Gustav Hasford - The Short-Timers

To me, the letters are like shoes for the dead, who do not walk.

As dusk approaches, Rafter Man and I hitchhike back to the ISO hootch in the First Marine Division HQ area.

Rafter Man writes a letter to his mother.

I take my black Magic Marker and I make a thick X over the number 59 on the shapely thigh of a the life-sized nude woman I've drawn on the plywood partition behind my rack. There is a smaller version of the same woman on the back of my flak jacket.

Almost every Marine in Viet Nam carries a short-timer's calendar of his tour of duty--the usual 365 days--plus a bonus of 20 days for being a Marine. Some are drawn on flak jackets with Magic Markers. Some are drawn on helmets. Some are tattoos. Others are mimeographed drawings of Snoopy, his beagle body cut up by pale blue ink, or a helmet on a pair of boots--"The Short-Timer." The designs vary, but the most popular design is a big-busted woman-child cut up into pieces like a puzzle. Each day another fragment of her delicious anatomy is inked out, her crotch being reserved, of course, for those last few days in country.

Sitting on my rack, I type out my story about Hill 327, the serviceman's oasis, about how all of us fine young American boys are assured our daily ration of pogey bait and about how those of us who are lucky enough to visit the rear areas get to see Mr. John Wayne karate-chop Victor Charlie to death in a Technicolor cartoon about some other Viet Nam.

The article I actually write is a masterpiece. It takes talent to convince people that war is a beautiful experience. Come one, come all to exotic Viet Nam, the jewel of Southeast Asia, meet interesting, stimulating people of an ancient culture...and kill them. Be the first kid on your block to get a confirmed kill.

I fall into my rack. I try to sleep.

The setting sun pours orange across the rice paddies beyond our wire.

Midnight. Down in Dogpatch, in the ville, the gooks are shooting off fireworks to celebrate the Vietnamese New Year. Rafter Man and I sit on the tin roof of our hootch so that we can watch the more impressive fireworks on the Da Nang airfield. One hundred-and-twenty-two-millimeter rockets are falling from the dark sky. I open a B-3 unit and we eat John Wayne cookies, dipping them in pineapple jam.

Chewing. Rafter Man says, "I thought this was supposed to be a truce on account of Tet is their big holiday."

I shrug. "Well, I guess it's hard not to shoot somebody you've been trying to shoot for a long time just because it's a holiday."

A sudden swooosssh...

Incoming.

I jump off the roof.

Rafter Man stands up, his mouth open. He looks down at me like I'm crazy. "What--"

A rocket hits the deck fifty yards away.

Rafter Man falls off the roof.

I jerk Rafter Man to his feet. I shove him. He falls into a sandbagged bunker.

All around the hill orange machine-gun tracers flash up into the sky. Outgoing mortars. Outgoing artillery. Incoming rockets. All kinds of noise. Illumination rounds pop high above the rice paddies. The flares sway down, glowing, suspended beneath little parachutes.

I listen for a few moments and then I grab Rafter Man and I pull him into our hootch. "Get your piece."

I pick up my M-16. I snap in a magazine. I throw a bandolier of full magazines to Rafter Man. "Lock and load, recruit. Lock and load."

"But that's against regulations."

"Do it."

Outside, headquarters personnel from the surrounding hootches are stumbling into rifle pits on the perimeter. They crouch down in the damp holes in their skivvies. They stare out through the wire.

Down on the airfield in Da Nang Victor Charlie's rockets are raining down on the concrete corrals where the Marine Air Wing parks its F-4 Phantom fighter bombers. The rockets blink like flashbulbs. The flashbulbs pop. And then the sound of drums.

The Informational Services Office on the hill is a carnival with green performers--many, many of them. The lifers are all being fearless leaders. The New Guys are about to wet their pants. Everyone is talking. Everyone is pacing and looking, pacing and looking. Most of these guys have never been in the shit. Violence doesn't excite them the way it excites me because they don't understand it the way I do. They're afraid. Death is not yet their friend. So they don't know what they're supposed to say. They don't know what they're expected to do.

Major Lynch, our commanding officer, marches in and squares us away. He tells us that Victor Charlie has used the Tet holiday to launch an offensive all over Viet Nam. Every major military target in Viet Nam has been hit. In Saigon, the United States Embassy has been overrun by suicide squads. Khe Sanh is standing by to be overrun, a second Dien Bien Phu. The term "secure area" no longer has any meaning. Only fifty yards up the hill, near the commanding general's private quarters, a Viet Cong sapper squad has blown apart a communications center with a satchel charge. Our "defeated" enemy is lashing out with a power that is shocking.

Everybody starts talking at once.

Major Lynch is calm. He stands in the center of chaos and tries to give us orders. Nobody listens. He makes us listen. His words snap out like bullets from a machine gun. "Zip up those flak jackets. Put on that helmet, Marine. Load your weapons but do not put a round in the chamber. Everybody will shut the fuck up. Joker!"

"Aye-aye, sir."

Major Lynch stands in front of the Marine Corps flag--blood red, with an eagle, globe, and anchor of gold, U.S.M.C. and Semper Fidelis . He taps my chest with his finger. "Joker, you will take off that damned button. How is it going to look if you get killed wearing a peace symbol?"

"Aye-aye, sir!"

"Get up to Phu Bai. Captain January will need all his people."

Rafter Man steps forward. "Sir? Could I go with Joker?"

"What? Sound off."

"I'm Compton, sir. Lance Corporal Compton. From Photo. I want to get into the shit."

"Permission granted. And welcome aboard." The major turns, starts yelling at the New Guys.

I say, "Sir, I don't think that--"

Major Lynch turns back to me, irritated. "You still here? Vanish, Joker, most ricky-tick. And take the New Guy with you. You're responsible for him." The major turns and starts snapping out orders for the defense of the First Marine Division's Informational Services Office.

Chaos at the Da Nang airfield; enemy rockets have wasted hootches, Marines, and Phantom jets. I talk to a poge in thick glasses. The poge is reading a comic book. By using my voice as an instrument of command I convince the poge that I'm an officer and that I'm on a personal errand for the Commandant of the Marine Corps. Rafter Man and I are given a priority rating and have to wait only nine hours before we're stuffed into the cavernous belly of a C-130 Hercules cargo plane with a hundred Marine Corps lifers.

Thousands of feet below, Viet Nam is a narrow stripe of dried dragon shit upon which God has sprinkled toy tanks and airplanes and a lot of trees, flies, and Marines.

As we descend for a landing at Phu Bai Combat Base, Rafter Man hugs his three black-body Nikons like metal babies.

I laugh. "When the grunts see that the famous Rafter Man is here, they'll just know that the war must be over."

Rafter Man grins.

Rafter Man won his nickname the night he fell out of the rafters at the Thunderbird Club, the enlisted men's slop chute back in the First Marine Division headquarters area. An Australian comedian and two fat Korean belly dancers were entertaining an SRO audience. Rafter Man was hammered, but so was I, so I couldn't stop him. We were back near the entrance and Rafter Man decided that the only way he was going to get a good look at the seminude belly dancers was to climb up into the rafters and crawl out above the mass of green Marines.