꧁ PROLOGUE ꧂

 

 

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Wilson,                                                                     .                             1 March 1967

 

Lt. Collins asked me to write to you. I hope that is okay with you. I’m sure he’ll be writing you soon if he hasn’t already.

 

     Corporal Damien Wilson sat on his steel pot with his back against a tree, having just finished cleaning his M-16. He pushed the selector on safe and laid it close to him. In these surroundings, he officiated in the context of war. Behind him, a flapping gaggle of ten CH-46 medium helicopters flew some company or battalion of Marine grunts into harm's way. He felt nothing for those men as the roar of their airborne machines passed into the horizon. He'd lived in this war zone for eleven months now. The boxcar crunch of artillery made its presence known about a half click to the west. Life wasn't complete without that crashing. A flight of bomb-laden F-4s from Da Nang streaked across the sky, northeast to southwest at about fifteen thousand and climbing.   

    The itch in his lower back roused him to personal sympathy. With his flak jacket on, he couldn't feel the tree's rough bark through the fiberglass plates sewn into his vest. He couldn't massage the itch like an old bear when he rubbed against tree bark. Regardless, he pressed his back hard into it like that bear does. It helped some. 

    He looked back out toward the surrounding countryside. Vietnam was often a noisy place, and he had learned to segregate it into dangerous and impotent sounds. Green undulating hills melted into lighter and darker tints, hues, and tones. These colors at one time provided a breathtaking conglomeration of his favorite color. That was a million years ago when he joined the company.

    In Delta Company's physical claim upon this AO. The landscape propounded to its inhabitants an ancient, serene facade. That had all become a lie during Damien's tour. This country and its green-washed dyes were equivocations; themes played out upon half-truths. Tree lines, bushes, bamboo thickets, and elephant grass; the flora and fauna of Southeast Asia were seldom what they advertised. Ages ago and half a world away, a tree line was just that and nothing more. Now, eleven months into Damien's tour, he could no longer trust what his steely dark brown iris told him was just rough brush. Everything was a potential trap.

     Vietnam was where his foe hid in, among, or under foliage, waiting to kill him. All of it he had to sort through in an instant. If he sorted wrong, he was dead. He no longer put stock in the ground he walked on, for nothing was safe or sacred here anymore. Hidden or buried in the dirt were land mines and punji stakes, or worse. Charlie used everything: discarded C-Ration cans, tires, unexploded bombs, unclaimed ordinance, everything, and Damien knew that Victor Charles, wherever he was, was watching him. That little gook was out there —somewhere. Sitting a few feet away from him, he and PFC Moorehouse were already sweating from the humid ninety-plus-degree heat. The heat over here had a taste to it. But he would never be able to describe it back home—back in the world. They had most recently completed digging their fighting hole, and both men were hungry, as hungry as one can get, laboring in a sauna. 

    Wilson and Moorehouse couldn't have been more of a study in contrasts. Damien Wilson was built like a basketball forward—tall, lean, and agile, quick as a deer. Moorehouse stood five feet seven inches and tripped over his feet. Damien was lightly black, and Jerry Moorehouse was white. Damien's features were measured in straight, handsome lines that had drawn plenty of female attention in school. Jerry had been a fat, freckle-faced kid, and here, his baby fat soon melted off of him as he edged his way into life in the Corps. Damien came from the upper middle class of Ft. Worth, Texas. His father, Dr. James Wilson, was a brilliant physicist who had recently taken the position of head of the science department at Gladstone Preparatory School. After years of his wife's bantering, James Wilson could come home at night to spend time with his family. Dr. Wilson nearly disowned Damien for enlisting in the Corps. 

     Jerry spent his days on the tough streets of Dundalk, Baltimore's industrial blue-collar district. Jerry had no idea who his father was, nor did he care. He'd been told his old man was a thief and a streetwise punk who had raped his mother. His mother died of a heroin overdose when Jerry was five. He was moved to an orphanage until he was twelve and a half. He had joined the Marines from the repressive confines of a foster home. No one at Jerry's last home cared that he'd joined the military. It just meant they didn't have his mouth to feed any longer. 

