iger piss into our hands.
     "Hey,  Skipper!"  says Cowboy. "Souvenir  me  spaghetti  and meatballs,
okay? Every  time  we  chow down  I pull ham and  mothers--the  Breakfast of
Champions. I hate fucking ham and lima beans."
     The little Marine rips open one case of C's, pulls out a cardboard box,
pitches it to Cowboy.
     Cowboy  catches the  box,  squints at the  label.  "Number one. Thanks,
Skipper."
     Crazy Earl throws another stack of piasters into my lap.
     Every man in the squad has a pile of money.
     "Man,  we  finally  got  paid," says  Crazy  Earl. "You know  what I am
saying, gentlemen? We been slave-labor mercenaries and  now  we are rich. We
got a million P's here, gentlemen. Yes, that's beaucoup P's."
     I say, "Sir, where'd this money--"
     Mr. Shortround shrugs. "Money? I don't see any money." He takes off his
helmet. On the back of the helmet: Kill a Commie for Christ. Mr.  Shortround
lights a cigarette. "About half a million  P's. Maybe a thousand dollars per
man in American money."
     Cowboy says, "You got to write about our John Wayne lieutenant." Cowboy
punches Mr.  Shortround on the arm. "Mr. Shortround is a mustang.  When  the
Crotch made him a lieutenant he was just a corporal,  just a snuffy like us.
He's very little, but he is oh so bad." Cowboy tilts his head back and sucks
in  a long swallow  of  tiger  piss.  Then: "We  were  taking  this railroad
terminal. That's where the  safe was. We blew  it open with  a block of C-4.
The gooks  were coming  down on us  with automatic  weapons, B-40's,  even a
fucking mortar.  The  Lieutenant got  six  confirmed.  Six! He  wasted those
zipperheads like a born killer."
     "There are NVA here," says Crazy Earl. "Many, many of them."
     "That's affirmative," says Cowboy. "And they are as hard  as slant-eyed
drill instructors. They are highly motivated individuals."
     Crazy Earl holds his bottle by the  neck and smashes it across a fallen
statue of a fat, smiling, bald-headed gook. "This ain't a war, it's a series
of overlapping riots. We blow them away. They come up behind us before we're
out of sight and shoot us  in the ass. I  know a guy in  One-One that shot a
gook  and  then  tied a  satchel  charge to  him  and  blew him into  little
invisible  pieces because shooting  gooks is a waste of time--they come back
to  life.  But  these  gooks  piss you  off  so bad that  you  get to  shoot
something, anything. Bros,  half the confirmed kills I got are civilians and
the other half is water buffaloes." Earl pauses, burps, drawing the burp out
as long as he can. "You should have seen Animal Mother wasting those Arvins.
As soon as we hit the shit the Arvins started di-di mau-ing for the rear and
Animal Mother spit and then blew them away."
     "I miss Stumbling Stewey," says Alice, the black giant.  He explains to
me  and  Rafter  Man: "Stumbling  Stewey was our  honcho  before Stoke,  the
Supergrunt.  Stumbling  Stewey was real nervous, you  know? Very nervous.  I
mean,  he was nervous. The  only way the dude  could relax was throwing hand
grenades. He  was always popping frags all over the area.  Then  he  started
holding on  to them  right up to the  last second.  So one day ol' Stumbling
Stewey pulled the  pin and just  stood  there,  staring,  just  staring  and
staring at that little ol' olive-drab egg in his hand..."
     Crazy Earl nods, burps.  "I was just a New Guy the day Stumbling Stewey
blew  himself away and Stoke the Supergrunt  took the  squad.  Stoke made me
assistant squad leader. He could  see that I  didn't  know nothing,  and all
that good  shit,  but he said he liked  my personality." Crazy Earl  takes a
swallow from another bottle of beer. "Hey, Cowboy, get your horse! Quick! My
crabs are having a rodeo!"
     Donlon, the radioman, says, "I hope we stay  here. This street fighting
is decent duty. We can  see  them here. We got cover,  resupply,  even  some
areas  where you  can cut a few Z's without  digging a hole. No rice paddies
full of slope shit to swim in. No immersion foot. No jungle rot. No  leeches
falling from the trees."
     Crazy Earl flips a beer bottle into the air and the  bottle arches down
and smashes upon a  broken  wall. "Affirmative,  but  we  blow  up all these
shrines and temples and the gooks got lots of shit to hide under and we have
to dig them out."
     Everybody gets a little high. Crazy Earl goes into a long, detailed sea
story about how the Montagnard Tribesmen are  in fact Viet Cong cavemen. "We
said we were going to bomb them back to the Stone Age and we do not lie."
     Cowboy  suggests that Montagnards are  actually  Viet  Cong Indians and
that the secret  to winning  the war is  to issue  each grunt  a horse. Then
Victor Charlie would have to hump while Marines could ride.
     Crazy  Earl puts his arm across the shoulders of the  man next to  him.
