writing from
Scars Publications

Audio/Video chapbooks cc&d magazine Down in the Dirt magazine books

 

Order this writing
in the collection book

the Book of Scars

for only $1695
the Book of Scars, the 2007 prose collection book
Short-Timers

Tom Glenn

    It was the M-16 that started me with them. The Major gave it to me my first night on Cobra Mountain, the same night I came down with a cold. We were outside the officers’ club tent sipping Bloody Marys and watching the twinkles from skirmishes in the valley far below.
    “Keep your weapon cleaned and oiled,” the Major said. “Carry it with you at all times. The lull could end without warning.”
    I gave him a smile. “I’m a reporter, not one of your soldiers.”
    I kept the M-16 in the transient tent, pitched on the western slope of the mountain, above the main camp and a couple of hundred feet from the crest. No electricity—generators, cranked up at night, were for the Officers’, NCO, and EM club tents. I wrote in the afternoon with the blinding sun and gritty December wind at my back and used empty ammunition clips to hold down my papers. Even though I kept my typewriter in its case and covered with plastic, I had to clean out blood-red dust every time I used it.
    My second week there, two guys in the main camp further down the mountain caught my eye. Hammering and sawing and getting in each other’s way like silent movie comedians, they were stripped to the waist and shining with sweat despite the snap in the air. I put on my fatigue cap, covered my typewriter, grabbed the M-16, and walked down to the battalion street.
    The guy in charge was a big kid, maybe nineteen at the most, with a handlebar mustache, glasses, and wide eyes the color of smoke.
    “What’re you up to?” I asked.
    The other kid, a beanpole with olive skin and blue-black hair, stopped hammering and swept me with his eyes. “He must be a nug, Bear. Look at his boots.”
    Bear looked at my boots. I looked at my boots. Then I saw the difference. Theirs were half canvas and half leather. Jungle boots. Mine were standard state-side issue, all leather.
    The guy with the hammer smiled. “We’re building the club, the new club, so’s we won’t have to use a tent no more.” He held out his hand. “Tony di Franco. And the hulk is Bear Thorenson.”
    “Larry Anderson. What’s wrong with using a tent for a club?”
    They were still staring at me when a little black guy stumbled up. His fatigue hat was pulled down to his purple aviator sunglasses. His Afro and mustache were out of control.
    “This here’s Diver,” di Franco grinned. “What’s the deal, Dive? Head fucked up?”
    Diver shuddered.
    Di Franco’s black eyes danced. “Diver had a little drunkie last night.”
    “So everything’s normal, right?” Bear said. “So let’s get to work.”
    They resumed their hammering and sawing. Diver, wrapped in his fatigue jacket, moved like a whipped bantam.
    “Hey,” I said. “Could one of you guys show me where to get some stuff to clean my M-16?”
    Bear stopped sawing. “Dive, you ain’t worth a damn anyways. Take the nug over to the cleaning tables.”
    Diver dropped his hammer and started down the battalion street. “What the hell you waiting for?”
    At the cleaning tables, he pointed to the solvent and oil and slumped on the ground in the shadow of a tent.
    “How about some help?” I said.
    “Go straight to hell, mother fucker.”
    “Hey, buddy, I haven’t cleaned a rifle in ten years.”
    He eased off his glasses, scanned my face with bloodshot eyes. and took in the unmarked fatigues and the boots. “Who the fuck are you?”
    “Larry Anderson. Reporter for Pacific Press International.”
    “Oh, lovin’ Jesus.” He put on his glasses and pulled the bill of his cap down as far as it would go. “Shit, I thought you was a nug.” He got up and snatched my rifle.
    “I’ll do it,” I said. “Just show me how.”