     Damien's IQ was slightly over one hundred thirty. Jerry didn't know what IQ meant, not really. For starters, Damien loved Keats and Shakespeare, as well as Hemingway and Steinbeck. And Moorehouse, well, he loved Superman comics, anything with pictures. Wilson was a Baptist. He spent his final summers at his church's basketball camp. Jerry held no particular beliefs sacred. Religion had not looped its way into Jerry's existence. But Jerry was a quick understudy, amiable and free-spirited, and he meshed well with this company of Marines. Despite his formative years, which could have made him resentful, he worked at making friends. He was more diligent than most, which became his first order of business. Damien felt at odds, especially with some of the other black Marines and several of the white Alabama and Tennessee boys. Damien and Jerry liked each other immediately. Only their rank separated them. Jerry snored at night and, worse, sometimes on ambushes, which brought Damien's whispered wrath. Damien, however, slept light, his hand almost always curling around his weapon's pistol grip. He'd wake at the slightest rustle or click of a twig—or for no reason.

     They were different in other significant ways. Damien had witnessed enough of the Delta Company men die, both white and black. He'd killed several Viet Cong and NVA at close range. His first kill was with his K-bar—on Christmas. He'd also experienced a tragic "friendly fire" incident, and as the saying goes, "friendly fire isn't." That was two days before Thanksgiving. When he finally rotated, he would do everything he could not to be anywhere near home on those days. The holidays would mock him. By now, his outlook on life had submerged into the thick ooze of his confusion, and he wondered if life held any truth or meaning for him. How was he supposed to understand all those Sunday school lessons at Emmanuel Baptist? Love thine enemies? Killing had become part of who he was. How does one stop this way of living and 'go home' as if nothing significant had happened for the past twelve months? He wondered if any place was really "safe" anymore. He would begun to wonder if Nietzsche was right, that God was indeed dead. He started to feel that all the answers he'd trusted as a churched child had not simply lost their meaning but never had any purpose. 

    Trust in anything solid had gotten lost somewhere between where he sat and Da Nang. Damien had also stopped wondering if there was some plan to win this war. Nietzsche had gone insane, partly because of the venereal disease he'd contracted and partly because he no longer had any response to his philosophy. Only God, if He did exist, knew if Johnson and McNamara intended to win this elongated, open-ended conflagration. 

    Private Moorehouse came to Delta to escape the constant change of life without weighty relationships. He was content with the possibility of God existing or not. He'd found a home in the most dangerous place on earth. Little else mattered to Jerry. 

    The previous two weeks had proven virulent and unrelenting to Delta Company. Each platoon had tripped one ambush each. They'd skirmished off and on for two days the preceding week with a sizable enemy force, and twice, they had initiated contact with the enemy. As a result, the company had suffered three KIAs and ten wounded during that span. And on last night's ambush, a patrol of VC walked right into second platoon's kill zone. They found several blood trails but recovered only parts of one body the following day.

     Humans weren't the only enemy they fought. The lack of sleep and the constant tension of wondering who would get hit next cut creases into their facial features. It sank their eyes deeper into their heads. The dead weight of their packs, along with all the gun ammo boxes and rifle bandoliers, extra mortar rounds, and frags, multiplied mass times gravity to equal more weight than any of them had ever carried over distances that might break a horse. Everyone swatted the malarial mosquitoes and the other critters. They had intense disdain for the horse-size malaria pills that sent them into the bushes with their e-tools, suffering from the 'Ho Chi Minh quick step.' Then there were the varmints that killed or made one wish he was dead. All around them were four-inch black scorpions, foot-long centipedes, three-quarters of an inch in diameter that could bite on either end, and an infinite variety of deadly snakes. They lived with dysentery, the ubiquitous heat, the incessant rain, and the resultant soaked clothing that could rub sores on a weary body. Annoying leeches populated the rice paddies and streams and hurt fiercely when you pulled them off. They left a hole in the skin that oozed blood and became infected quickly. 

    The skin between their toes split and bled from being constantly wet. When a man cut himself on the ten-foot tall razor-sharp elephant grass, he bled, which led to infection and then a pus-filled sore within fifteen minutes: the more cuts, the more infectious sores. The more sores, the more they drained and burned when sweat ran into the cut. But the abrasions didn't heal appropriately. Life in Vietnam stung and burned in one way or another, and all the time. 