The man has a bush  cover pulled down over his face, a  beer in  his hand, a
pile of money in his lap.  "This is my  bro," says  Crazy Earl, removing the
bush  cover from  the  man's  face. "This is  his party. He is the  guest of
honor. You see, today is his birthday."
     Rafter Man looks at me, his mouth open. "Sarge..."
     I say, "Don't call me Sarge."
     The man next to Crazy Earl  is a dead man, a North Vietnamese corporal,
a clean-cut Asian kid about seventeen years old with ink-black hair, cropped
short.
     Crazy Earl hugs  the North Vietnamese  corporal. He grins. "I made  him
sleep." Crazy Earl puts his forefinger to his lips and whispers, "Shhh. He's
resting now."
     Before Rafter Man  can start asking questions Animal Mother and another
Marine double-time up the road, carrying a large cardboard box between them.
They drop the box and reach  inside. They throw plastic bags  to each of us.
"Resupply! Resupply! Get your red-hot bennies. Scarf it up!"
     Cowboy snatches up his bag and rips it open. "Long-rats. Outstanding!"
     I pick up my bag and I show it to Rafter Man. "This is number one chow,
Rafter. The Army eats this shit on humps. Add water and you got real food."
     Lieutenant Shortround says,  "Okay, Mother, where'd  you  souvenir  the
chow?"
     Animal Mother spits. He grins, baring rotten teeth. "I stole it."
     "You stole it, sir."
     "Yeah, I stole it...sir."
     "That's looting. They shoot people for that."
     "I stole it from the Army...sir."
     "Outstanding. It is part of your duty as a  Marine to harass our sister
services. Carry on."
     Cowboy punches the Marine who helped Animal Mother carry  the cardboard
box. "This is T.H.E.  Rock. Make him  famous. He wears that  rock around his
neck so that when the dinks zap him they'll know who he is."
     T.H.E. Rock grins. "You fucking  alcoholic. I wish  you'd  stop telling
people about my rock." He pulls out a rawhide cord and shows  us his rock, a
quartz crystal mounted in brass.
     Animal Mother props his M-60  machine gun against a wall and sits down,
cross-legged. "Man, I almost got me some eatin' pussy."
     T.H.E. Rock says, "That's affirmative. Mother was chasing a little gook
girl with his dick hanging out...."
     Lieutenant Shortround pulls his  K-bar from its sheath and cuts a chunk
from a block of C-4 plastic explosive he has extracted from a Claymore mine.
He puts the  piece  of C-4 into  a little stove he has made  by punching air
holes into an empty C rations can. He strikes a match and lights the C-4. He
fills a second  can with  water from his canteen  and then holds the can  of
water over the blue flame. "Mother, you know what I told you last week."
     A Phantom  F-4 jet roars over  and  unloads a few  rocket pods into the
Citadel. Explosions rock the deck.
     T.H.E. Rock  looks at  Animal Mother  as he  explains: "She  was just a
baby, sir. Thirteen or fourteen."
     Animal  Mother grins, spits.  "If she's old  enough to bleed, she's old
enough to butcher."
     Mr. Shortround  looks at  Animal Mother,  but doesn't say  anything. He
takes a white plastic spoon out of his shirt pocket and puts it into the can
of boiling water. Then he takes a tinfoil packet  of cocoa  out of his thigh
pocket, tears it open, pours the brown powder into the can of boiling water.
He  takes hold  of  the  white  plastic  spoon  and  begins to stir the  hot
chocolate slowly. "Animal Mother? Do you hear me? I'm talking to you."
     Animal Mother glares at the lieutenant. Then,  "Oh, I was just  fooling
around, Lieutenant."
     Mr. Shortround stirs his hot chocolate.
     I say, "Animal Mother, how come you think you're so bad?"
     Animal Mother looks  at me, surprised.  "Hey, motherfucker,  don't even
talk to me. You ain't a  grunt. You want your face stomped in? Huh? You want
to battle?"
     I pick up my M-16.
     Animal Mother reaches for his M-60.
     Cowboy says, "Man, if there's one thing I can't stand, it's violence. I
mean, if  you  got  to blow Mother away,  that's  outstanding.  Nobody likes
Mother anyway. Shit, he don't even like  himself. But  you got to get a real
gun, not that  toy  M-16. If it's Mattel, it's swell." Cowboy unhooks a frag
from his flak jacket and tosses it to me. "Here. Use this."
     I catch  the  hand  grenade.  I  toss  it  up into the air a few times,
catching  it,  still looking  at Animal Mother. "No,  I'm going to get me an
M-60 and then me and this motherfucker are going to have one duel--"
     "Stow it, Joker," Mr. Shortround interrupts: "Animal Mother, listen up.
You harass one more little girl and I'm going to put my little silver bar in
my pocket and then you and I are going to throw some hands."
     Animal Mother grunts, spits, picks up a bottle of  tiger piss. He hooks
a tooth  into the  metal cap and  forces the bottle up. The cap pops off. He
takes a swallow, then looks at  me. He mutter,  "Fucking  poge..." He  takes
another  couple of swallows  and then  says very loud, "Cowboy, you remember
when we was set up in that L-shaped ambush up by Khe Sanh and blew away that
NVA rifle squad? You remember that little gook bitch that was  guiding them?
