THE MISSION:
It was another day in South Vietnam and someone had decided that a mission had to be carried out, a mission vital to preserving the corrupt but freedom-loving Thieu-Ky partnership. The mission was to be carried out by missionaries from Bravo Company, two platoons or perhaps four, it is all too vague now except the importance of the mission. The mission, a holy quest to be carried out by Uncle Sam's acolytes sans sanctification of a Christian Shaman.
The tracks moved into a clearing that was bordered on three sides by a rubber plantation. The mission sacre was to destroy enemy bunkers. We filed into the overgrown rubber and set down a path, obviously someone had not bothered to read Roger's Rules Of Warfare. It was an easy hump and not an unpleasant one like so many others where they rode you hard and put you away wet.
We found two and perhaps three small bunkers and the engineers blew them. It was a near-fatal blow that would set the enemy back at least two or three hours of digging. It made me damn proud to be an American and damn if my chest didn't stick out a little further. All we needed to enhance the magic of it all was Martha Raye belting one out with Francis Scott Key as her sideman. It was simply magnificent.
Someone decided that we take the same path back to our tracks, obviously someone had not bothered to read Roger's Rules Of Warfare.
The point platoon moved out and being the point man for my platoon, I followed their last man. We had just set out for a minute or two when two large explosions rocked the earth and dust obscured everything. I flung myself down and covered the flank, certain that we were ambushed. The dust started to clear and there was a dozen to fourteen men down, most prone but some staggering around. One of the wounded was holding his arm which was horribly fractured, the bone sticking through three places in his shattered arm; he kept repeating, "I knew it! I knew it! Fourteen days to go!"
The focal point of this tableau was a black kid, mortally wounded. He was one of McNamara's Project 100,000 victims. The so called Project was, according to the author of it, an opportunity for minorities to enter the service who might not otherwise get in the service and learn a trade like the infantry or some other invaluable skill.
The kid kept screaming for God and his mother, the former was not listening and the latter was ten thousand miles away. Two troopers, one on either side of him, kept him in an upright position but it was hopeless, he had sucking chest wounds and he was drowning in his own blood.
The casualties were finally evacuated and we proceeded down the trail, obviously someone not only had not read Roger's Rules Of Warfare but also could not take a fucking hint. We found a "Lollypop," an enchanting device, a convex warhead that contained thirty-five pounds of metal and explosives mounted on a pole. When these anti-personel devices exploded it was as if seventy shotguns were to discharge at the same time. For some reason this one did not go off. A little beyond this device the enemy had rigged the trail with grenades. A Rhodes scholar finally determined that gosh, since it was getting dark and the trail was booby trapped, wouldn't it be wiser to get the fuck off the trail. It was pitch black and we held on to the fatigue shirt of the trooper in front of us, the blind leading the blind. We finally made it to the clearing. It had been a bargain day for the Vietnamese, for the price of two small bunkers they bought fourteen butchered casualties from Bravo.
I made my way to the track, mind-fucked and numb, I really liked the black kid. The kid always had a smile for everyone and was truly one of God's Children. The State was Abraham and the kid was Isaac, sacrificed on the war altar in order to appease a blind and moronic god.
I sat on the fifty to pull my watch. Someone handed me a joint through the opening of the cupola and I took it as a sacrament, a cleansing that would obliterate temporarially
the effects of that day's murderous activities.
I pulled my watch occasionally looking at the stars and looking for some kind of an answer but the stars said nothing. I was relieved and went into the track. James Harrison had rigged a small television to the track's generator. An episode of Rowan and Martin's 'Laugh In' was in progress. I sat down and watched. A skit showed Rowan and a woman sitting at a formal dining table in the forest. Rowan sat at one end of the table and the woman, the other. A Candelabrum was in the center of the table. Rowan and his dinner companion enjoyed an exquisite feast and occassionally raising their wine glasses toasting one another. While this feast went on soldiers from different eras started fighting with one another. They butchered each other with shot and bayonet, bodies lay everywhere but the fighting did not deter the couple from enjoying their meal even as cannonballs flew across the table destroying the candles. The dinner was finished, the couple, arms entwined, strolled away from the carnage. There was a pan to a tree, a sheet of paper was held in place by a bayonet and on the sheet of paper was a message, "What if they gave a war and nobody came." I was blown away---Synchronicity squared. The carnage, the joint, the skit, everything coalesced into something that I am still trying to understand. (J. Driessler)