    He went on working as if he hadn’t heard me. He cleaned and oiled the weapon faster than I’d ever seen it done and handed it to me. “Man, don’t tell the beggars you saw me hungover, and don’t write about me in your story. Deal?”
    “What’s a nug?”
    For the first time he smiled. Only a faint smile, but he was a different man when he smiled. “Tell you what.” He rubbed his palms together and paced. “I’ll clean your weapon long as you’re here, and you let me stay out of sight.” He extended his hand, and we shook on it. “A nug is a new girb.”
    “A what?”
    “A new GI rat bastard. A tenderfoot. Wet behind the ears. Can’t find the latrine or his ass in the dark. Can you hear me?”
    “I hear you.”
    “Smooth.”
    He pulled his cap down and headed up the road. I scrambled along behind.
    At the building site, he told the others who I was. In the silence that followed, I could hear the wind moving through the tents.
    “How about if I give you a hand?” I said.
    They glanced at each other sidelong.
    Bear tried to figure out what to do with his hands. “Fine, sir,”
    I worked with them the rest of the afternoon. They were the worst carpenters I’d ever seen—mismeasuring, sawing crookedly, bending nails, then pounding them in—and I had to bite my tongue to keep from coaching them. When the sun disappeared behind crags on the other side of the valley and the wind turned cold, they went off to their tents to get ready for guard mount. They’d be on the perimeter until midnight, they told me, then be relieved by another crew. All three were short-timers—due to rotate back to the states within the next sixty days—so they worked details six hours a day and had guard six hours. They’d keep at this routine until some action broke the lull.
    The next day, they didn’t show up at the site, so I worked alone. Turned out they’d been pulled off for another detail. The construction of the EM club wasn’t a high priority to the brass.
    By the time I got there the following day, Bear was inspecting the frame. Di Franco was picking his teeth. He sniffed like something smelled bad. Diver sat on the ground with his knees against his chest and his hands in his pockets. He’d pulled his cap down over his face, and the hair on the back of his head stuck out like dyed cotton batting.
    Bear scowled at planks I’d hammered in place. “Who did all this stuff?”
    “Sorry, guys,” I said. “Since you couldn’t be here to work, you know—” I stopped talking. I’d fucked up.
    Di Franco flashed his grin. “You done good, sir. We need all the help we can get.”
    Bear snorted, hacked, and spat.
    “Why do you care so much about it?” I asked.
    Bear gave me the expressionless look enlisted men reserve for dumb officers.
    “Sir,” di Franco said, “it’s going to be our club, and we want it to be good. They won’t let nobody but three guys work on it, so we’re trying to get it finished quick and do a good job all the same.” He kicked the dirt. “I mean, like, you know, it’s Our Club.”
    Bear scratched his armpit. “We appreciate your help, sir.” He swallowed hard. “And we’re proud to have you working with us.”
     After that, each day I was in camp I worked beside them. Bear watched me out of the corner of his eye to see how I drove a nail without bending it. Di Franco asked me to show him how to saw a board straight. I taught them what a plumb line was and how to use it to keep the frame vertical. Now they greeted me happily as “Mr. Anderson” or “sir.” I wasn’t one of them, but at least I wasn’t a beggar any more.
    Di Franco I liked because he was a con artist and loved to make a fish out of anybody who’d fall for his scam. Bear was a good kid, quiet and serious.
    Diver was something else. Not more than five foot eight or nine and wiry, he came to life by mid-afternoon and bopped to the music in his head, shoulders forward, hands cupped, legs bent, chin bouncing. The lines in his face seemed temporary, as if a good night’s sleep would erase them. His voice cracked like an adolescent’s. His chocolate eyes boogied.

