First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a miss named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. They were non love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was trusting, so he kept them folded in plastic at the underside of his backpack. In the late afternoon, after a twenty-four hours ‘s March, he would delve his fox hole, rinse his custodies under a canteen, unwrap the letters, keep them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last hr of battle pretense. He would conceive of romantic bivouacing trips into the White Mountains in New Hampshire. He would sometimes savor the envelope flaps, cognizing her lingua had been at that place. More than anything, he wanted Martha to love him as he loved her, but the letters were largely gabby, elusive on the affair of love. She was a virgin, he was about certain. She was an English major at Mount Sebastian, and she wrote attractively about her professors and roomies and midterm tests, about her regard for Chaucer and her great fondness for Virginia Woolf. She frequently quoted lines.of poesy ; she ne’er mentioned the war, except to state, Jimmy, take attention of yourself. The letters weighed 10 ounces. They were signed “ Love, Martha, ” but Lieutenant Cross understood that Love was merely a manner of sign language and did non intend what he sometimes pretended it meant. At twilight, he would carefully return the letters to his backpack. Slowly, a spot distrait, he would acquire up and travel among his work forces, look intoing the margin, so at full dark he would return to his hole and watch the dark and inquire if Martha was a virgin.

The things they carried were mostly determined by necessity. Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat checks, carpus tickers, Canis familiaris tickets, mosquito repellant, masticating gum, confect, coffin nails, salt tablets, packages of Kool-Aid, igniters, lucifers, run uping kits, Military payment Certificates, C rations, and two or three canteens of H2O. Together, these points weighed between 15 and 20 lbs, depending upon a adult male ‘s wonts or rate of metamorphosis. Henry Dobbins, who was a large adult male, carried excess rations ; he was particularly affectionate of transcribed Prunus persicas in heavy sirup over lb bar. Dave Jensen, who practiced field hygiene, carried a toothbrush, dental floss, and several hotel-size bars of soap he ‘d stolen on R & A ; R in Sydney, Australia. Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried tranquillizers until he was shot in the caput outside the small town of Than Khe in mid-April. By necessity, and because it was SOP, they all carried steel helmets that weighed five lbs including the line drive assistance disguise screen. They carried the standard weariness jackets and pants. Very few carried underwear. On their pess they carried jungle boots-2.1 lbs – and Dave Jensen carried three braces of socks and a can of Dr. Scholl ‘s pes pulverization as a safeguard against trench pes. Until he was shot, Ted Lavender carried six or seven ounces of premium pot, which for him was 2 necessity. Mitchell Sanders, the RT0, carried rubbers. Norman Bowker carried a diary. Rat Kiley carried amusing books. Kiowa, a devout Baptist, Carried an illustrated New Testament that had been presented to him by his male parent, who taught Sunday school in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. As a hedge against bad times, nevertheless, Kiowa besides carried his grandma ‘s misgiving of the white adult male, his gramps ‘s old hunting tomahawk. Necessity dictated. Because the land was mined and booby-trapped, it was SOP for each adult male to transport a steel-centered, nylon-covered flack catcher jacket, which weighed 6.7 lbs, but which on hot yearss seemed much heavier. Because you could decease so rapidly, each adult male carried at least one big compress patch, normally in the helmet set for easy entree. Because the darks were cold, and because the monsoons were wet, each carried a green plastic poncho that could be used as a waterproof or ground cloth or stopgap collapsible shelter. With its quilted line drive, the poncho weighed about two lbs, but it was deserving every ounce. In April, for case, when Ted Lavender was shot, they used his poncho to wrap him up, so to transport him across the Paddy, so to raise him into the chopper that took him off.

They were called legs or oinks.

To transport something was to “ hunch ” it, as when Lieutenant Jimmy Cross humped his love for Martha up the hills and through the swamps. In its intransitive signifier, “ to hunch, ” meant “ to walk, ” or “ to process, ” but it implied burdens far beyond the intransitive.

