line soldier.”
“I?ll tell you, Captain, I?m almost a short-timer. I got six months left to pull and I got two objectives
in life. Get me back whole, get my men back whole. I don?t think about anything past that. There isn?t
anything past that. You start thinking about what?s past that and you?re a dead man.”
“I?m going to field-commission you,” he says, just like that.
“Shit no,” I says. “Don?t do that to me, Captain. Gimme a break. What do you want from me?”
“I need a lieutenant on that squad and you?re the best man for the job”
“Look, gimme six stripes, okay, that way I outrank anybody else on the squad. I?ll stay right there, do
the same shit I been doing, but I don?t want a goddamn bar, man. Bars get you killed. I?m walking
away from this, Captain. I?m not dying in this swamp. You hand a bar to me, it?s like a fuckin? hex.”
So he gives me six stripes and a night on the town, which is kind of a joke, and the next day I?m back
at Hi Pien and nothing is changed. It?s the same old shit.
The 287th day: We had this nut colonel who came up on the line. He was an old campaigner, you
could tell. He knew all the tricks and he just ignored them. He didn?t even make a lot of sense when he
talked. I don?t think he was wrapped real tight anymore.
Later in the day he was going to grab a medevac out and we?re standing on the LZ on top of this knoll
and he takes a leak right down the side of the hill, and just like that the VC start popping away at us. I
don?t know where they came from, and he?s laughing, and I?m telling him, “Colonel, you better watch
out, we seem to have Charlie all over the place.”
“Piss on „em,” he says.
All of a sudden 9-millimeters were busting all around us. They must?ve busted fifty caps and the
ground around his feet was churning up like little fountains. He finished, zipped up, and shot them a
bird. Then the Huey comes in and he climbs aboard and they dust off. I thought, There?s a guy needs
to get off the line, bad.
“That crazy son of a bitch?ll get somebody killed,” Doe says. “He doesn?t give a shit anymore.”
“What the hell?re they gonna do with him?” I say. “He?s too crazy to send back to the World.”
