Gustav Hasford: The Short-Timers

Silence. They all look at me. I have never felt so alive.

Semper Fi, Mom and Dad, Semper Fi, my werewolf children. Payback is a motherfucker.

They shift their gear to more comfortable positions.

They wait for an order. I pick up Cowboy's muddy Stetson.

I wave my hand and the squad moves out, moves back down the trail.

Nobody talks. We're all too tired to talk, to joke, to call each other names. The day has been too hot, the hump too long. We've shot up our share of Victor Charlie jungle plants and we are wasted.

We wrap ourselves in pastel fantasies of varied designs and "X" another day off our short-timer's calendars. We look forward to imaginary bennies: hot showers, cold beer, a fix of Coke (because things go better with Coke), juicy steaks, mail from hone, and a moment of privacy in which to massage our wands, inspired by fading photographs of loving wives and girlfriends back in the World.

The showers will be cold, the beer, if there is any, will be hot. No steak. No Cokes. The mail, if there is any, will not be from sweethearts. The mail from hometown America, like the half dozen letters I carry unopened in my rucksack, will say: Write more often be careful if you think it's tough there bought this used car what a report card mother is taking shots nothing good on TV don't write depressing letters so maybe send me fifty bucks new furniture in the dining room for a ring quick buddy she's pregnant be real careful write more often and so on and so on until you feel like you just got a Dear John letter from the whole damned world.

We hump back down the trail.

Back on the hill, Sorry Charlie, our bro, will laugh at us one more time; Sorry Charlie, at least, will greet us with a smile.

Putting our minds back into our feet, we concentrate all our energy into taking that next step, that one more step, just one more step.... We try very hard not to think about anything important, try very hard not to think that there's no slack and that it's a long walk home.

There it is.