About everyone humped exposure. In his billfold, Lieutenant Cross carried two exposure of Martha. The first was a Kodachrome snapshot signed “ Love, ” though he knew better. She stood against a brick wall. Her eyes were grey and impersonal, her lips somewhat unfastened as she stared straight-on at the camera. At dark, sometimes, Lieutenant Cross wondered who had taken the image, because he knew she had fellows, because he loved her so much, and because he could see the shadow of the image taker distributing out against the brick wall. The 2nd exposure had been clipped from the 1968 Mount Sebastian yearbook. It was an action shot-women ‘s volleyball-and Martha was dead set horizontal to the floor, making, the thenar of her custodies in crisp focal point, the lingua taut, the look Frank and competitory. There was no seeable perspiration. She wore white gym trunkss. Her legs, he thought, were about surely the legs of a virgin, dry and without hair, the left articulatio genus cocked and transporting her full weight, which was merely over one hundred lbs. Lieutenant Cross remembered touching that left articulatio genus. A dark theatre, he remembered, and the film was Bonnie and Clyde, and Martha wore a tweed skirt, and during the concluding scene, when he touched her articulatio genus, she turned and looked at him in a sad, sober manner that made him draw his manus back, but he would ever retrieve the feel of the tweed skirt and the articulatio genus beneath it and the sound of the gunshot that killed Bonnie and Clyde, how abashing it was, how slow and oppressive. He remembered snoging her goodnight at the residence hall door. Right so, he thought, he should ‘ve done something brave. He should ‘ve carried her up the stepss to her room and tied her to the bed and touched that left knee all dark long. He should ‘ve risked it. Whenever he looked at the exposure, he thought of new things he should ‘ve done.

What they carried was partially a map of rank, partially of field forte.

As a first lieutenant and platoon leader, Jimmy Cross carried a compass, maps, codification books, field glassess, and a.45 caliber handgun that weighed 2.9 lbs to the full loaded. He carried a stroboscope battle and the duty for the lives of his work forces.

As an RTO, Mitchell Sanders carried the PRC-25 wireless, a slayer, 26 lbs with its battery.

As a trefoil, Rat Kiley carried a canvas satchel filled with morphia and plasma and malaria tablets and surgical tape and amusing books and all the things a medic must transport, including M & A ; M ‘s for particularly bad lesions, for a entire weight of about 20 lbs.

As a large adult male, hence a machine artilleryman, Henry Dobbins carried the M-60, which weighed 23 lbs unloaded, but which was about ever loaded. In add-on, Dobbins carried between 10s and 15 lbs of ammo draped in belts across his thorax and shoulders.

As PFCs or Spec 4s, most of them were common oinks and carried the standard M-16 gas-operated assault rifle. The arm weighed 7.5 lbs unloaded, 8.2 lbs with its full twenty-round magazine. Depending on legion factors, such as topography and psychological science, the riflemen carried anyplace from 12 to twenty magazines, normally in cloth bandoleers, adding on another 8.4 lbs at lower limit, 14 lbs at upper limit. When it was available, they besides carried M-16 care gear – rods and steel coppices and swabs and tubings of LSA oil – all of which weighed about 2 lb. Among the oinks, some carried the M-79 grenade launcher, 5.9 lbs unloaded, a moderately fight arm except for the ammo, which was heavy. A individual unit of ammunition weighed 10 ounces. The typical burden was 25 unit of ammunitions. But Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried 34 unit of ammunitions when he was shot and killed outdoors Than Khe, and he went down under an exceeding load, more than twenty lbs of ammo, plus the flack catcher jacket and helmet and rations and H2O and lavatory paper and tranquillizers and all the remainder, plus the unweighed fright. He was dead weight. There was no vellication or flopping. Kiowa, who saw it go on, said it was like watching a stone autumn, or a large sandbag or something -just roar, so down – non like the films where the dead cat axial rotations around and does fancy spins and goes ass over teakettle -not like that, Kiowa said, the hapless asshole merely flat-fuck fell. Boom. Down. Nothing else. It was a bright forenoon in mid-April. Lieutenant Cross felt the hurting. He blamed himself. They stripped off Lavender ‘s canteens and ammunition, all the heavy things, and Rat Kiley said the obvious, the cat ‘s dead, and Mitchell Sanders used his wireless to describe one U.S. KIA and to bespeak a chopper. Then they wrapped Lavender in his poncho. They carried him out to a dry Paddy, established security, and sat smoking the dead adult male ‘s pot until the chopper came. Lieutenant Cross kept to himself. He pictured Martha ‘s smooth immature face, believing he loved her more than anything, more than his work forces, and now Ted Lavender was dead because he loved her so much and could non halt believing about her. When the dust-off arrived, they carried Lavender aboard. Afterward they burned Than Khe. They marched until twilight, so delve their holes, and that dark Kiowa kept explicating how you had to be them how fast it was, how the hapless cat merely dropped like so much concrete, Boom-down, he said. Like cement.

