Outside, an apprentice Viet Cong forces me to submit to a boot shine while his older sister exhibits her breasts to Rafter Man.
"Relax, Rafter. You owe it to yourself. You'll be in the field soon enough."
"Come on, Joker, cut me a huss. How can I teach geography if I never see the world? Take me to Phu Bai. Okay?"
"Right," I say. "And then you'll get yourself wasted the first day you're in the field and it'll be my fault. Your mom will find me after I rotate back to the World. Your mom will beat the shit out of me. That's a negative, Rafter. I'm not a sergeant, I'm only a corporal. I'm not responsible for your scrawny little ass."
"Yes you are. I'm only a lance corporal."
Rafter Man and I stop by the USO and exchange a few off-color jokes with the round-eyed Red Cross girls, who give us donuts. We ask the Red Cross girls if they expect us to satisfy our lust with a donut and they explain that a donut hole is all we rate.
In the USO there are barrels and barrels of letters which have been written to us by children back in the World:
Dear Soldiers in Red Alert:
We have learned that men in Vietnam alive or dead are the bravest. We are all trying to help you all
to come home to your house. We'll buy bonds. We help the Red Cross to help soldiers. We'll help
you and your allies to come back. If possible, we'll send you gifts.
From Your Country,
Cheri
Dear Friend in Battle:
I am eight years old. I have one brother. I have one sister. It must be sad over there.
Sincerely,
Jeff
Dear American:
I wish I could see you instead of talking on this Card. We have a dog, and it is so cute. It is black
and has long hair. My name is Lori. I will always remember you in my prayers. Tell everyone I love
them and I love you too, so good-bye.
Your Friend,
Lori
Rafter Man reads the letters out loud. He can still be touched by them.
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?"