looking at college girls and eating a churro and watching Hare Krishnas sing
“Krishna Krishna Hare Hare”
and ping their little finger cymbals together. Now I was being driven down a road into enemy territory, a road our CO had just told us was too dangerous to drive down. I shut my eyes and, despite already being an avowed and often annoyingly vocal atheist, I whispered the Lord’s Prayer to myself. Just to have something to concentrate on, I told myself, though I knew differently. I was praying as hard as the devoutest Muslim on the road to Mecca.
I guess my prayers were heard and answered, because nothing happened. We drove down a shitty, cratered road for three hours, then hung a left onto an even-shittier, even-more-cratered road for another thirty minutes, until that road petered out into a faint trail of dust, which led us to the front gate of the base. “Gate” is probably a bit grand—the threshold was marked by two large wooden poles on either side of the trail. With the chicken wire and the lazy hills rising up behind the compound, it felt like we’d been shipped in to work on a ranch in California. But this feeling quickly vanished as we drove farther in, past several mortar positions surrounded by sandbags, past an enormous canvas tent with the Stars and Stripes fluttering nervously overhead, and stopped in front of a row of aluminum Quonset huts.
We got out and stretched our legs—mine were severely cramped from maintaining a squatting position and a full rectal pucker for most of the afternoon. One of the staff sergeants escorted us to our quarters. It was the last hut, butted up against a dense tree line that ran maybe half a football field to the base of a small mountain or very large hill. Looking up at the hill, I felt my shoulders relax a little with the thought that it would be very near impossible to creep up on us from behind and, further, that we were buffered from the surrounding forest by everything else in the base. It was a little like the feeling you get as a kid, all nice and tucked in, with yards of blanket and pillow keeping the monsters at bay.
“Nowhere to run,” someone said, and I turned to see Berlinger shaking his head at the hut.
“What?”
“Any kind of assault on base, we’re pinned in here. Retreat would be impossible.”
“I was looking at it the other way.”
“Glass half full, huh? That’ll last about another forty-eight hours here.”
We both stared silently up at the mountain for a moment or two, then Berlinger slapped my back, and said, “Well, come on, sweet cheeks. Let’s pick our coffins, I mean cots.” I followed him into the hut, same on the inside as you would imagine it would be from the outside. Spartan and hot as ever-loving fuck. Twelve cots were laid out, six a side, and I saw that the ones in the corners had already been claimed. I put my pack down next to a cot under a window, and Berlinger sat on the one adjacent. The sergeant told us to get situated, that chow would be at nineteen-hundred, then disappeared. Propped up against two starchy pillows, I pulled out whatever book I was reading, or trying to read, at the time. Probably Hemingway, predictably enough, and, even more predictably, probably
A Farewell to Arms .
I wasn’t big on subtlety at nineteen. I’m still not.
A few other men straggled in and picked a cot, among them the country-faced brush-cut. He looked around at everyone, sitting there in a puddle of their own sweat, and said, “I’m Lester Hawkins.”
A few guys grunted their names. I might have. Hawkins grinned broadly. “Welcome to Vietnam, fellas.”
“Hey, Lester Hawkins,” said Berlinger. “Put a fucking sock in it.”
“Hey man,” said Hawkins. He put his sack down and sat on a cot near the opposite wall, looking deflated. He had been expecting something else, an experience of instant camaraderie that wasn’t transpiring. He pouted like a little kid in time-out. There was something about his face that
“Krishna Krishna Hare Hare”
and ping their little finger cymbals together. Now I was being driven down a road into enemy territory, a road our CO had just told us was too dangerous to drive down. I shut my eyes and, despite already being an avowed and often annoyingly vocal atheist, I whispered the Lord’s Prayer to myself. Just to have something to concentrate on, I told myself, though I knew differently. I was praying as hard as the devoutest Muslim on the road to Mecca.
I guess my prayers were heard and answered, because nothing happened. We drove down a shitty, cratered road for three hours, then hung a left onto an even-shittier, even-more-cratered road for another thirty minutes, until that road petered out into a faint trail of dust, which led us to the front gate of the base. “Gate” is probably a bit grand—the threshold was marked by two large wooden poles on either side of the trail. With the chicken wire and the lazy hills rising up behind the compound, it felt like we’d been shipped in to work on a ranch in California. But this feeling quickly vanished as we drove farther in, past several mortar positions surrounded by sandbags, past an enormous canvas tent with the Stars and Stripes fluttering nervously overhead, and stopped in front of a row of aluminum Quonset huts.
We got out and stretched our legs—mine were severely cramped from maintaining a squatting position and a full rectal pucker for most of the afternoon. One of the staff sergeants escorted us to our quarters. It was the last hut, butted up against a dense tree line that ran maybe half a football field to the base of a small mountain or very large hill. Looking up at the hill, I felt my shoulders relax a little with the thought that it would be very near impossible to creep up on us from behind and, further, that we were buffered from the surrounding forest by everything else in the base. It was a little like the feeling you get as a kid, all nice and tucked in, with yards of blanket and pillow keeping the monsters at bay.
“Nowhere to run,” someone said, and I turned to see Berlinger shaking his head at the hut.
“What?”
“Any kind of assault on base, we’re pinned in here. Retreat would be impossible.”
“I was looking at it the other way.”
“Glass half full, huh? That’ll last about another forty-eight hours here.”
We both stared silently up at the mountain for a moment or two, then Berlinger slapped my back, and said, “Well, come on, sweet cheeks. Let’s pick our coffins, I mean cots.” I followed him into the hut, same on the inside as you would imagine it would be from the outside. Spartan and hot as ever-loving fuck. Twelve cots were laid out, six a side, and I saw that the ones in the corners had already been claimed. I put my pack down next to a cot under a window, and Berlinger sat on the one adjacent. The sergeant told us to get situated, that chow would be at nineteen-hundred, then disappeared. Propped up against two starchy pillows, I pulled out whatever book I was reading, or trying to read, at the time. Probably Hemingway, predictably enough, and, even more predictably, probably
A Farewell to Arms .
I wasn’t big on subtlety at nineteen. I’m still not.
A few other men straggled in and picked a cot, among them the country-faced brush-cut. He looked around at everyone, sitting there in a puddle of their own sweat, and said, “I’m Lester Hawkins.”
A few guys grunted their names. I might have. Hawkins grinned broadly. “Welcome to Vietnam, fellas.”
“Hey, Lester Hawkins,” said Berlinger. “Put a fucking sock in it.”
“Hey man,” said Hawkins. He put his sack down and sat on a cot near the opposite wall, looking deflated. He had been expecting something else, an experience of instant camaraderie that wasn’t transpiring. He pouted like a little kid in time-out. There was something about his face that
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