In add-on to the three standard weapons-the M-60, M-16, and M-79-they carried whatever presented itself, or whatever seemed appropriate as a agency of killing or remaining alive. They carried catch-as-catch can. At assorted times, in assorted state of affairss, they carried M-14 ‘s and CAR-15 ‘s and Swedish K ‘s and lubricating oil guns and captured AK-47s and ChiCom ‘s and RPG ‘s and Simonov carbines and black-market Uzi ‘s and.38-caliber Smith & A ; Wesson pistols and 66 millimeter Law ‘s and scatterguns and silencers and jack oaks and bayonets and C-4 plastic explosives. Lee Strunk carried a catapult ; a arm of last resort, he called it. Mitchell Sanders carried brass brass knuckss. Kiowa carried his gramps ‘s feathery tomahawk. Every 3rd or 4th adult male carried a Claymore antipersonnel mine-3.5 lbs with its fire device. They all carried fragmentation grenades-fourteen ounces each. They all carried at least one M-18 colored smoke grenade- 24 ounces. Some carried CS or tear-gas grenades. Sonic carried white-phosphorus grenades. They carried all they could bear, and so some, including a soundless awe for the awful power of the things they carried.

In the first hebdomad of April, before Lavender died, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross received a good-luck appeal from Martha. It was a simple pebble. An ounce at most. Smooth to the touch, it was a milky-white colour with bits of orange and violet, egg-shaped, like a illumination egg. In the attendant missive, Martha wrote that she had found the pebble on the Jersey shoreline, exactly where the land touched H2O at high tide, where things came together but besides separated. It was this separate-but-together quality, she wrote, that had inspired her to pick up the pebble and to transport it in her chest pocket for several yearss, where it seemed weightless, and so to direct it through the mail, by air, as a item of her truest feelings for him. Lieutenant Cross found this romantic. But he wondered what ‘her truest feelings were, precisely, and what she meant by separate-but-together. He wondered how the tides and moving ridges had come into drama on that afternoon along the Jersey shoreline when Martha saw the pebble and, bent down to deliver it from geology. He imagined au naturel pess. Martha was a poet, with the poet ‘s esthesias, and her pess would be brown and bare the toenails unpainted, the eyes chilly and somber like the ocean in March, and though it was painful, he wondered who had been with her that afternoon. He imagined a brace of shadows traveling along the strip of sand where things came together but besides separated. It was phantom green-eyed monster, he knew, but he could n’t assist himself. He loved her so much. On the March, through the hot yearss of early April, he carried the pebble in his oral cavity, turning it with his lingua, savoring sea salts and wet. His head wandered. He had trouble maintaining his attending on the war. On juncture he would shout at his work forces to distribute out the column, to maintain their eyes unfastened, but so he would steal off into reveries, merely feigning, walking barefoot along the Jersey shore, with Martha, transporting nil. He would experience himself lifting. Sun and moving ridges and soft air currents, all love and elation.

What they carried varied by mission.

When a mission took them to the mountains, they carried mosquito gauze, matchets, canvas tarps, and excess bugjuice.

If a mission seemed particularly risky, or if it involved a topographic point they knew to be bad, they carried everything they could. In certain to a great extent mined AO ‘s, where the land was heavy with Toe Poppers and Bouncing Betties, they took bends hunching a twenty-eight-pound mine sensor. With its earphones and large detection home base, the equipment was a emphasis on the lower dorsum and shoulders, awkward to manage, frequently useless because of the shrapnel in the Earth, but they carried it anyhow, partially for safety, partially for the semblance of safety.

On ambuscade, or other dark missions, they carried curious small odds and terminals. Kiowa ever took along his New Testament and a brace of mocassins for silence. Dave Jensen carried night-sight vitamins high in provitamin A. Lee Strunk carried his catapult ; ammunition, he claimed, would ne’er be a job. Rat Kiley carried brandy and M & A ; M ‘s. Until he was shot, Ted Lavender carried the starlight range, which weighed 63 lbs with its aluminium carrying instance. Henry Dobbins carried his girlfriend ‘s pantie hosiery wrapped around his cervix as a sympathizer. They all carried shades. When dark came, they would travel out individual file across the hayfields and Paddies to their ambuscade co-ordinates, where they would softly put up the Claymores and lie down and pass the dark waiting.

