"That's odd. He just stopped breathing."
"Why does my mouth taste like I've been sucking on a copper
wire?"
"That's a dumb thought."
It may be dumb, but it is what I am thinking as I try to
ignore the unreasonable itching which keeps breaking out at varying times, and
in varying locations, on my body. I know the temperature in the predawn blackness
is around 90º but I shiver all the same.
There is certain surrealism about hunkering down in mud and
taller-than=a-man grass with cutting edges that shred fatigues and skin at the
slightest movement. Add to that incongruity the fact that we are a group of
fourteen dirty, frightened and never-more-alert-in-our-lives and confused young
men hiding here to find another group of dirty, frightened, never-more-alert-in-
their-lives and equally confused young men.
When we do, we are going to kill them.
"Unless they kill us."
Damned funny how these thoughts move unbidden into the
forefront of my thinking as I nervously touch and inspect with my finger
tips the weapon in my hand. The smell of gun oil wafts to my nostrils and is
somehow reassuring.
"We are bad-ass Marines."
At this moment, we need to remind ourselves of that. This
isn't an "exercise" at Pendleton or "The Island" or even "Cherries Point." It is
as real as it gets, and yet it is as if we were each looking at the scene from the
vile mind of Dante from afar.
"Gunny" taps me. He is on his third trip through this Hellhole.
"Dear God, please don't let me shit my pants. I'm the FNG
hotshot 'Second Loot' and these are supposed to be some of the baddest of the bad."
My mind skews wildly from the trail just a heartbeat away to
my sphincter.
"Please, dear God, don't let me do that in front of
these men."
Suddenly it dawns on me.
"All of the night noises are gone!"
"Nothing!"
There is none of the constant cacophony of eternal buzzing,
whirring and "cheeeeeeees" that I have come to accept as ambient sound,
hardly worth notice. The silence is screaming at me.
"Holy shit!"
The shadow about ten yards away just moved in a way that
screams "ENEMY!" at the top of the brain and soaks its way through
my armpits to my now sweat-drenched toes.
"God, I feel everything! Is this what it feels like before
you die?"
There is no noise, as such, to betray the silently creeping
shadow-out-of-place for what it is. I try to swallow, but there is no saliva in
my mouth. Even my eyeballs seem to have gone totally dry. I know that, if I
could blink, it would be painful.
"OmiGod! Does he hear the sound of my heart beating like
that?"
"Over there..."
"Jesus-H-Kee-rist on a fucking rope! There's a whole Goddamned
squad of...."
"Holy shit! They're coming out of the ground... that's a
fucking platoon!"
A tug at my pants leg tells me that "Gunny" has seen, assessed
and - with practiced ease and a few hand gestures - done all the things I should
have done while I was trying to keep my bowels firmly in the right place. In the
faint light I see his hand signal and feel his reassuring grip on my arm.
I glance back.
"There's Jimmy."
Jimmy is my radio man. Wherever I go, he goes, and he's toting
almost half his weight in "commo" equipment. It suddenly strikes me that Jimmy is
a rich, deep, lustrous black. I really hadn't thought about it until now.
"Why not?"
"Why am I just noticing it now?"
"What a stupid fucking thing to think at a time like this."
Now the whole world erupts into flashes, curses, screaming,
grunts, agonized moans and explosions that turn the action into strobe-light stop-action.
There is a smell of human excrement and urine and dead vegetation and there is
no reality to hold onto.
"When did I start firing?"
"The patrol won't close the 'bush unless I start it. Isn't
that how it is supposed to work?"
Vision takes on a funnel effect. There are things happening on
every side of me, but my eyes are wide open, seeing only the world directly in
front of me. Life and death take place in a 140º opening before me, but I "know"
what is happening all around me. Later I will be told that is what makes me a
"leader" and a survivor. I "feel."
"Jesus. I think I'm gonna puke!"
I fire and see the 14-pound instrument of death in my hands
reach across fifteen yards and slam the life - and most of the intestines - out
of one of the "shadows." The problem is that this "shadow" is a man and I see
the look on his face as the life escapes through his screaming lips and through
his hands grabbing at the eternal fire in his gaping abdomen.
"I did that. Oh, God! I did that! How will I ever again be
the same person I was when I arrived here? How can I live with what I just did?"
"Let it quit! Dear God, let it quit."
"So much for heroism and "Gung Ho!"
"Semper Fi, my ass."
Then things get really busy as men who do not know one another
do all in their power to murder, maim and inflict mayhem on one another. Suddenly
I hear someone yelling orders.
"Flank 'em! Don't let the bastards out of the box!"
"What idiot is saying such a thing?"
"Jesus, it's me."
Jimmy is saying something into the handset and I can only
look at him gratefully.
"Fuck!"
There's one of "them" kneeling over "Gunny" with a knife.
"Gunny's" blood looks black on the blade and I hear a maniac screams something
unintelligible. Again, I am shocked to realize that I am the "maniac" doing
the screaming.
Now there is nothing my world but a North Vietnamese Regular
and me. He lets out a startled "whoof" as I slam into him, knocking him off "Gunny."
He is small, but...
"GODDAMMIT! He is strong."
In the back of my head there is the litany of the D. I. at
"The Island" pounding the "...simple basics, shit heads. That's what's gonna
keep you pussies alive over there!" into my head.
Time slows down and I am amazed that his knife blade has just
plunged into my arm to the hilt, yet I don't feel a thing. I'm laughing at the
dumb bastard as I jerk my arm - and the weapon - out of his reach. My near crazed
laughter must have confounded him. He looks startled. Time goes into slow motion
now and the world becomes a surreal vignette. Everything is blurred around the
edges, but he and I are in the sharpest focus one can imagine. I can smell his
sweat and his fear. I can smell mine, too.
We look at one another and the realization of the now near certain
outcome of this once-in-one-of-our-lifetime's encounter slams home to both of us
at the same moment. A momentarily sadness flickers in his eyes just before I
smash his throat under my knuckles. He drops his defenses and struggles to get
air past his now crushed larynx. He fails. Arms that had always obeyed his wishes
until now suddenly can't reach his throat or stay his panic. His body just stops
taking his orders. His hands move feebly as he tries to stumble back away from
his date with death at my hands.
"Geez, Sarge, it worked just like you said it would."
Now the quick stabbing blow of the knuckles to the breast bone
that halts the heart.
It's clinical.
Thoughtless.
No feeling except the jar of the blow landing and the smell
of urine as his bladder voids. Then his bowels let go.
"There."
"God, he looks so frightened."
"Oh, sweet Jesus. He just stopped breathing."
"That's odd. He just stopped breathing."
"Oh dear God! That's a tear trickling down his cheek."
Somehow I pull his knife from my arm. I feel no pain, but my
throat is filling and I cannot stop. Before I can stop myself, I'm tossing last
night's "K-Rats" all over the poor dead bastard.
I'm embarrassed. I look around. Jimmy is with "Gunny" tending
his wound. Jimmy and "Gunny" smile at me as if I hadn't just made an ass of myself.
"Gunny" gives me a "thumbs up" and mouths the word, "Thanks."
Welcome to Viet Nam... 1968.
I have just killed a man and felt his last putrid breath hit
me in the face as he pissed himself, shit his pants and then died. The being
that was the man simply left as I watched and I knew that it was my handiwork.
Today I am less than a man. I will be an animal for many more
days and far too many uncountable, never-ending, sweat-soaked, fear-filled nights
of terror and strung-too-tightly nerves to come. I may never again be "human."