for shit, we?re off up the hill while the Hueys are still chewing it u - Six or eight 50-millimeter and 20-
millimeter cannons working. Good God, there were VC?s flying all over the place in bits and pieces.
A boot with a foot in it hit me in the shoulder and splashed blood down my side. I was getting sick.
Then the gooks broke and ran and we took the knob and sat up there picking them off as they went
down the other side. We must?ve shot ten, twelve of them in the back. After a while I stopped counting.
It didn?t seem right. Maybe I?ve seen too many cowboy movies, but shooting all those people in the
back seemed to be pushing it. But then, I?ve only been on the line two months. I?m still learning.
The 56th day: Last night a bunch of sappers jumped this airstrip eight or nine kliks north of here and
pillaged two cargo planes. They got ahold of some of our own Bouncing Bettys. What you got there is
a daisy cutter, a 60-millimeter mortar round, and it?s rigged so it jumps u about waist high when you
trip it, and it goes off there, at groin level, cuts you in half
We?re always real careful about mines, but the motherfuckers have these Bettys all over the fucking
place. A couple of places they rigged phony trip lines so you?d see the line and move out of the way
and they?d have another trip line next to it and you?d nick that and it was all over.
I hear it go off. Nobody screams or anything, it just goes boomf! and shakes some leaves off the trees
where I am. I run back. It?s maybe a hundred meters. Flagler?s laying there and he?s blown in half.
Two parts of him. I can?t believe it. I start shaking. I sit down and shake all over. Then Doc comes up
and gives me a downer.
Carmody is taking it the worst. He just keeps swearing over and over. Later in the day we catch up
with a couple of VC. We don?t know whether they rigged the Bouncing Bettys, but we tie the two of
them to these two trees, side by side, and we set one of the mines between the trees and rig it and then
we back off about a hundred feet and we keep shooting at the line and those two gooks are screaming
blood y-fucking-murder. It was Jesse finally tripped it. We left them hanging in the trees.
Psychological warfare, that?s what we call it.
39
DEAD MAN’S FLOAT
