Rafter Man and I hurry down to the River of Perfumes. We talk to a baby-faced Navy ensign who souvenirs us a ride on a Vietnamese gunboat ferrying reinforcements to the Vietnamese Marines.
As we skim down the river Rafter Man asks, "Are these guys any good?"
I nod. "The best the Arvins got. They're not as tough as the Korean Marines, though. The ROK's are so hard that they got muscles in their shit. The Blue Dragon Brigade. I was on an op with them down by Hoi An."
A shot pops from the shore. The bullet buzzes over.
The gunboat crew opens up with a fifty-caliber machine gun and a forty mike-mike cannon.
Rafter Man watches with joy in his eyes as the bullets knock up thin stalks of water along the river bank. He holds his piece at port arms, first to fight.
The Strawberry Patch, a large triangle of land between the Citadel and the River of Perfumes, is a quiet suburb of Hue. We get off the gunboat at the Strawberry Patch and wander around with the Vietnamese Marines until we see a little Marine with an expensive pump shotgun slung across his back, a case of C rations on his shoulder, and DEADLY DELTA on his flak jacket.
I say, "Hey, bro, where's One-Five?"
The little Marines turns, smiles.
I say, "You need a huss with that?"
"No thanks, Marine. You people One-One?"
"No, sir," I say. Officers do not wear rank insignia in the field but snuffies learn to fix a man's rank by his voice. "We're looking for One-Five. I got a bro in the First Platoon. They call him Cowboy. He wears a cowboy hat."
"I'm Cowboy's platoon commander. The Lusthog Squad is in the platoon area up by the Citadel."
We walk along with the little Marine.
"I'm Joker, sir. Corporal Joker. This is Rafter Man. We work for Stars and Stripes."
"My name is Bayer. Robert M. Bayer the third. My people call me Shortround, for obvious reasons. You here to make Cowboy famous?"
I laugh. "Never happen."
The gray sky is clearing. The white mist is moving away, exposing Hue to the sun.
First Platoon's area is within sight of the massive walls of the Citadel. While First Platoon waits for the attack to begin, the Lusthog Squad is partying.
Crazy Earl points a forefinger at the three of us. "Resupply! Number one!" Then: "Hey, cowpuncher, the Joker is on deck."
Cowboy looks up and grins. He's holding a large brown bottle of tiger piss--Vietnamese beer. "Well, no shit. It's the Joker and his New Guy. Lai dai, bros, come on, sit and share, sit and share."
Rafter Man and I sit down in the dirt and Cowboy throws loose stacks of Vietnamese piasters into our laps. I laugh, surprised. I pick up the brightly colored bills, large bills, in large denominations. Cowboy shoves bottles of tiger piss into our hands.
"Hey, Skipper!" says Cowboy. "Souvenir me spaghetti and meatballs, okay? Every time we chow down I pull ham and mothers--the Breakfast of Champions. I hate fucking ham and lima beans."
The little Marine rips open one case of C's, pulls out a cardboard box, pitches it to Cowboy.
Cowboy catches the box, squints at the label. "Number one. Thanks, Skipper."
Crazy Earl throws another stack of piasters into my lap.
Every man in the squad has a pile of money.
"Man, we finally got paid," says Crazy Earl. "You know what I am saying, gentlemen? We been slave-labor mercenaries and now we are rich. We got a million P's here, gentlemen. Yes, that's beaucoup P's."
I say, "Sir, where'd this money--"
Mr. Shortround shrugs. "Money? I don't see any money." He takes off his helmet. On the back of the helmet: Kill a Commie for Christ. Mr. Shortround lights a cigarette. "About half a million P's. Maybe a thousand dollars per man in American money."
Cowboy says, "You got to write about our John Wayne lieutenant." Cowboy punches Mr. Shortround on the arm. "Mr. Shortround is a mustang. When the Crotch made him a lieutenant he was just a corporal, just a snuffy like us. He's very little, but he is oh so bad." Cowboy tilts his head back and sucks in a long swallow of tiger piss. Then: "We were taking this railroad terminal. That's where the safe was. We blew it open with a block of C-4. The gooks were coming down on us with automatic weapons, B-40's, even a fucking mortar. The Lieutenant got six confirmed. Six! He wasted those zipperheads like a born killer."
"There are NVA here," says Crazy Earl. "Many, many of them."
"That's affirmative," says Cowboy. "And they are as hard as slant-eyed drill instructors. They are highly motivated individuals."
Crazy Earl holds his bottle by the neck and smashes it across a fallen statue of a fat, smiling, bald-headed gook. "This ain't a war, it's a series of overlapping riots. We blow them away. They come up behind us before we're out of sight and shoot us in the ass. I know a guy in One-One that shot a gook and then tied a satchel charge to him and blew him into little invisible pieces because shooting gooks is a waste of time--they come back to life. But these gooks piss you off so bad that you get to shoot something, anything. Bros, half the confirmed kills I got are civilians and the other half is water buffaloes." Earl pauses, burps, drawing the burp out as long as he can. "You should have seen Animal Mother wasting those Arvins. As soon as we hit the shit the Arvins started di-di mau-ing for the rear and Animal Mother spit and then blew them away."
"I miss Stumbling Stewey," says Alice, the black giant. He explains to me and Rafter Man: "Stumbling Stewey was our honcho before Stoke, the Supergrunt. Stumbling Stewey was real nervous, you know? Very nervous. I mean, he was nervous. The only way the dude could relax was throwing hand grenades. He was always popping frags all over the area. Then he started holding on to them right up to the last second. So one day ol' Stumbling Stewey pulled the pin and just stood there, staring, just staring and staring at that little ol' olive-drab egg in his hand..."
Crazy Earl nods, burps. "I was just a New Guy the day Stumbling Stewey blew himself away and Stoke the Supergrunt took the squad. Stoke made me assistant squad leader. He could see that I didn't know nothing, and all that good shit, but he said he liked my personality." Crazy Earl takes a swallow from another bottle of beer. "Hey, Cowboy, get your horse! Quick! My crabs are having a rodeo!"
Donlon, the radioman, says, "I hope we stay here. This street fighting is decent duty. We can see them here. We got cover, resupply, even some areas where you can cut a few Z's without digging a hole. No rice paddies full of slope shit to swim in. No immersion foot. No jungle rot. No leeches falling from the trees."
Crazy Earl flips a beer bottle into the air and the bottle arches down and smashes upon a broken wall. "Affirmative, but we blow up all these shrines and temples and the gooks got lots of shit to hide under and we have to dig them out."
Everybody gets a little high. Crazy Earl goes into a long, detailed sea story about how the Montagnard Tribesmen are in fact Viet Cong cavemen. "We said we were going to bomb them back to the Stone Age and we do not lie."
Cowboy suggests that Montagnards are actually Viet Cong Indians and that the secret to winning the war is to issue each grunt a horse. Then Victor Charlie would have to hump while Marines could ride.
Crazy Earl puts his arm across the shoulders of the man next to him. The man has a bush cover pulled down over his face, a beer in his hand, a pile of money in his lap. "This is my bro," says Crazy Earl, removing the bush cover from the man's face. "This is his party. He is the guest of honor. You see, today is his birthday."