and slit him ear to ear with my K-bar, just drop him in the fucking river.
That?s one son of a bitch isn?t getting any more of my people killed.
The 338th day: This time when I went down to Dau Tieng, it was the captain and this lieutenant
named Harris, who looked like he didn?t take shit from anybody, and we met in this bar which
everybody jokingly calls the Cafe Society. 1 figure it?s about the ARVN. They probably found him,
he?s some asshole?s brother or something. It doesn?t even come up.
“You know the trouble with this war,” the captain says. “We get these people for a year. Just when
they?re getting good enough to stay alive and take a few tricks, they go home.”
And I says to myself, Uh-oh.
The lieutenant says to me, “You got a real handle on what it?s all about, Sergeant.”
And I laugh. I don?t know what?s happening two miles away and I say so.
“I mean out on the line,” the lieutenant says.
“Oh, that,” I says.
“Ever hear of CRIP?” he asks me.
I had heard some vague stories about a mixed outfit made up of North Viets who had defected to our
side and called themselves Kit Carson scouts, plus infantry guys, some leftover French Legionnaires,
and, some said, even some CIA, although you could hear that about anything. What I heard was that
they were pretty much assassination squads. Our own guerrillas, like the Green Berets and the
SEALS, which is like the Navy berets. Anyway I said no, because what I heard was mostly scuttlebutt.
“It?s Combined Recon and Intelligence Platoons. Special teams. We keep them small, four or five
people. You know how that goes, everybody gets so they think like one person. You move around
pretty much on your own, targets of opportunity, that sort of thing. I think it would be just up your
alley.”
“I got ten weeks left,” I said, and I said it like You must be nuts.
But it was funny, I was interested in what he was saying. I mean, this lieutenant was recruiting me,
asking me to do another tour, and I was listening to the son of a bitch. And he went right
“We have a low casualty rate because everybody knows what they?re doing. You go out, you do your