She was a lot younger  than the  one I saw today." He takes another swallow.
"I didn't get to fuck that one either. But that's okay.  That's okay. I shot
her motherfucking face off." Animal Mother burps. He looks at me and smirks.
"That's affirmative, poge. I shot her motherfucking face off."
     Alice shows me a necklace of little bones and tries to convince me that
they're magic Voodoo  bones  from New Orleans,  but  they look like dry  old
chicken bones to me.
     "We...are animals," I say.
     After a couple  of  minutes Crazy Earl  says, "Grunts ain't animals. We
just  do our job. We're shot at and  missed, shit on and hit.  The gooks are
grunts,  like us. They fight, like  us.  They got  lifer poges running their
country and we  got lifer  poges running ours.  But at least  the  gooks are
grunts, like  us. Not the  Viet Cong. The VC  are some dried-up old mamasans
with rusty  carbines. The NVA, man,  we are tight with the NVA. We kill each
other, no doubt about it, but we're tight. We're hard." Crazy Earl tosses an
empty beer bottle to the deck and picks up his Red Ryder air rifle. He fires
the air rifle at the bottle and the BB ricochets off the bottle with a faint
ping.  "I love  the  little  commie  bastards,  man.  I  really  do.  Grunts
understand grunts. These are great  days  we are living, bros. We  are jolly
green giants,  walking with the earth  with guns.  The people we wasted here
today are the finest individuals we will ever  know. When  we rotate back to
the World we're  gonna miss  having somebody  around who's  worth  shooting.
There ought to be a  government for grunts. Grunts could fix the world up. I
never met a grunt I didn't like, except Mother."
     I say, "Never happen. It would make too much sense. It's better that we
save Viet Nam from the people who live here. Of course, they love us;  we'll
kill them if they don't. When you've got them by  the balls their hearts and
minds will follow."
     Donlon says,  "Well, we're  rich and we  got beaucoup beer and beaucoup
chow. Now all we need is the Bob Hope show."
     I  stand  up.  The beer has  gone  to my  head.  "I'll be Bob Hope."  I
hesitate.  I touch my  face.  "Oh, wow,  my  nose ain't  big  enough."  Mild
laughter.
     A hundred yards  away a heavy machine gun fires a long burst. Scattered
small arms fire replies.
     I do impressions.
     "Friends, I am Bob Hope. You all  remember me, I'm sure.  I was in some
movies with Bing Crosby. Well, I'm here in  Viet Nam to  entertain  you. The
folks back home  don't care enough about you to  bring you back to the World
so you won't get wasted, but they do care enough to send comedians over here
so that at least you can  die laughing. So have you  heard the one about the
Viet Nam veteran who came home and said, 'Look, Mom, no hands!'"
     The squad laughs. They say: "Do John Wayne!"
     Doing my John Wayne voice, I tell  the squad a joke: "Stop me if you're
heard this.  There was  a Marine of nuts  and bolts,  half robot--weird  but
true--whose  every move  was cut from pain as though from  stone. His stoney
little hide had been crushed and broken. But he just laughed and said, 'I've
been crushed  and  broken before.' And sure enough, he  had  the  heart of a
bear. His heart functioned for weeks after it had been diagnosed by doctors.
His  heart  weighed half  a pound. His heart  pumped  seven hundred thousand
gallons  of  warm blood through one hundred thousand miles of veins, working
hard--hard enough in twelve hours to lift one sixty-five ton boxcar one foot
off the  deck.  He said. The  world would not  waste the heart of a bear, he
said. On his clean blue pajamas many  medals hung.  He was a walking word of
history, in the shop for a few repairs. He took it on the chin and was good.
One  night in Japan his life  came out  of his body--black--like  a question
mark. If you can keep your head  while others are losing  theirs perhaps you
have misjudged the situation. Stop me if you've heard this..."
     Nobody says anything.
     "The war is ruining my sense of humor," I say. I squat.
     Cowboy nods. "There  it is. All  I'm  doing  is counting my days,  just
counting  my  days. A  hundred days  and a wake-up and I'll  be on that  big
silver Freedom Bird, flying back to  the World, back to the  block,  back to
the  Lone Star State, back to  the land of the big  PX. And I'll have medals
all over myself.  And I won't be fucked up. No, when you  get fucked up they
send you to Japan. You go to Japan and somebody pins a medical discharged to
what's left of you and all that good shit."
     "I'd rather be  wasted," I say.  "Hire the handicapped--they're  fun to
watch."
     Cowboy grins.
     T.H.E. Rocks  says, "You know, my mom writes  me a lot of letters about
what a brave boy  T.H.E. Rock is. T.H.E.  Rock is not a boy; he's a person."
He drinks beer.  "I  know I'm a person  because I  know there ain't no Santa
Claus. There ain't  no  fucking Easter bunny. You know? Back in the World we
thought that the future is always safe in a little gold box somewhere. Well,
I'll live forever. I'm T.H.E. Rock."
