Five hundred yards north there is an island in the River of Perfumes. On the island a semicircle of miniature tanks is converging upon a frantic colony of ants. The ants drop their gear and sling their AK-47 assault rifles over their backs and they jump into the river. The ants swim for it.

All of the tanks open fire with ninety-millimeter shells and with fifty-caliber machine guns.

Some of the ants sink.

Cobra gunships buzz out of a horizon that is the color of lead and swoop in for the kill.

The ants swim faster.

The hovering gunships chop up the brown water with their machine guns.

The ants swim, dive, or, in their panic, drown.

Delta Company gets onto its feet.

Three Cobra gunships zoom down to within a few yards of the river and the helmeted door gunners machine-gun the ants as they flop in the water, trapped in a syncopated hurricane of hot air beating down from the swirling rotor blades, trapped in the water while their red life runs out through bullet holes.

Only one ant reaches the river bank. The ant opens fire at the gunships as they hover over the water like monsters feeding.

Someone says, "See that shit? He's hard-core."

One gunship detaches itself from the blood feast and skims across the River of Perfumes. The chopper drops bullets all over the beach, all around the ant.

The ant runs off the beach.

The gunship zooms back to feed on the ants in the water.

The ant runs onto the beach and opens fire.

The gunship banks sharply and comes in low, rockets swooshing from under its belly and machine guns chattering.

Again, the ant runs off the beach.

The gunship is halfway back to the ants in the water when the ant on the beach reappears and opens fire.

This time the gunship pilot brings his ship in low enough to decapitate the ant with the chopper's skids. The gunship fires.

The ant fires.

Machine-gun bullets knock the ant over.

The gunship swings around to verify that it is a confirmed kill.

As machine-gun bullets snap into the wet sand, the ant stands up, aims its tiny AK-47 assault rifle, and fires a thirty-round magazine on full automatic.

The Cobra gunship explodes, splits open like a bloated green egg. The gutted carcass of aluminum and plexiglass bounces along, suspended in the air, burning, trailing black smoke. And then it falls.

The flaming chopper hits the river and the flowing water sucks it down.

The ant does not move. The ant fires another magazine on full automatic. The ant is shooting at the sky.

Tired of firing into floating corpses, the remaining two gunships attack.

The ant walks off the beach.

The gunships hit the beach and sand dunes with every weapon they've got. They circle and circle and circle like predatory birds. Then, out of ammunition and out of fuel, they buzz straight into the horizon and vanish.

Delta Company applauds and cheers and whistles. "Get some! Number one! Out-fucking-standing! Payback is a motherfucker!"

Alice says, "That guy was a grunt."

While we wait for the gunboats to come and take us back across the River of Perfumes we talk about how the NVA grunt was one hell of a hard individual and about how it would be okay if he came to America and married all our sisters and about how we all hope that he will live to be a hundred years old because the world will be diminished when he's gone.

The next morning, Rafter Man and I get the map coordinates of a mass grave from some green ghouls and we hump over to the site to get Captain January his atrocity photographs.

The mass grave smells really bad--the odor of blood, the stink of worms, decayed human beings. The Arvin snuffies doing the digging in a school yard have all tied olive-drab skivvy shirts around their faces, but casualties due to uncontrollable puking are heavy.

We see corpses of Vietnamese civilians who have been buried alive, faces frozen in mid-scream, hands like claws, the fingernails bloody and caked with damp earth. All of the dead people are grinning that hideous, joyless grin of those who have heard the joke, of those who have seen the terrible secrets of the earth. There's even the corpse of a dog which Victor Charlie could not separate from its master.

There are no corpses with their hands tied behind their backs. However, the green ghouls assure us that they have seen such corpses elsewhere. So I borrow some demolition wire from the Arvin snuffies and, crushing the stiff bodies with my knee until dry bones crack, I bind up a family, assembled at random from the multitude--a man, his wife, a little boy, a little girl, and, of course, their dog. As a final touch, I wire the dog's feet together.

Noon at the MAC-V compound. We say good-bye to Cowboy and to the Lusthog Squad.

Cowboy has found a stray puppy and is carrying the bony little animal inside his shirt. Cowboy says to me, "Keep your ass down, bro. Scuttlebutt is, the Lusthog Squad is headed up to Khe Sanh, a very hairy area. But no sweat; we can hack it. And maybe they got some horses up there. So if you ever feel hard enough to be a real Marine, a grunt, bop up to see us."

I pet Cowboy's puppy. "Never happen. But you take care, you piece of shit. We've got a date with your sister I don't care to miss."

Rafter Man says good-bye to Alice and to the other guys in Cowboy's squad. He shakes hands with Cowboy and pets Cowboy's puppy. In my best John Wayne voice I say, "See you later, Mother."

Animal Mother says, "Not if I see you first."

Rafter Man and I ditty-bop down Route One, south, toward Phu Bai. We hump in crushing heat for hours, looking for a ride. But the sun is without mercy and there are no convoys in sight.

We sit in the shade by the road. "It's hot," I say. "It's very hot. Wish that old mamasan was here. I'd souvenir beaucoup money for one Coke..."

Rafter Man stands up. "No sweat. I can find her..." Rafter Man ditty-bops into the road.

I start to say something about how it might be a good idea for us to stay together. There are still plenty of NVA stragglers in the area. "Rafter..." But then I remember that Rafter Man has got his first confirmed kill. Rafter Man can take care of himself.

The deck trembles. A tank? I look up, but I can't see anything on the road. Yet nothing on earth sounds as big as a tank, nothing produces that terrible rumble of metal like a tank. It shakes my bones. I jump up, weapon ready. I look up and down the road. Nothing. But all around me is the clamor of rolling iron and the odor of diesel fuel.