Other missions were more complicated and required particular equipment. In mid-April, it was their mission to seek out and destruct the luxuriant tunnel composites in the Than Khe country South of Chu Lai. To blow the tunnels, they carried one-pound blocks of pentrite high explosives ; four blocks to a adult male, 68 lbs in all. They carried wiring, detonating devices, and battery-powered clackers. Dave Jensen carried earplugs. Most frequently, before blowing the tunnels, they were ordered by higher bid to seek them, which was considered bad intelligence, but by and big they merely shrugged and carried out orders. Because he was a large adult male, Henry Dobbins was excused from tunnel responsibility. The others would pull Numberss. Before Lavender died there were 17 work forces in the platoon, and whoever drew the figure 17 would deprive off his cogwheel and crawl in headfirst with a torch and Lieutenant Cross ‘s.45 caliber handgun. The remainder of them would fan out as security. They would sit down or kneel, non confronting the hole, listening to the land beneath them, conceive ofing cobwebs and shades, whatever was down there-the tunnel walls squashing in-how the torch seemed impossibly heavy in the manus and how it was tunnel vision in the really strictest sense, compaction in all ways, even clip, and how you had to jiggle in-ass and elbows-a swallowed-up feeling-and how you found yourself worrying about uneven things-will your flashlight travel dead? Do rats transport hydrophobias? If you screamed, how far would the sound carry? Would your brothers hear it? Would they hold the bravery to drag you out? In some respects, though non many, the waiting was worse than the tunnel itself. Imagination was a slayer.

On April 16, when Lee Strunk drew the figure 17, he laughed and muttered something and went down rapidly. The forenoon was hot and really still. Not good, Kiowa said. He looked at the tunnel gap, so out across a dry Paddy toward the small town of Than Khe. Nothing moved. No clouds or birds or people. As they waited, the work forces smoked and drank Kool-Aid, non speaking much, experiencing understanding for Lee Strunk but besides experiencing the fortune of the draw, You win some, you lose some, said Mitchell Sanders, and sometimes you settle for a rain cheque. It was a tired line and no 1 laughed.

Henry Dobbins ate a tropical cocoa saloon. Ted Lavender popped a tranquillizer and went off to make. After five proceedingss, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross moved to the tunnel, leaned down, and examined the darkness. Trouble, he thought-a cave-in maybe. And so all of a sudden, without willing it, prevarication was believing about Martha. The emphasiss and breaks, the speedy prostration, the two of them buried alive under all that weight. Dense, oppressing love. Kneeling, watching the hole, he tried to concentrate on Lee Strunk and the war, all the dangers, but his love was excessively much for him, he felt paralytic, he wanted to kip inside her lungs and breathe- her blood and be smothered. He wanted her to be a virgin and non a virgin, all at one time. He wanted to cognize her. Intimate secrets-why poesy? Why so sad? Why that grey in her eyes? Why so entirely? Not lonely, merely entirely -riding her motorcycle across campus or sitting off by herself in the cafeteria. Even dancing, she danced entirely – and it was the loneliness that filled him with love. He remembered stating her that one eventide. How she nodded and looked off. And how, subsequently, when he kissed her. She received the buss without returning it, her eyes broad unfastened, non afraid, non a virgin ‘s eyes, merely level and uninvolved.

Lieutenant Cross gazed at the tunnel. But he was non at that place. He was buried with Martha under the white sand at the Jersey shore. They were pressed together, and the pebble in his oral cavity was her lingua. He was smiling. Vaguely, he was cognizant of how quiet the twenty-four hours was ; the sullen Paddies, yet he could non convey himself to worry about affairs of security. He was beyond that. He was merely a child at war, in love. He was 20 two old ages old. He could n’t assist it.

A few minutes subsequently Lee Strunk crawled out of the tunnel. He came up smile, foul but alive. Lieutenant Cross nodded and closed his eyes while the others clapped Strunk on the dorsum and made gags about lifting from the dead.

Worms, Rat Kiley said. Right out of the grave. Fuckin ‘ living dead.

The work forces laughed. They all felt great alleviation.

Spook City, said Mitchell Sanders.

Lee Strunk made a amusing shade sound, a sort of moaning, yet really happy, and battle so, when Strunk made that high happy groaning sound, when he went Ahhooooo, right so Ted Lavender was shot in the caput on his manner back from making. He lay with his oral cavity unfastened. The dentitions were broken. There was a conceited black contusion under his left oculus. The zygomatic bone was gone. Oh crap, Rat Kiley said, the cat ‘s dead. The cat ‘s dead, he kept stating, which seemed profound -the cat ‘s dead. I mean truly.

The things they carried were determined to some extent by superstitious notion. Lieutenant Cross carried his good-luck pebble. Dave Jensen carried a coney ‘s pes. Norman Bowker, other-wise a really soft individual, carried a pollex that had been presented to him as a gift by Mitchell Sanders. The pollex was dark brown, rubbery to the touch, and weighed four ounces at most. It had been cut from a VC cadaver, a male child of 15 or 16. They ‘d establish him at the underside of an irrigation ditch, severely burned, flies in his oral cavity and eyes. The male child wore black trunkss and sandals. At the clip of his decease he had been transporting a pouch of rice, a rifle, and three magazines of ammo.