     Crazy  Earl grunts. "Hey Skipper, what say we stuff some dope into your
shotgun and toke it through the barrel?"
     Mr. Shortround  shakes his  head. "No can do, Craze. We're moving  most
skosh."
     Donlon is talking into his handset. "Sir, the C.O. wants the Actual."
     Donlon gives the  handset to  Mr.  Shortround.  The Lieutenant talks to
Delta Six, the commanding officer of Delta One-Five.
     "Number ten. Just  when we were scarfing  up some of the bennies," says
Crazy Earl. "Just when we were getting a little piece of slack..."
     Lieutenant  Shortround  stands  up  and starts  putting  on  his  gear.
"Moving, rich kids. Saddle up. Craze, get your people on their feet."
     "Moving. Moving."
     We all stand up, except for the NVA corporal who remains seated, a beer
in  his  hand, a pile  of money in  his lap, his split lips curled back in a
death grin.
     Alice steps  up with a machete in  one hand and  a blue canvas shopping
bag in the other. He kneels. With two blows of  the machete  Alice chops off
the NVA  corporal's feet. He picks up each foot by the big  toe and drops it
into the blue shopping bag. "This gook was a very hard dude. Number one! Big
Magic!"
     The  grunts  stuff  beer  bottles,  piasters,   long-rats,  and  looted
souvenirs into their baggy  pockets, into Marine-issue field packs, and into
NVA haversacks  souvenired  from  enemy grunts they  have wasted. The grunts
pick up their weapons.
     Moving. Moving. I walk behind Cowboy. Rafter Man walks behind me.
     I say, "Well, I guess this Citadel shit is going to  be oh  so bad. But
it could be worse. I mean, at least it's not Parris Island."
     Cowboy grins. He says, "There it is."


     We see the great walls  of the Citadel. With zigzagging ramparts thirty
feet high and  eight feet  thick,  surrounded by a moat,  the fortress looks
like an ancient castle  from a fairy tale about  dragons  who guard treasure
and knights on white horses and princesses in need of assistance. The castle
is black stone against a  cold  gray sky,  with  dark  towers  populated  by
shadows that are alive.
     The Citadel  is actually  a  small  walled  city constructed  by French
engineers as protection  for the home of Gia Long,  Emperor  of the Annamese
Empire. When Hue was the Imperial Capital, the Citadel protected the Emperor
and  the royal family  and the  ancient  treasure of the Forbidden City from
pirates raiding from the South China Sea.
     We are big white American boys in steel helmets and heavy flak jackets,
armed with magic weapons, laying siege to a castle in modern times. One-Five
has changed a lot since the days when it was  the first battalion to hit the
beach at Guadacanal.
     Metal  birds  flash  in and  shit  steel eggs  all over the place.  F-4
Phantom  jet  fighters  are  dropping  napalm, high  explosives,  and  Willy
Peter--white  phosphorus. With  bombs  we are expressing ourselves;  we  are
writing our history in shattered blocks of stone.
     Black roses of smoke bloom inside the Citadel.
     We ditty-bop  Indian-file  along both  sides of the road,  twenty yards
between each man. The lines pop and snick as cocking levers are snapped back
and bolts sent home,  chambering rounds. Safeties are  clicked off. Selector
switches are thumbed to the full  automatic  position. Those  Marines  armed
with M-14's fix bayonets.
     Machine guns  start typing  out history. First  our guns,  then theirs.
Snipers on the wall fire a round here and there, sighting us in.
     War is a catalogue of sounds. Our ears direct our feet.
     A bullet crunches into a wall.
     Somebody starts singing:

        M.I.C...K.E.Y...M.O.U.S.E.

     The  machine guns  are exchanging a steady fire now,  like  old friends
having a conversation. Thumps and thuds puncture the rhythm of the bullets.
     The snipers zero in on  us.  Each shot becomes a  word spoken by death.
Death is talking to us. Death wants to tell  us a funny secret.  We may  not
like death but death likes  us. Victor  Charlie  is hard but  he never lies.
Guns tell the truth. Guns never say, "I'm only kidding." War is ugly because
the truth can be ugly and war is very sincere.
     I say out loud: "You and me, God--right?"
     I  send  guard-mail  directives  to   my  personal  Tactical   Area  of
Responsibility,  which extends  to the perimeters  of  my skin.  Dear  Feet,
tiptoe through the  tulips. Balls,  hang in there. Legs,  don't do any  John
Waynes.  My body  is  serviceable.  I  intend  to maintain  my body  in  the
excellent condition in which it was issued.
     In the  silence of our hearts we  speak  to  our werewolf weapons;  our
weapons reply.
     Cowboy is  listening to me  mutter to myself. "John Wayne? Hey, Joker's
right.  This ain't  real. This is just a John Wayne movie. Joker can be Paul
Newman. I'll be a horse."
     "Yeah."
     "Crazy Earl says, "Can I be Gabby Hayes?"
     "The Rock can be a rock," says Donlon, the radioman.