.. .. ..


    I savored the time I spent with The Short-Timers, as I called them in my mind. They swaggered the way only young men can. Their masterful use of sexual expletives and street lingo made me smile. They horsed around and engaged each other in a ritual dance about the passage to manhood through war and killing. In their unfinished faces I saw sweetness hidden beneath the fear they concealed by blanking the feeling out of their eyes.
    One-thirty Christmas morning, after the O Club tent closed, I stood shivering in the moonlit battalion street. Across from me was the EM club tent. Did I really want to barge in? What if they threw me out? The wind was cutting through me. I needed company. I pulled back the flap and went in.
    Opposite the door was a ten-stool bar next to a platform with stereo speakers booming “Don’t Sleep in the Subways” and a fake Christmas tree rigged out with paper candy canes and a sagging star. Between me and the bar were half a dozen tables of different sizes and a collection of chairs stolen from twenty different places. The dirt floor was red, like all the earth around here. Cigarette smoke dimmed the glow from candles. The only electric light was a naked bulb hanging over the bar. Thirty or forty men were drinking, laughing, talking.
    “Mr. Anderson,” came a voice from the bar. It was Bear. “You decided to come see how the other half lives.”
    The talk stopped. The music played on.
     I crossed the tent among the upturned faces and blank eyes.
    “Sam,” Bear said to the GI tending bar, “give the man a drink. What’ll it be?”
    “Johnnie Walker Black on the rocks.”
    “Diver, hear that?” Bear called over his shoulder to the closest table. “The man drinks Black Label on the rocks.”
    “Mr. Anderson!” Diver got out of his chair, waved to di Franco to follow him, and tottered toward me, grinning. He clapped a hand on my shoulder. His eyes came in and out of focus. “Hell, we thought you was happy with the beggars.”
    “Sit down, Mr. Anderson.” Bear pulled up a stool.
    “Make it Larry.”
    Diver offered me a cigarette and lit it for me. Immediately I began to cough and blow my nose.
    Di Franco gave me a grin full of mischief. “You got that coughing routine down real good. That only proves you’re a nug. Nugs always get colds.” His grin widened. “But we know how to fix ’em.”
    “Sam—” Diver said.
    The bartender pushed a bottle of Old Crow, a tumbler, and a bag of sugar onto the bar. Diver seized the bottle and tumbler and threw an arm around my shoulder, barely missing the bar with the bottle. “Slog down what I fix you, man. You’ll be in great shape tomorrow.”
    The others howled.
    Diver glowered. “Man, don’t laugh like that. It ain’t saltpeter.” He filled the glass one third with bourbon and dumped sugar into it. Sugar flowed over the bar and ran onto the floor. “Nit noy. Won’t hurt nothing. There you go, Mr. Anderson. You chug-a-lug that.”
    “Larry.” I stirred the sugar-clotted bourbon with my thumb. “Jeez, I’ll barf all over the club.”
    Sam slammed a second tumbler on the bar. Diver prepared another Old Crow and sugar.
    “Now, Larry,” he said, his voice breaking, “this here is the Cobra Cold Cure. You drink as many of these as you can without passing out and you go to bed with a bunch of blankets. You sweat all night and your cold is gone.”
    “Course, you get one hell of a hangover,” Bear said.
    “And just to show —” Diver began but broke into laughter. He got control of himself and glared at Bear. “No interruptions, please.” He turned to me, all stern and solemn. “Just to show I’m not trying to put one over on you, I’ll drink with you.”
    The GIs cheered. Diver beamed and raised his glass. I clinked mine against his. Staring at each other, we downed the bourbon.
    “Two more, Sam,” Bear called across the bar while Diver and I gasped for air. We drank again.
    “Two more!” the others chorused.
    Di Franco eyed us. “Feel anything yet?”
    “I’m starting to feel good,” I said.
    It wasn’t only the liquor. For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t alone.
    Diver slapped the bar. “Ready for ’nother treatment?”
    We drank.
    “Two more!” everybody shouted, and we drank again.
    Diver stumbled toward the door and disappeared. Then he was back, walking carefully. He shook his head loosely and raised his hand for silence. “We took the cure, right? So now it’s time for me and Larry here to get down to some serious drinking. Sam, two Scotches.”
    “Numbah ten!” di Franco yelled. “The girls in town say he can’t fuck any better than he drinks.”
    The GIs groaned and headed back to their tables.
    Diver smiled at me. “Xin loi. Barfed.”
    “Feeling a little green myself.” The words came out in thick clots.
    Diver sloshed down the remainder of his Scotch and signaled Sam for two more. I held out a twenty.
    “Not a chance, man.” Diver flicked the bill from my hand and stuffed it in my shirt pocket. “You’re a nug. Tell me one more time what the fuck are you’re doing at Cobra Mountain and why you’re fuckin’ wandering around VC land without no weapon.”
    “Reporting on the war in the highlands. What the fuck are you doing at Cobra Mountain?”
    “I’m fighting the war in the highlands. Can’t you fucking tell?” His voice cracked with laughter. “How come they sent you to Nam? You don’t seem the type. You married?”
    “Divorced. You?”
    “Fucking army’s all the family I got.”
    “Been in long?”
    “Six years. Gonna get out at the end of this tour.”
    “Then what?”
    “Be a wino and forget the whole thing.”
    I believed him. “What’s your real name?”
    He lifted his glass above his head and smiled at the amber liquid. “Diver. I’m the biggest goddam alcoholic in the battalion.” He leaned toward me. “You know what, Larry? I got to see everything, whether it’s great or stinks like shit. You ever kill anybody, man?” His voice became a hoarse whisper. “You know something else? I’m scared of dying. Got no reason to die. No reason to live, either. Maybe I could find one if I had time to get over stuff—no, not even get over it. Just accept it, get to where I can live with it, that’s all. I don’t believe in this goddam war, and I don’t want to die with one of Charlie’s bullets in my brain or chest or belly. Christ—”
    He grinned. “Man, this is Christmas. And we’re runnin’ smooth and easy, right? I got forty-three days and a wake-up, and I’m out of here.” He closed his eyes.
    After that Christmas morning, I went to the EM club after midnight as often as I could. Diver and I had long conversations about sex, war, and soldiering, punctuated by his abrupt mood shifts. He told me he never used a condom, hated the beggars, loved being a soldier. The guys’d listen for a while and then give up on us. When we were talked out, we’d get up a game of Liars’ Dice for drinks. I did pretty well because I could con everybody. Di Franco tricked me sometimes, but Diver was a pushover. All I had to do was look into his eyes, and I knew. When he tried to fool me and failed, he’d laugh and laugh in that cracked voice of his.