You want my sentiment, Mitchell Sanders said, there ‘s a definite lesson here.

He put his manus oil the dead male child ‘s carpus. He was quiet for a clip, as if numbering a pulsation, so he patted the tummy, about dearly, and used Kiowa ‘s runing tomahawk to take the pollex.

Henry Dobbins asked what the lesson was.

Moral?

You know- Moral.

Drum sanders wrapped the pollex in toilet paper and handed it across to Norman Bowker. There was no blood. Smiling, he kicked the male child ‘s caput, watched the files spread, and said, It ‘s like with that old Television show – Champion. Have gun, will go.

Henry Dobbins thought about it.

Yeah, good, he eventually said. I do n’t see no moral.

There it is, adult male.

Fuck off.

They carried USO letter paper and pencils and pens. They carried Sterno, safety pins, trip flairs, signal flairs, bobbins of wire, razor blades, masticating baccy, liberated joss sticks and figurines of the sniffing Buddha, tapers, lubricating oil pencils, The Stars and Stripes, fingernail limiters, Psy Ops cusps, shrub chapeaus, bola tie, and much more. Twice a hebdomad, when the resupply choppers came in, they carried hot Zhou in green Mermite tins and big canvas bags filled with iced beer and sodium carbonate dad. They carried fictile H2O containers, each with a two gallon capacity. Mitchell Sanders carried a set of starched tiger fatigues for particular occasions. Henry Dobbins carried Black Flag insect powder. Dave Jensen carried empty sandbags that could be filled at dark for added protection. Lee Strunk carried tanning lotion. Some things they carried in common. Taking bends, they carried the large PRC-77 scrambler wireless, which weighed 30 lbs with its battery. They shared the weight of memory. They took up what others could no longer bear, Often, they carried each other, the hurt or weak. They carried infections. They carried chess sets, hoopss, Vietnamese English lexicons, insignia of rank, Bronze Stars and Purple Hearts, plastic cards imprinted with the Code of Conduct. They carried diseases, among them malaria and dysentery. They carried lice and tinea and bloodsuckers and paddy algae and assorted putrefactions and casts. They carried the land itself. Vietnam, the topographic point, the turf -a powdery orangish-red dust that covered their boots and fatigues and faces. They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidness, the monsoons, the malodor of fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gravitation. They moved like mules. By daytime they took sniper fire, at dark they were mortared, but it was non conflict, it was merely the eternal March, small town to village, without intent, nil won or lost. They marched for the interest of the March. They plodded along easy, densely, tilting frontward against the heat, unreflective, all blood and bone, simple oinks, soldiering with their legs, laboring up the hills and down into the Paddies and across the rivers and up once more and down, merely hunching, one measure and so the following and so another, but no will, no will, because it was automatic, it was anatomy, and the war was wholly a affair of position and passenger car, the bulge was everything, a sort of inactiveness, a sort of emptiness, a obtuseness of desire and mind and scruples and hope and human esthesia. Their rules were in their pess. Their computations were biological. They had no sense of scheme or mission. They searched the small towns without cognizing what to look for, nor lovingness, kicking over jars of rice, frolicing kids and old work forces, blowing tunnels, sometimes puting fires and sometimes non, so organizing up and traveling on to the following small town, so other small towns, where it would ever be the same. They carried their ain lives. The force per unit areas were tremendous. In the heat of early afternoon, they would take their helmets and flak jackets, walking bare, which was unsafe but which helped ease the strain. They would frequently fling things along the path of March. Strictly for comfort, they would throw away rations, blow their Claymores and grenades, no affair, because by nightfall the resupply choppers would get with more of the same, so a twenty-four hours or two later still more, fresh Citrullus vulgariss and crates of ammo and dark glassess and woolen sweaters-the resources were stupefying -sparklers for the Fourth of July, colored eggs for Easter. It was the great American war chest-the fruits of scientific disciplines, the smokestacks, the canneries, the armories at Hartford, the Minnesota woods, the machine stores, the huge Fieldss of maize and wheat they carried like cargo trains ; they carried it on their dorsums and shoulders-and for all the ambiguities of Vietnam, all the enigmas and terra incognitas, there was at least the individual abiding certainty that they would ne’er be at a loss for things to transport.

After the chopper took Lavender off, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross led his work forces into the small town of Than Khe. They burned everything. They shot poulets and Canis familiariss, they trashed the small town good, they called in heavy weapon and watched the wreckage, so they marched for several hours through the hot afternoon, and so at twilight, while Kiowa explained how Lavender died, Lieutenant Cross found himself trembling.