     Alice says, "I'll be Ann-Margret."
     "Animal  Mother can be  a rabid buffalo," says Stutten,  honcho  of the
third fire team.
     The walls are assaulted by werewolf laughter.
     "Who'll be the Indians?"
     The  little enemy folks  audition for the part--machine-gun bullets rip
across a wall to starboard.
     Lieutenant Shortround calls up his squad leaders with a hand signal--he
holds up his right hand and twirls it. Three  squad leaders, including Crazy
Earl, double-time to him.  He  talks to them,  points at the wall. The squad
leaders double-time back  to  their squads  to  confer with their  fire team
leaders.
     Lieutenant Shortround blows a whistle  and then  we're all running like
big-assed birds. We don't want to to  this.  We are  all afraid. But  if you
stayed behind you would be alone. Your friends are going; you go too. You're
not a person anymore. You don't have to be who you are  anymore. You're part
of an attack, one  green object in a line of green objects, running toward a
breach in the  Citadel wall, running through hard noise  and bursting metal,
running, running, running...you don't look back.
     We  double-time,  werewolves  with  guns,  panting.  We  run  as though
impatient to  sink  into  the  darkness that is opening up  to  swallow  us.
Something snaps and we're  past the  point of no return. We're going through
the broken wall. We're running fast and we aren't going to stop. Nothing can
stop us.
     The air is being torn.
     The deck  shifts beneath your feet. The asphalt sucks at your feet like
sand on the beach.
     Green tracer bullets dissect the sky.
     Bullets  hit the street. The  impact  of the bullets is  the sound of a
covey of quail taking flight.  And sparks.  You  feel the  shock  of bullets
punching through bricks. Splinters of stone sting your face.
     People tell you what to do.
     Keep moving, keep moving,  keep moving.  If  you  stop  moving,  if you
hesitate, your heart will stop beating. Your legs  are machines  winding you
up like a mechanical toy.  If your legs  stop  moving, your taut spring will
run down and you will fall over, a lump without motion.
     You  feel like  you could  run around the world. Now the asphalt  is  a
trampoline and you are fast and graceful, a green jungle cat.
     Sounds.  Cardboard  being torn. Head-on collisions.  Trains  derailing.
Walls falling into the sea.
     Metal hornets swarm overhead.
     Pictures: The dark eyes of guns; the cold  eyes of guns. Pictures blink
and blur, a wall, tiny men, shattered blocks of stone.
     Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving...
     Your    feet   take    you   up...up...over   the    rubble   of    the
wall...up...up...you're loving  it...climbing,  you're not  human, you're an
animal, you feel like a god...you scream: "DIE! DIE! DIE, YOU MOTHERFUCKERS!
DIE! DIE! DIE!"
     Hornets try to swarm into you--you swat them aside.
     Boots crunch in powdered stone. Equipment flaps, clangs,  and  rattles.
People curse.
     "Oh, fuck."
     Keep moving.
     Your Boy Scout shit is  wet with sweat. Salty  sweat wiggles into  your
eyes and onto your lips. Your  right index finger is on the  trigger of your
M-16. Here I  come, you  say  to  yourself, here  I come with a  gun full of
bullets. How  many rounds left in this magazine? How many days  left  to  my
rotation  date? Am I carrying too  much gear? Where are  they? And where the
hell are my feet?
     A  face.  The face moves.  Your weapon sights in. Your  M-16  automatic
rifle vibrates. The face is gone.
     Keep moving.
     And then  you feet no longer touch the  ground,  and you wonder  what's
happening to you. Your body relaxes, then goes  rigid. You hear the sound of
a human body erupting, the  ugly sound  of a human  body being torn apart by
high-speed metal. The pictures blinking  before  your eyes slow  down like a
silent film  on a defective reel.  Your weapon floats our of your hands  and
suddenly you are alone. You are floating. Up. Up. You are being lifted up by
a  wall of  sound. The  pictures blink  faster  and  faster and suddenly the
filmstrip snaps and the wall of sound slams into you--total, terrible sound.
The deck is enormous as you fall. You merge with the earth. Your flak jacket
absorbs much of  the impact. Your helmet  falls off  your  head  and  spins.
You're on your back, crushed by sound. You think: Is that the sky?
     "CORPSMAN," someone says, far away. "CORPSMAN!"


     You're  on  your  back. All  around  you boots dance by,  pounding  and
crunching.  Dirt  clods and  pieces  of stone fall  from the sky, into  your
mouth, your eyes. You spit out stone. You hold up one of your hands. You try
to tell the pounding boots: Hey, don't step one me.
     Your  palms are hot. Your  legs are  broken. With one of your hands you
touch yourself, your  face,  your thighs,  you  search your broken  guts for
warm, wet cavities.
     Your  reaction  to  your  own  death  is  nothing  more  than a  highly
intensified curiosity.
     A  hand  presses you down. You wonder if you should try to do something
about your broken legs. You think that it's possible that you don't have any
legs. Tons of  ocean water, dark and cold  and  populated by  monsters,  are
crushing you.  You try to  raise your head. Hands hold  you down. You fight.
