"Oh, I have been here before, haven't I, Lailu?"
— That's better, says Karl.
— You're insatiable, says his friend admiringly. I've got to admit it, for all your faults.
— What's the time? Karl asks.—My watch has stopped.
— It must be coming up for morning, says his friend.
You and your sister have been captured by your enemies. They are brutal enemies.
They want information from you concerning your friends. They say they will make you responsible for your sister's safety. If you tell them all they wish to know she will go free. If you do not they will humiliate, terrorize and torture her in every way they know.
You are aware that should they catch your friends they will do the same thing to at least some of them, perhaps all of them.
Whom will you betray?
17
So Long Son Lon: 1968:
Babies
Quite apart from the enormous present importance of South Vietnam and our actions there, I have often reflected—as one who was tempted to become a professional historian—that the story of Vietnam, of South-East Asia, and of American policy there forms an extraordinarily broad case history involving almost all the major problems that have affected the world as a whole in the past 25 years. For the strands of the Vietnam history include the characteristics of French colonial control compared to colonial control elsewhere, the end of the colonial period, the inter-relation and competition of nationalism and Communism, our relation to the Soviet Union and Communist China and their relationships with each other, our relation to the European colonial power -France—and at least since 1954—the relation of Vietnam to the wider question of national independence and self-determination in South-East Asia and indeed throughout Asia...
... So all over South-East Asia there is today a sense of confidence—to which Drew Middleton again testified from his trip. Time has been bought, and used. But that confidence is not solid or secure for the future. It would surely be disrupted if we were, in President Johnson's words, to permit a Communist takeover in South Vietnam either through withdrawal or "under the cloak of a meaningless agreement". If, on the contrary, we proceed on our present course—with measured military actions and with every possible non-military measure, and searching always for an avenue to peace—the prospects for a peaceful and secure South-East Asia now appear brighter than they have been at any time since the nations of the area were established on an independent basis.
An address given before the National Student Association convention held at the University of Maryland, August 15,1967 United States Information Service, American Embassy, London, August 1967 "We were all psyched up, and as a result when we got there the shooting started, almost as a chain reaction. The majority of us had expected to meet VC combat troops, but this did not turn out to be so... After they got in the village, I guess you could say that the men were out of control."
"They just kept walking towards us... You could hear the little girl saying, 'No, no...' All of a sudden, the GIs opened up and cut them down."
"It's just that they didn't know what they were supposed to do; killing them seemed like a good idea, so they did it. The old lady who fought so hard was probably a VC. Maybe it was just her daughter."
MY LAI 4: A REPORT ON THE MASSACRE AND ITS AFTERMATH.
Mr. Daniel Ellsberg will surrender tomorrow in Boston where he lives. He was charged on Friday with being unlawfully in possession of secret documents, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. Since he was named on June 16, by a former reporter of the 'New York Times', as the man who provided the paper with its copy of a Pentagon report, Mr. Ellsberg and his wife have been in hiding. The Pentagon is about to hand over its Vietnam study to Congress for confidential perusal. On Saturday the Justice Department sought to convince the Court that indiscriminate publication of further documents from the study would endanger troops in South Vietnam and prejudice the procedures for obtaining the release of prisoners.
— You're not slow, are you? says Karl's friend.—And to think I was worried. Now I think I'll get some sleep.
— Not yet, says Karl.
— Yes, now. I'm not feeling too well, as it happens.
— You are looking a bit grey. Karl inspects the black man's flesh. Compared with his own skin, it is quite pale.
Karl is twenty-two and it's his last few months in the Army. The past five months have been spent in Vietnam. Although he's seen only one VC in that time, he's tired and tense and fearful. He jokes a lot, like his buddies. There is heat, sticky sweat, jungle, mud, flies, poverty, death, but no Viet Cong. And this is a place reputedly thick with them.
— I'll be all right when I've rested, says Karl's friend. You've worn me out, that's all.
Karl reaches out the index finger of his right hand and traces his nail over his friend's lips.—You can't be that tired.
Twenty-two and weary. A diet of little more than cold C-rations for weeks at a stretch. No change of clothing. Crashing around in the jungle. For nothing, It wasn't like the John Wayne movies. Or maybe it was. The shit and the heat—and then the action coming fast and hard. The victory. The tough captain proving he was right to drive the men so hard, after all. The bowed heads as they honored dead buddies. Not many could stop the tears... But so jar all they had was the shit and the heat.
Karl's friend opens his lips. Karl hasn't noticed before that his friend's teeth are rather stained.
— Just let me rest a little.
KARL WAS TWENTY-TWO. His mother was forty-five. His father was forty-four. His father managed a hardware store in Phoenix, Arizona. His mother was a housewife.
Karl was on a big mission at last. He felt that if he survived the mission then it would all be over and he could look forward to going home, back to his job as his father's assistant. It was all he wanted.
He sat shoulder to shoulder with his buddies in the shivering chopper as it flew them to the combat area. He tried to read the tattered X-Men comic book he had brought along, but it was hard to concentrate. Nobody, among the other members of his platoon, was talking much.
Karl's hands were sweating and there was dark grease on them from the helicopter, from his rifle. The grease left his fingertips on the pages of the comic book. He tucked the book into his shirt and buttoned his shirt. He smoked a joint handed to him by Bill Leinster who, like two thirds of the platoon, was black. The joint didn't do anything for him. He shifted the extra belt of M16 ammo to a more comfortable position round his neck. He was overloaded with equipment. It would almost worth a battle to get rid of some of the weight of cartridges he was carrying.
He wondered what would be happening in Son Lon now. The hamlet had already been hit by the morning's artillery barrage and the gunships had gone in ahead. The first platoon must have arrived already. Karl was in the second platoon of four. Things would be warming up by the time he landed.