He tried non to shout. With his intrenching tool, which weighed five lbs, he began delving a hole in the Earth.

He felt shame. He hated himself He had loved Martha more than his work forces, and as a effect Lavender was now dead, and this was something he would hold to transport like a rock in his tummy for the remainder of the war.

All he could make was excavation. He used his intrenching tool like an ax, cut downing, experiencing both love and hatred, and so subsequently, when it was full dark, he sat at the underside of his fox hole and wept. It went on for a long piece. In portion, he was sorrowing for Ted Lavender, but largely it was for Martha, and for himself, because she belonged to another universe, which was non rather existent, and because she was a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey, a poet and a virgin and uninvolved, and because he realized she did non love him and ne’er would.

Like cement, Kiowa whispered in the dark. I swear to God – boom-down. Not a word.

I ‘ve heard this, said Norman Bowker.

A urinator, you know? Still zipping himself up. Zapped while zipping.

All right, all right. That ‘s adequate.

Yeah, but you had to see it, the cat merely

I heard, adult male. Cement. So why non close the screw up?

Kiowa shook his caput unhappily and glanced over at the hole where Lieutenant Jimmy Cross sat watching the dark. The air was thick and wet. A warm, heavy fog had settled over the Paddies and there was the hush that precedes rain.

After a clip Kiowa sighed.

One thing for certain, he said. The lieutenant ‘s in some deep injury. I mean that shouting jag – the manner he was transporting on – it was n’t bogus or anything, it was existent heavy-duty injury. The adult male cares.

Surely, Norman Bowker said.

State what you want, the adult male does care.

We all got jobs.

Not Lavender.

No, I guess non, Bowker said. Make me a favour, though.

Shut up?

That ‘s a smart Indian. Shut up.

Shruging, Kiowa pulled off his boots. He wanted to state more, merely to buoy up up his slumber, but alternatively he opened his New Testament and arranged it beneath his caput as a pillow. The fog made things seem hollow and unattached. He tried non to believe about Ted Lavender, but so he was believing how fast it was, no play, down and dead, and how it was difficult to pess anything except surprise. It seemed unchristian. He wished he could happen some great unhappiness, or even anger, but the emotion was n’t at that place and he could n’t do it go on. Largely he felt pleased to be alive. He liked the odor of the New Testament under his cheque, the leather and ink and paper and gum, whatever the chemicals were. He liked hearing the sounds of dark. Even his weariness, it felt all right, the stiff musculuss and the bristly consciousness of his ain organic structure, a drifting feeling. He enjoyed non being dead. Liing at that place, Kiowa admired Lieutenant Jimmy Cross ‘s capacity for heartache. He wanted to portion the adult male ‘s hurting, he wanted to care as Jimmy Cross cared. And yet when he closed his eyes, all he could believe was Boon-down, and all he could experience was the pleasance of holding his boots off and the fog curling in around him and the moist dirt and the Bible odors and the plush comfort of dark.

After a minute Norman Bowker sat up in the dark.

What the snake pit, he said. You want to speak, talk. State it to me.

Forget it.

No, adult male, travel on. One thing I hate, it ‘s a soundless Indian.

For the most portion they carried themselves with poise, a sort of self-respect. Now and so, nevertheless, there were times of terror, when they squealed or wanted to oink but could n’t. When they twitched and made groaning sounds and covered their caputs and said Dear Jesus and flopped around on the Earth and fired their arms blindly and cringed and sobbed and begged for the noise to halt and went natural states and made stupid promises to themselves and to God and to their female parents and male parents, trusting non to decease. In different ways, it happened to all of them. Afterward, when the fire ended, they would wink and glance up. They would touch their organic structures, experiencing shame, so rapidly concealing it. They would coerce themselves to stand. As if in slow gesture, frame by frame, the universe would take on the old logic-absolute silence, so the air current, so sunlight, so voices. It was the load of being alive. Awkwardly, the work forces would reassemble themselves, foremost in private, so in groups, going soldiers once more. They would mend the leaks in their eyes. They would look into for casualties, call in dust-offs, light coffin nails, attempt to smile, unclutter their pharynxs and tongue and get down cleaning their arms. After a clip person would agitate his caput and say, No prevarication, I about denounce my bloomerss, and person else would express joy, which meant it was bad, yes, but the cat had evidently non denounce his bloomerss, it was n’t that bad, and in any instance cipher would of all time make such a thing and so travel in front and speak about it. They would squinch into the dense, oppressive sunshine. For a few minutes, possibly, they would fall soundless, illuming a joint and tracking its transition from adult male to adult male, inhaling, keeping in the humiliation. Scary material, one of them might state. But so person else would grin or flick his superciliums and state, Roger-dodger, about cut me a new bastard, about.