.. .. ..


     Halfway through January, we had the club frame up, the flooring mostly in, and the wall planks ready to nail in place. The roof would come last. We might be ready for the grand opening by early February. Late one afternoon, Diver and I stepped back to the edge of the dusty street to survey our progress.
    “All right,” Diver said. “Better’n if you hadn’t-a helped us. You been great, man.”
    I shrugged and was about to say it was nothing when he knocked me flat. As I tried to get up, he slammed me to the ground again. He was lying face down in the red dirt next to me. A rifle slug whumped into the weeds three feet from the club. I burrowed into the earth as another round spit dirt in my face. Bear and di Franco were out of sight. A bullet thudded into a wall plank. For the first time I heard the far-off report of a rifle.
    “Sons of bitches,” Diver whispered. “Leave our fuckin’ club alone.”
    “What is it?”
    “Sniper. Must be up toward the crest. Perimeter guards are going to have their asses shagged about this one.”
    “Di Franco and Bear okay?” I said.
    “Got to check on them. The bastard’s aiming at the club. Probably can’t see us. You wait it out here. The fucker’ll hightail it in a minute.”
    Diver snaked toward the club. For ten minutes I lay in the dust. No more firing. I slithered to the frame and ducked inside. Bear, Diver, and di Franco were on their bellies on the floor. Small-arms fire up on the mountain. Maybe they’d caught him.
    “Asshole,” Diver hissed at me. “Get down.” He pulled me to the floor. “Told you to stay put.”
    All quiet. Minutes passed. We wriggled and sighed. My nose dripped.
    “I got a girl waiting for me in Butte,” di Franco said to me.
    “I don’t want to hear about it,” Diver said.
    “We’re going to get married in March.”
    “Then you better stay out of town,” Bear said. “You don’t want to go home with dink syph.”
    “I use a rubber.”

    “Hate them things,” Diver said. “Like washing your feet with your socks on.”
    “Better’n having your dick fall off,” di Franco said.
    “Doctor fucking di Franco,” Diver said.
    “Ask Larry,” di Franco said.
    “I’d use a rubber,” I said.
    Bear sighed. Di Franco coughed. Someone was scratching.
    “Won’t be much longer,” Diver said.
    “On your feet, men,” said a voice from the unfinished doorway. One of the senior sergeants.
    “You catch the bastard?” Diver said
    “Naw.”
    “Fuck.”
    We dusted ourselves off and went back to work.