You fling your arms. Strong hands search for damage in your body.
     "Legs..."
     You cough up spiders.
     On  the  ground beside you is  a  Marine  without a  head.  Exhibit  A,
formerly a  person, now two  hundred  pounds  of fractured  meat. The Marine
without a head is on his back. His face has been knocked off. The top of his
skull has been torn back, with the soft brain inside. The jawbone and bottom
teeth  are  intact.  In the  hands of  the Marine  without a head is an M-60
machine  gun,  locked  there forever  by rigor mortis. His  finger in on the
trigger. His canvas jungle boots are muddy.
     You look at the dried mud on the jungle boots of  the  Marine without a
head and you are stunned that his feet look so much like your own.
     You reach out. You touch his hand.
     Something stings your arm.
     Suddenly, you are very tired. You  are breathing hard from the running.
Your heart is beating so hard that  it  seems to want to tear its way out of
your body. Through the  center of your heart there  is a  star-shaped bullet
hole.
     Hands touch you. Gentle hands. "You're okay, jarhead. No sweat. I'm Doc
Jay. Can you hear me? You can trust me, Marine. I got magic hands."
     "No," you  say. "NO!"  You try to explain to the hands that part of you
is missing in action. You want the hands to find the missing part; you don't
want your missing  part to be left behind. But you cannot  speak. Your mouth
won't work.
     You sleep. You trust the hands that are holding you, the hands that are
lifting you up.


     In your dope dream  of  death you are an enlistment  poster nailed to a
black wall: THE MARINE CORPS BUILDS MEN--BODY--MIND--SPIRIT.
     You feel  yourself  breaking  up into three pieces...you  hear  strange
voices...
     "What's  wrong?" one  voice  says,  confused  and  frightened.  "What's
wrong?"
     "Who's there?"
     "What?"
     "Who's there?"
     "I'm Mind. Are you--"
     "Affirmative. I'm his Body. I'm not feeling well..."
     "This is utterly ridiculous," interjects a  third voice. "This can't be
happening."
     "Who said that?" Mind demands. "Body? That you?"
     "I said it, fool. You may call me Spirit."
     Body sneers. "I don't believe either of you."
     Mind speaks slowly: "Now, we've got to  be logical about  this. Our man
is down. We've got to get organized."
     Body whimpers. "Listen, you guys, that's  me lying there--not  you. You
don't know what it's like."
     Mind says, "Look, you moron, we're all in this together. If he goes, we
all go."
     "Is he..." Body can't say the word. "I've got to survive."
     "No," Mind  observes. "Not  necessarily. They  play this game.  I'm not
sure we are allowed to interfere."
     Body is horrified. "What kind of 'game'?"
     "I'm not sure. Something about rules. They have a lot of rules."
     Spirit says, "This guy pisses me off. I'm not going back."
     Mind says, "You have to go back."
     "On the  contrary,"  says Spirit. "I do as  I please.  You two  have no
control over me."
     "Forget him," says Body.
     Mind insists, "But Spirit must return with us."
     "No. We don't need him."
     Mind considers  the  situation.  "Perhaps  Spirit has a valid argument.
Perhaps I shouldn't go back either..."
     Body is frantic. "NO! PLEASE...."
     "Yet,  actually,  nothing  would be  achieved by  not going  back.  Our
actions will not affect their game in any event. Losing one man won't change
the game one way  or the other.  In fact, losing men  seems to be the  whole
point  of  the  game. We must be practical.  Come  along,  Body, we're going
back."
     Spirit says, "Tell the man I'm missing in action."


     In your dream you call for Chaplain Charlie. You  met the Navy chaplain
when  you  interviewed him for a  feature article you were writing. Chaplain
Charlie  was  an   amateur  magician.  With  his  magic,   Chaplain  Charlie
entertained Marines  in sick  bays and distributed spiritual tourniquets  to
men who  were still  alive,  but  weaponless.  To brutal,  godless  children
Chaplain Charlie spoke about how God is merciful, despite appearances, about
how  the  Ten Commandments lack detail because when you're writing on  stone
tablets with lightning bolts  you're got to be brief,  about  how  the  Free
World  will conquer Communism  with aid of God and  a few Marines, and about
free fish. One day a Vietnamese child booby-trapped Chaplain Charlie's black
bag  of tricks. Chaplain Charlie reached in and pulled out a  bright ball of
death...

     "Hey, hit the deck, leatherneck, we're moving."
     "What--?" I recognize the  rooms I'm  in.  I remember the  room from an
earlier visit to  Hue.  I'm in  the Palace of Perfect Peace in the Forbidden
City.
     Cowboy punches my  arm. "Okay, Joker,  stop  acting. We know you're not
dead."
     I sit up. I'm on a canvas med-evac  stretcher. "There it is. I  did it!
Number one! I got my first heart."
     Rafter Man says, "A Purple Heart?"
     Cowboy laughs. "Tough titty, you poge. No heart."