There were legion such airss. Some carried themselves with a kind of pensive surrender, others with pride or stiff soldierlike subject or good wit or butch ardor. They were afraid of deceasing but they were even more afraid to demo it.

They found gags to state.

They used a difficult vocabulary to incorporate the awful softness. Greased, they ‘d state. Offed, lit up, zapped while zipping. It was n’t inhuman treatment, merely phase presence. They were histrions and the war came at them in 3-D. When person died, it was n’t rather dying, because in a funny manner it seemed scripted, and because they had their mulcts largely memorized, irony assorted with calamity, and because they called it by other names, as if to encyst and destruct the world of decease itself. They kicked cadavers. They cut off pollexs. They talked oink slang. They told narratives about Ted Lavender ‘s supply of tranquillizers, how the hapless cat did n’t experience a thing, how improbably tranquil he was.

There ‘s a moral here, said Mitchell Sanders.

They were waiting for Lavender ‘s chopper, smoking the dead adult male ‘s pot.

The lesson ‘s reasonably obvious, Sanders said, and winked. Stay off from drugs. No gag, they ‘ll destroy your twenty-four hours every clip.

Cute, said Henry Dobbins.

Mind-blower, acquire it? Talk about wiggy- nil left, merely blood and encephalons.

They made themselves laugh.

There it is, they ‘d state, over and over, as if the repeat itself were an act of poise, a balance between loony and about brainsick, cognizing without traveling. There it is, which meant be cool, allow it sit, because oh yeah, adult male, you ca n’t alter what ca n’t be changed, there it is, there it perfectly and positively and sleep togethering good is.

They were tough.

They carried all the emotional luggage of work forces who might decease. Grief, panic, love, hankering -these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their ain mass and specific gravitation, they had touchable weight. They carried black memories. They carried the common secret of cowardliness hardly restrained, the inherent aptitude to run or stop dead or conceal, and in many respects this was the heaviest load of all, for it could ne’er be put down, it required perfect balance and perfect position. They carried their reputes. They carried the soldier ‘s greatest fright, which was the fright of crimsoning. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed non to. It was what had brought them to the war in the first topographic point, nil positive, no dreams of glorification or award, merely to avoid the bloom of dishonour. They died so as non to decease of embarrassment. They crawled into tunnels and walked point and advanced under fire. Each forenoon, despite the terra incognitas, they made their legs move. They endured. They kept hunching. They did non subject to the obvious option, which was merely to shut the eyes and autumn. So easy, truly. Travel wilted and tumble to the land and allow the musculuss unwind and non talk and non stir until your brothers picked you up and lifted you into the chopper that would howl and dunk its olfactory organ and transport you off to the universe. A mere affair of falling, yet no 1 of all time fell. It was non courage, precisely ; the object was non valor. Rather, they were excessively frightened to be cowards.

By and big they carried these things indoors, keeping the masks of calm. They sneered at ill call. They spoke bitterly about cats who had found release by hiting off their ain toes or fingers. Cunts, they ‘d state. Candyasses. It was ferocious, mocking talk, with merely a hint of enviousness or awe, but even so, the image played itself out behind their eyes.

They imagined the muzzle against flesh. They imagined the quick, sweet hurting, so the emptying to Japan, so a infirmary with warm beds and cute geisha nurses.

They dreamed of freedom birds.

At dark, on guard, gazing into the dark, they were carried off by elephantine jets. They felt the haste of takeoff Gone! they yelled. And so speed, wings and engines, a smiling stewardess-but it was more than a plane, it was a existent bird, a large sleek Ag bird with plumes and talons and high shriek. They were winging. The weights fell off ; there was nil to bear. They laughed and held on tight, experiencing the cold smack of air current and height, surging, believing It ‘s over, I ‘m gone! – they were naked. They were light and free-it was all elation, bright and fast and floaty, light as visible radiation, a He bombilation in the encephalon, a dizzy bubbling in the lungs as they were taken up over the Clouds and the war, beyond responsibility, beyond gravitation and chagrin anti planetary webs -Sin loi! They yelled, I ‘m regretful, assholes, but I ‘m out of it, I ‘m goofed, I ‘m on a infinite sail, I ‘m gone! -and it was a reposeful, disencumbered esthesis, merely siting the battle moving ridges, sailing ; that large Ag freedom bird over the mountains and oceans, over America, over the farms and great sleeping metropoliss and graveyards and main roads and the Golden Arches of McDonald ‘s. It was flight, a sort of fleeing, a sort of falling, falling higher and higher, whirling off the border of the Earth and beyond the Sun and through the huge, soundless vacuity where there were no loads and where everything weighed precisely nil. Gone! they screamed, I ‘m regretful but I ‘m gone! And so at dark, non rather woolgathering, they gave themselves over to lightness, they were carried, they were strictly borne.