    The next day during a break, we smoked and argued and tried to choose a target date for the club opening.
    “Why not payday?” Bear said.
    “That’s only two weeks off,” di Franco said. “You think we could finish the roof and get the stock in and everything?”
    Bear chewed his nails. “We could if we gave up some booze time and got our asses out here between midnight and noon,”
    “Too dark before sunrise,” Diver said. “Couldn’t see what we were doing.”
    “Yes, we could, Dive,” Bear said. “Or else we could sleep until sunup if the moon wasn’t bright enough.”
    Diver shrugged.
    For the next ten days, we worked our tails off. Diver and I couldn’t do without booze time entirely, so we drank when we should have been sleeping.
    On the twenty-seventh of January, we finished. We announced the grand opening of the club for the following night—three days early. Before it was time for evening chow, every troop in camp had gotten the word. We spent the day of the twenty-eighth sanding the bar, loading in the stock, and stealing furniture from every unit on the mountain. The Short-Timers were pissed that they wouldn’t be allowed to be there for the grand opening, but guard mount was guard mount. At sundown, they shuffled off to get their gear.
    After they’d gone, I washed the glasses and put out red table cloths. I taped balloons on the walls and draped yellow crpe paper and strings of Christmas tree lights over the exposed rafters. I swept the floor—real wood, not bloody earth—checked to be sure the new refrigerator was making ice, and tried out the new tape recorder. As long as the generator held up, we were running smooth and easy.
    Best of all was the mirror I’d found in a little furniture shop in Pleiku City. It was a surprise for my guys. I put it up on the wall behind the bar. It made the place spacious, even grand. Our club was the best in the highlands.
    The Short-Timers, still in flack jackets and steel pots, came in right after midnight. They stood inside the door and stared with their mouths open, taking in the people and the balloons and the colored lights and the crpe paper. Bear walked to the bar and gazed at the mirror. Di Franco made faces at himself. Diver turned to my reflection and smiled. He nudged the others. They all grinned at me in the mirror and, together, saluted me.
    They shed their gear, and the four of us settled at the bar. After Diver downed three Scotches, he showed how he could suck a lighted cigarette into his mouth so we couldn’t see it at all, take a drink and bring the cigarette out on his tongue—all without using his hands or putting out the cigarette.
    While we were still laughing, I heard a boom, like someone had dropped a microphone with the PA system still turned on. Then came an earpuncturing concussion. The barstools overturned and glasses went flying. I grabbed the bar to keep from toppling. Diver and di Franco vanished. The mirror over the bar exploded. A jagged hunk hit me in the cheek. I yanked it out of my flesh. Another blast. One wall snapped away from the roof and swatted down a clump of men. The bar was sagging. Bodies were thrashing. Smashed glass was everywhere. Everyone was yelling. The lights went out. Voices screamed “Incoming!”
    Smoke seared my throat. I fought my way to the door through tangles of limbs and torsos. I caught sight of Bear and followed him. Gasoline from the club generators exploded, lighting up the mountainside and knocking us off our feet. Finally, we leaped into a bunker at the perimeter. Bear had the M-60 swung into position before I’d gotten my bearings. Diver, di Franco, and Sam were already there. I wasn’t supposed to be out on the line, and I couldn’t even remember where my M16 was.
    We waited. How the hell could we fight incoming rockets? I crouched at the rear of the bunker by the door and strained to see over the sandbag wall. Tents were in flames. Every once in a while I’d see the silhouette of someone running. The rockets fell gracefully on the camp and exploded. My ears rang. A rocket hit the club. Wood, flames, and sparks tore up the sky.
    “God-mother-fuckin’-damn,” Diver’s voice said. He’d left his position at the front of the bunker and was squatting next to me. His dark face flickered in and out of my vision as he watched the burning club. His eyes were wide and silent, his mouth in a frozen snarl. “God-mother-fuckin’-damn.”
    We sat shivering. Tents burned, one after another. The night wind kept the club glowing long after the flames had died. After that, all we had for light was a smokey moon. Smallarms fire rattled from down in the valley.
    Around four in the morning, another rocket attack began. They were coming from the mountain to the south. All rounds fell outside the perimeter. Next we heard the thunder—the U.S. artillery opened up against the rocket positions. When it stopped, aircraft took over. Everything with wings was above that mountain to the south, pouring down red ribbons, like streams of blood across the sky. No more rockets.
    After the sun came up, a formation left the battalion area. It stopped off at each of the bunkers and relieved men. When it reached us, Sam and The Short-Timers fell in.
    I grabbed the sergeant in charge. “What’s going on?”
    “Guys from the 406th moving in from Dragon Mountain to replace us.”
    He called the men to attention and marched them off. I turned toward the battalion area and humped up the mountain.
    The whole damned highlands was alive. Planes and choppers were coming and going so fast I couldn’t keep count. Olive drab figures were running in all directions. Just as I reached the battalion street, my breath gave out. The terrain tilted. My consciousness was slipping away. I dropped to my knees. A medic sprinted over and helped me up.