     I pat myself with my hands. "The hell you say. Where am I hit?"
     Rafter Man says, "You been out for hours. Doc Jay said you got blown up
by a B-40. A rocket-propelled grenade. But you only got the concussion. Some
other guy got the shrapnel."
     "Well," I say, "that sounds like a lifer-type thing to do."
     Animal Mother grunts and spits.  Animal  Mother spits a  lot because he
thinks it  makes him look tough. "Lifers never  get  wasted. Just the ones I
frag, that's all."
     Donlon takes a step toward Animal Mother. Donlon  is glaring  at Animal
Mother. Donlon starts to say something, then decides against it.

     Rafter Man says, "Doc Jay  gave  you  some morphine. You were trying to
punch him out."
     "There it is," I say. "I'm mean, even when  I'm unconscious. But that's
some very good shit, that morphine."
     Cowboy pushes his gray Marine-issue glasses  up on  his nose. "I  could
use a hit of something myself. I wish we had time to smoke some grass."
     I say, "Hey, bro, who's on your program?"
     Cowboy shakes  his head.  "Mr. Shortround is  KIA." Cowboy pulls  a red
bandana from his back pocket and wipes his grimy face. "The platoon radioman
was down. Some redneck from Alabama. I forget his name. Took a sniper  round
through  the knee.  The Skipper went out to get him. A  frag got him. A frag
got them  both. At least..."  Cowboy  turns to look  at  Animal Mother.  "At
least, that's how Mother tells it, and he was walking point."
     I  shake the  cobwebs out  of my head and pick up my  gear. "Where's my
Mattel?"
     Cowboy  hands me a grease gun. "Your Mattel got  wasted. Use this."  He
hands me a canvas bag containing half-a-dozen grease-gun magazines.
     I check out the grease gun. "This thing is obsolete."
     Cowboy shrugs. "I souvenired it off  a wasted tanker." Cowboy scratches
his face. "I got a new K-bar. And I souvenired Mr. Shortround's pistol."
     "Where's Craze?"
     Cowboy  leads me  outside a long row of body  bags and  ponchos stuffed
with human junk.
     We stand over Craze as Cowboy says, "Craze did a John Wayne. He finally
went berserk. Shot BB's at a gook machine gun. The BB's bounced off the gook
gunners. You should  have  seen it. Craze was laughing like a  happy  little
kid. Then that slope machine gun blew him away."
     I nod. "Anybody else?"
     Cowboy checks  his weapon,  snaps  the bolt to  see  that  it's working
smoothly. "T.H.E. Rock. A sniper. Popped his head off. I'll have to tell you
about  it. Right  now we got  a job to do. We  got  to find that sniper. I'm
personally  going to  waste  that  gook son-of-a-bitch. T.H.E.  Rock was the
first guy to get wasted after I took the squad. He's my responsibility."
     Alice double-times up the road. "That sniper is still there.  You can't
see him, but he's there."
     Cowboy doesn't say anything; he's looking at the long row of body bags.
He takes a few steps. I walk along with him.
     Mr. Shortround doesn't look  like an officer anymore. He's naked, lying
facedown on a bloody poncho. His  skin is yellow. His eyes are  dry in their
sockets, Dead, Mr. Shortround is just another meat-bag with a hole in it.
     Cowboy looks down at Mr. Shortround. He takes off his muddy Stetson.
     Donlon steps up to Mr. Shortround. There are tears in Donlon's eyes. He
fumbles with his handset. Donlon says, "We're mean Marines, sir." He hurries
away, fumbling with the handset.
     Alice  walks  up  to the  row of  body bags and kicks Mr.  Shortround's
corpse. "Go easy, bro."
     The squad files by.
     I kneel.  I fold the poncho over  Mr. Shortround's small body. I feel a
great need to say something to the green plastic lump with the human feet. I
say, "Well, you're short, sir."
     I think about  what I have just  said and I know that  making a bad pun
was a stupid thing to do. But then anything you  could say to a dead officer
who was killed by one of his own men would have to be pretty ridiculous.


     Rafter Man and I double-time to catch up with the squad.
     We hump  past scented lotus ponds,  through  landscaped  gardens,  over
bridges linking delicately structured pagodas.
     All around the beautiful gardens invisible gunships rip  into the peace
and quiet like dogs fighting in a church.
     Cowboy holds  up  his right hand. The  squad stops. Alice aims an index
finger at a street of big mansions.
     Cowboy looks at  me, then at the squad. Cowboy pulls me  aside. We walk
ahead for  a  few steps. "That sniper opened  up on us in a gook  graveyard.
Some guys in  One-One told  us they found gold bars in the Emperor's palace.