On the forenoon after Ted Lavender died, First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross crouched at the underside of his fox hole and burned Martha ‘s letters. Then he burned the two exposure. There was a steady rain falling, which made it hard, but he used heat checks and Sterno to construct a little fire, testing it with his organic structure, keeping the exposure over the tight blue fire with the tips of his fingers.

He realized it was merely a gesture. Stupid, he thought. Sentimental, excessively, but largely merely stupid.

Lavender was dead. You could n’t fire the incrimination.

Besides, the letters were in his caput. And even now, without exposure, Lieutenant Cross could see Martha playing volleyball in her white gym trunkss and xanthous Jersey. He could see her traveling in the rain.

When the fire died out, Lieutenant Cross pulled his poncho over his shoulders and ate breakfast from a can.

There was no great enigma, he decided.

In those burnt letters Martha had ne’er mentioned the war, except to state, Jimmy take attention of yourself. She was n’t involved. She signed the letters “ Love, ” but it was n’t love, and all the all right lines and trifles did non affair.

The forenoon came up wet and blurry. Everything seemed portion of everything else, the fog and Martha and the deepening rain.

It was a war, after all.

One-half smile, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross took out his maps. He shook his caput hard, as if to unclutter it, so dead set frontward and began be aftering the twenty-four hours ‘s March. In 10 proceedingss, or possibly 20, he would bestir the work forces and they would pack up and caput West, where the maps showed the state to be green and ask foring. They would make what they had ever done. The rain might add some weight, but otherwise it would be one more twenty-four hours layered upon all the other yearss.

He was realistic about it. There was that new hardness in his tummy.

No more phantasies, he told himself.

Henceforth, when he thought approximately Martha, it would be merely to believe that she belonged elsewhere. He would close down the reverie. This was non Mount Sebastian, it was another universe, where there were no pretty poems or midterm tests, a topographic point where work forces died because of sloppiness and gross stupidity. Kiowa was right. Boom-down, and you were dead, ne’er partially dead.

Briefly, in the rain, Lieutenant Cross saw Martha ‘s grey eyes staring back at him.

He understood.

It was really sad, he thought. The things work forces carried inside. The things work forces did or felt they had to make.

He about nodded at her, but did n’t.

Alternatively he went back to his maps. He was now determined to execute his responsibilities steadfastly and without carelessness. It would n’t assist Lavender, he knew that, but from this point on he would behave himself as a soldier. He would dispose of his good-luck pebble. Swallow it, possibly, or utilize Lee Strunk ‘s catapult, or merely drop it along the trail. On the March he would enforce rigorous field subject. He would be careful to direct out flank security, to forestall straggling or bunching up, to maintain his military personnels traveling at the proper gait and at the proper interval. He would take a firm stand on clean arms. He would impound the balance of Lavender ‘s pot. Later in the twenty-four hours, possibly, he would name the work forces together and talk to them obviously. He would accept the incrimination for what had happened to Ted Lavender. He would be a adult male about it. He would look them in the eyes, maintaining his mentum degree, and he would publish the new SOPs in a composure, impersonal tone of voice, an officer ‘s voice, go forthing no room for statement or treatment. Get downing instantly, he ‘d state them, they would no longer abandon equipment along the path of March. They would patrol up their Acts of the Apostless. They would acquire their crap together, and maintain it together, and keep it neatly and in good working order.

He would non digest laxness. He would demo strength, distancing himself.

Among the work forces there would be grouching, of class, and possibly worse, because their yearss would look longer and their tonss heavier, but Lieutenant Cross reminded himself that his duty was non to be loved but to take. He would distribute with love ; it was non now a factor. And if anyone quarreled or complained, he would merely fasten his lips and set up his shoulders in the right bid position. He might give a curt small nod. Or he might non. He might merely shrug and state Carry on, so they would saddle up and organize into a column and travel out toward the small towns west of Than Khe. ( 1986 )

R & A ; R remainder and rehabilitation leave

SOP criterion operating process

RTO wireless and telephone operator

M & A ; M jesting term for medical supplies

KIA killed in action

AOs countries of operation

Sin loi Sorry