    “Mr. Anderson,” he cried. “We thought you was still in the rubble.” He nodded toward the black carnage in a big hole where the club had stood. “We put you on the missing list.”
    “We’re moving out?”
    His face lit up. “We’re heading to Plei Klang. Big buildup there—” He was staring at my cheek.
    I put my hand to my face and felt a crust. Dried blood. “Where’s Plei Klang?”
    He swabbed my face.
    I pushed his hands away. “When’s the battalion moving out? How are we going?”
    “We’ll be out of here in half an hour. Hold still, goddamit.” He dabbed my face with some orange stuff. “This’ll sting.”
    “How are we moving? Truck? Foot?”
    “Choppers due toot-sweet.”
    I ran. I had to find the Major.
    I caught the sound of engines. The copters came, dozens of them, flocking down all over the camp. Troops were forming up in the street next to the mess tent. I spotted the Major calling orders and hurrying his men along. I zigzagged through the ranks.
    “Major, can you fit me in?”
    He barely glanced at me. “Get your ass on the next flight for Saigon. While there are still flights.”
    “Major, for Christ’s sake, I’ve been in combat before.” I was lying. I had to go with them.
    He moved through the streams of kids in full battle gear and yelled at stragglers.
    I had to calm down. I had to think. I stumbled through the ragged lines of soldiers. Someone grabbed me and pulled hard. I wheeled. Diver had me by the arm. Bear and di Franco stared at me.
    “They won’t let me come,” I said.
    Diver’s face was somewhere between fury and fear. He shoved me away. The Short-Timers turned toward the choppers. I ran alongside.
    “But I’ll get there,” I panted. “I’m press.”
    Diver yelled. “Fuck you, nug. They don’t let nobody but girbs get their balls shot off by Charlie. They don’t let no—”
    Bear pushed him toward the group waiting to board.
    I lurched after them into the staging area. “I’ll find a way—”
    Di Franco gave me a weary thumbs up. Bear gritted his teeth.
    Diver turned his back.
    I caught his sleeve. “Hey, buddy—”
    “Get your ass out of here, Larry,” he said under his breath, “’fore somebody shoots you.”
    “I’m coming.”
    His face twisted with rage. “Get the fuck out of here.” He was screaming at me, his eyes welling with tears. “You bag of shit, asshole, Fuckin’ nug. Reporter.” He glared at me, trembling. “You fuckin’ deaf? I told you—”
    He whipped his M-16 from his shoulder and chambered a round. Bear knocked the barrel skyward. Di Franco seized Diver’s arm and spun him. Diver was still screaming at me when four GI’s hustled me away. They dragged me to the supply tent. I was shaking so hard the horizon was jumping. A loaded helicopter lifted off. I darted through the dust to the admin tent. I’d call Saigon—use the freedom-of-the-press line. Get them to order the Major to let me go along.
    I clutched the phone. Lines were tied up all over the country. They routed me through half a dozen military switchboards. “Songbird here, sir . . . this is Dynamic .
.
. Cougar, sir . . . Sorry, sir. No lines.”
    I dropped the phone and made for the street. Just past the mess tent, a blast of dirt hit me and blinded me. I clawed at my eyes and raked away grit, blood, and sweat. I swerved toward the two choppers still on the ground and waved my arms. The first lifted off. The second was revving up. I headed straight at it, yelling. It couldn’t have been more than thirty feet away when it rose off the ground. I screamed, jumped up and down, flailed my arms, but the chopper moved evenly away from me, higher and higher, angling off toward the west. It got smaller and turned into a smudge in the glaring sky. I couldn’t tell which one it was any more. All the smudges melted together into a distant blemish.
    I got a hop for Saigon at noon. The other news services reported the battle at Plei Klang was a meat grinder and both sides sustained heavy losses. From my hotel room in Saigon, I phoned the battalion. The Major didn’t return my call. I wrote to Bear and Diver, then to di Franco.
    For a week, I sat in the bar at the top of the Caravel Hotel, surrounded by reporters. I smoked and sipped Scotch, sick with premonition. Bear was an everyday, big sweet kid, and people like that died sometimes. But Diver
.
.
. Jesus, it was hard to think about him being dead. He didn’t even believe in the war and was scared of dying. Did he clutch up at Plei Klang or tough it out or maybe even fight courageously? I was still wondering when the service fired me. I’d never filed a story on what they were now calling the Tt Offensive.
    A week after I got to Washington, D.C., a letter came from di Franco. He’d been medevaced to the Philippines, and he was writing from a hospital at Clark. So he was the one who got hit. He’d lost a leg.
    Christ. Di Franco was only nineteen! I poured myself a straight Scotch, dropped into a chair, and lit a cigarette. There was one more sentence. Bear and Diver died at Plei Klang.

.. .. ..


    I’ve told myself I’m past it, but sometimes at night when it’s cold and sharp and clear, I’m back there again with my three short-timers. I still have a tee-shirt stained red from the earth, the M-16, my boaots, di Franco’s letter. I have scars on my cheek. The doctor said if I’d gotten decent care that day, there’d be no scars. That’s what the doctor said.c



Scars Publications


Copyright of written pieces remain with the author, who has allowed it to be shown through Scars Publications and Design.Web site © Scars Publications and Design. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.




Problems with this page? Then deal with it...