They had  all they could hump, so we was going to souvenir the rest." Cowboy
wipes  sweat from his eyes. "T.H.E.  Rock was walking point. The sniper shot
T.H.E.  Rock's foot off. Shot it off. The Hardass Squad went out to get him,
one at  a time. That sniper shot all their feet off.  We were hiding  behind
graves, those old round graves  like baseball mounds, and we had nine grunts
down  in the street...."  Cowboy pulls a red bandanna  from his back pockets
and wipes his sweaty  face. "Mr.  Shortround wouldn't let us go get them. It
made  him sick, but he held us back. Then  the sniper  started  shooting off
fingers,  toes,  ears--everything.  The guys in  the  road  were  crying and
begging and we were  all growling  like  animals, but Mr. Shortround held us
back. Then Animal  Mother  started  to go for  them and the Skipper  grabbed
Animal  Mother's collar and hit him in  the face. Animal Mother was so mad I
thought he was  going  to kill us all. But  before he could do  anything the
sniper  started putting rounds into  the  guys in the street. He didn't miss
more than a couple of times. He popped T.H.E.  Rock's head  off and then  he
put a round through each guy's head. They were all moaning and  praying  and
then it was quiet and they were dead and it was like we were dead too..."
     I don't know what to say.
     Cowboy spits, his face a  sweaty stone. "After the NVA  pulled out, the
lifers  sent in the  Arvin Black Panthers to take the Forbidden City.  Shit.
Nothing left but rear guard  squads. We stomped the NVA and they  stomped us
and  then the lifers send in the Arvins, like the goddamn Arvins did it. Mr.
Shortround  said it was their country, said we was only helping out, said it
would boost  the morale of the Vietnamese people.  Well, fuck the Vietnamese
people. The  horrible hogs in hard, hungry Hotel Company ran up  an American
flag. Like on Iwo Jima. But some poge officers ordered them to take it down.
The  snuffies had to run  up the stinking  Vietnamese flag, which is yellow,
which  is  the  right  color for  these chickenshit  people.  We're  getting
slaughtered in this  city.  And we can't even run up a fucking  flag. I just
can't  hack this shit, bro. My job is to get  my people back to the World in
one piece."  Cowboy coughs, spits, wipes his nose with the back of his hand.
"Under fire, these are the  best human beings in the world. All they need is
for  somebody  to  throw hand  grenades  at  them  for  the  rest  of  their
lives...These guys  depend on me.  I can't send my  people  out to  get that
sniper, Joker. I might lose the whole squad."
     I wait until I'm sure that Cowboy has finished  talking and then I say,
"That sounds like a personal problem to me, Cowboy. I can't tell you what to
do.  If I was a human being instead of a Marine, maybe I'd  know." I scratch
my armpit. "You're the honcho. You're the sergeant around here and you  give
the orders. You make the decisions. I could never do it. I could never run a
rifle squad. Never happen, bro. I just don't have the balls."
     Cowboy thinks  about  it.  Then he  grins. "You're  right,  Joker.  You
shitbird.  You're right.  I've got to get  my program  squared  away. I wish
Gunny Gerheim was  here. He'd know  what to do."  Cowboy thinks about it. He
grins. "Shit." He walks back to the squad. "Moving..."
     The squad hesitates. Crazy Earl has always been the one to say what is.
     Animal Mother stands up. He sets his M-60 machine gun into his hip.  He
doesn't speak. He looks at the dirty faces of the squad. He moves out.
     The squad collects its gear and gets to its feet.
     Cowboy waves his hand and Mother takes the point.


     We are discussing the best way to search the street house to house when
a tank rumbles up.
     Donlon says, "Hey, a tank! We can get it to--"
     "No," says Cowboy. "Number ten! We don't need any help."
     "That's affirmative," says Animal Mother.
     I say, "A tank could flush him for us, Cowboy. Think about it. We can't
budge gook grunts without supporting arms."
     Cowboy shrugs. "Oh, to hell with it."
     I  double-time down the road  to meet the tank.  I  run  past heaps  of
rubble  which  were houses yesterday, bricks  and stones and shattered  wood
today.
     The tank  jerks to a  halt. The turret whirs. The big ninety-millimeter
gun locks on me. For a long moment I think that the tank is going to blow me
away.
     The  top  half of the blond tank commander appears in the turret hatch.
The  lieutenant is wearing  a flak jacket and an olive-drab  football helmet
with  a microphone that protrudes over  his lip. He is a mechanical centaur,
half man, half tank.
     I  point out the mansions and I explain about the sniper, about how the
sniper wasted our bro and all that good shit.
     Cowboy comes over  and tells the lieutenant to "wait  one"  and then to
start wasting the mansions, one after another.
     The blond tank commander is silent. He gives us a thumbs-up.


     Cowboy sends Lance Corporal Stutten and his fire team around behind the
row of mansions.
     Animal Mother sets up his M-60 on a low wall and opens fire, raking the
mansions at random. Every fifth round is a tracer.
     The tank rolls up to the first mansion.
     The rest of  us double-time down an alley  and cross the road a hundred
yards down the street, at the end of the row of mansions.
     At the opposite end of the street sits the tank. The tank fires a round
of high explosives. The upper  story  of the first house is blown apart. The
roof collapses.
     Animal Mother continues to fire from his position near the tank.
     Cowboy double-times  to the first house at our end  of the  street.  He
steps carefully to the