Another Einstein, I thought.
I was on my cot, with no plans for going to lunch that day either, when John came by to tell me that this was his last day. Next morning, Crispy Critters was to go back into the field. Right away, I knew the implications. Because John was shorter than I was, there was no telling if we would ever run across each other again. I decided to go to lunch with him.
We made the long trek to the mess hall. By the time we got there, a meandering column of men a hundred strong was standing outside the door.
As we approached the end of the line, we heard some very distant and muffled booms. Typical everyday background noises, I thought and I paid them no notice. Hell, there was always some rumbling or distant explosion going off somewhere far away. Just another day in The Nam.
Suddenly the line of Marines scattered in all different directions. I found myself standing alone. Rookies, I thought. FNGs who panic over nothing! I started to move to the door of the mess hall, not believing my luck at now becoming first in line.
I hadn’t taken two steps forward when I heard John call. “Mr. Peabody!” He was standing in a slit trench some fifty feet away. “Get your ass in here! Incoming!”
I finally realized this must be that lunchtime shelling he had warned me about. As I took off toward John, I heard what sounded like somebody tearing paper right next to my ear. Except that the sound came from overhead.
Crack! was followed by several more right behind it: Crack… crack… crack! I jumped into the space John had saved for me in a slit trench already packed with Marines from the chow line.
John pointed north, toward a new series of distant and muffled booms. “Count to ten,” he said.
All around us, I heard people counting down, under their breath.
“…eight, nine…” Then I heard the paper-tearing sound of an artillery round coming in, high over our heads.
“Ten!”
Crack! I stuck my head up to see where it landed. If they were trying for the mess hall, obviously they were way off target.
Another shell went streaking overhead, followed by two more. Crack! Crack!
“Sherman, I knew I shouldn’t have gone to lunch with you!”
Someone next to me spoke up: “As long as you hear the shells, it’s okay. It’s the one you don’t hear that gets you.”
I pondered for a minute and thought what a stupid saying that was. Of course you weren’t going to hear it.
The next five incoming shells landed on the ridge south of us. Again I stuck my head up to see where their black bursts were popping.
“Jesus Christ!” I yelled to John. “They’re hittin’ the tank park!”
“I told you they weren’t very good! They’re tryin’ for the mess hall!” He stuck his head up over the trench just in time to hear another shell streak overhead. We both watched it land—squarely between our two tents.
“Holy shit!” we said together. Looking at John with eyes the size of saucers, I started a mental inventory of everything I had back in my tent.
“Now,” he asked, “aren’t you glad you came to lunch?”
I nodded my head to his rhetorical question. “I’m too short for this shit!” I added, forgetting I was standing right next to a guy who was even shorter.
Short guys always knew exactly how many days they had left. “Short?” John laughed. “I’m so short I can play handball off the edge of a dime!”
The distant booms and the noise overhead continued, but Charlie’s aim never improved. Several of our trenchmates decided they had gone long enough without lunch and began to play a game of chicken. A few guys made a break for the vacated mess hall. They came running back out after the next series of distant “booms” was heard, all carrying the first thing they could grab in the mess hall.
The Marine next to us waited until the next salvo impacted, then went over the top. About thirty seconds later, we heard another flurry of distant booms, and we started to count. To those in the mess hall, we yelled out the seconds remaining until impact.
A paper-tearing sound came overhead. At our count of eight—with only two seconds left—our trenchmate came diving back into the trench, a huge gallon-sized jar of jelly clutched to his chest. Another hungry guy followed him with an industrial-sized jar of peanut butter and yelled, “Who’s got the bread?”
“Down here!” came a voice from farther down the trench.
“I got the jelly!” yelled the Marine next to me. It was obvious the bread man was at the wrong end of the trench. Down there at the far end, a commotion started and moved swiftly toward us. Bodies parted. Somebody was making his way through. In his arms was a huge loaf of bread. When he reached where we were, he held up a butter knife from the mess hall.
“I bet none of you were smart enough to stop and get one of these?”
After the Olympic sprinters had finished making their rightfully earned sandwiches, they handed the knife to John, who looked at me and said, “Hey, ya never know how long the show’s gonna last!”
We proceeded to fix our own lunch and watch the incoming shells.
“I’m going for milk!” said the peanut butter guy. “Can’t eat peanut butter and jelly without milk!”
As soon as the next salvo landed, he jumped up and ran for the door of the mess hall, followed by more distant muffled booms. Our milkman knew he had less than ten seconds to get in and out. The mess hall’s screen door had just slammed shut when it slammed open again. Running back to the trench was the sprinter, each arm wrapped around a cardboard box holding a collapsible bag of milk. Sticking out of it was a short rubber hose; he had pulled it out of one of the milk dispensers.
The shelling lasted about half an hour, but it seemed like all afternoon. The last five minutes were accompanied by the sounds of outgoing 8-inch rounds from our own artillery battery nearby.
From trenches all around us went up cheers: “Get some!” The volume of noise around us increased tenfold; the ground shook with each report from the huge Marine guns. I tried to take it all in: the giant industrial-sized jars of peanut butter and jelly, and the gargantuan loaf of bread. We all shared the oversized container of milk, holding the box over our heads to drink through the rubber hose. All this, accompanied by our huge 8-inch guns, plus incoming shells tearing overhead and exploding on the other ridgeline, made for the most bizarre and surrealistic meal of my life—and we thoroughly enjoyed every swallow. It was the company of the men around me, especially John, that I was so grateful for. And I wasn’t on that fuckin’ cot!
Finally the shelling ended. Heads popped up around the perimeter like prairie dogs sniffing the air for danger.
By now, John and I had had our fill of milk and sandwiches. We decided to forego lunch and go see what was left of our tents. During the long walk back, we mentally inventoried our gear, neither listening to the other.
“God, I hope my cassette player is alright,” I said. It was brand new and the format was very unusual in early 1969.
“Hope my camera is okay,” said John.
Our tents were still standing, a little out of whack. Mine, the closest as we approached, was shredded with hundreds of holes. I quickly ducked into the smoky tent. For all I knew, there might be dead and wounded in there. Inside, a hundred shafts of light came beaming through the dust-filled air. It was like a planetarium gone berserk, with stars twinkling all around me.
I saw what was left of my things. Shrapnel had torn my cot to shreds. Several of its wooden legs were severed…. “Oh shit!” I said. My most prized possession—the one item I totally forgot to mention to John on our walk over—was a pair of fireman’s boots that my mother had sent me. After I sent her snapshots of my tank mired in knee-deep mud, she went to the local firehouse to ask who their supplier was and where she could buy a pair. What a mom!