    If these matters weren't sufficient to burden a man, there was always the uncertainty of wondering if the effort they gave day and night was worth the cost. They held deep in their psyche the growing suspicion that America didn't care about them. And from what they read in their hometown newspapers at Mail Call, it felt as if the country that sent them 10,000 miles west hated them for what they did. It all conspired to sap from them what energy remained in their bodies. 

 

     With the can's lid cut open and bent to form a handle, Jerry Moorehouse raised the hot green tin can to his nose. He sniffed at the malodorous bubbling gravy bathing the beefsteak and potatoes. The heat tab cooking his meal gave off acrid, noxious fumes that burned his eyes, soldering the inside of his nose. This burning caused him to rub his eyes and nose with his other dirty hand. Jerry blinked hard to clear his watering eyes and blew on the gurgling, thickened juices to cool them. He had learned to do it this way for the past few months. In the heat, Jerry endured eating. In the bush, getting to where you could sit long enough to shovel the food was often an ordeal. 

     Jerry stirred the contents of the can, sloshing some of the gravy over its edge so that it dripped onto his mud-encrusted right boot. "Way to go, Moorehouse," he groused to himself. He was already thinking past the main course of this B-2 Unit and into the middle of his pound cake. He loved his pound cake. So did Damien. After months in the bush, Jerry found he wouldn't eat Ham and Eggs, Boned Chicken, and Chicken and Noodles—no way unless he could beg some home-sent spices from somebody. 

    After eleven months and some loose change, Damien had one full moon to go out of his twelve and seventeen. That was when he'd hitch a ride on a chopper and be out of the bush for good. At twelve months and twenty days, he would be on that big freedom bird headed home to the land of the round eyes. So, he ate the ham slices, Beans and Wieners, and, occasionally, a Beefsteak ration. If you only had Beefsteak, you needed a heat tab and Tabasco sauce. The gunk they packed in and around the "meat" was horrible, if not heated. When Damien heated it, it tasted merely terrible. His mother kept him supplied with dried onions and other seasonings. She learned to bake German Chocolate cakes in coffee cans. She'd filled old shoeboxes with chocolate chip cookies and other goodies she had sent him. Damien was good about sharing his mom's fabulous cooking. But almost twelve months of eating the same meals, except for the few times they got to eat in somebody's mess hall in the rear, would drive a normal person insane. Damien didn't feel normal anymore. Complaining about everything was a grunt's right of passage, an obligation. It didn't alter the facts, but it provided some comic relief.

     "Damien, you want my Caraway cheese? I hate this stuff." Jerry shuddered as he thought about what lay just beyond the thin metal cover he refused to cut open with his C-Rat opener. 

Damien didn't look up as he spoke. "PFC Moorehouse, you know what you can do with that Caraway cheese, d on't you?"

    "How you gonna act, man? Don't say I never offered you nothin.' Don't come screamin' to me when you're starvin,' and we can't get resupplied like last time. I'm a nice guy, Corporal--hey. By the way, when are you gonna finish tellin' me about your dad? Did he ever talk much about working on the atomic bomb?"

    "No. He couldn't talk about it. He told me some stories, but I'm certain now that he left out quite a bit, you know, top secret things. He used to say that if he talked about that project, Mr. Hoover, the FBI Director, would personally show up at our door and take me off someplace where they couldn't find me. He is a genius, my dad. Did I tell you he met Einstein?"

      "Albert Einstein?"

    "Yep. Oppenheimer, Konopinski, Hans Bethe, Serber, and Teller too. All those brilliant men and so many more. They called them the Luminaries. It took all of them and thousands more to make that bomb."

     "You gotta be kiddin' me. Albert Einstein? Man. Did you ever meet any of those guys, Damien?" Jerry didn't know who Oppenheimer or Teller were. For all he knew, they played baseball, but Albert Einstein? Holy mackerel! 

     "I was too little. Some of them are dead now. You know what's funny about my dad?"

     "No. What?"

    "Sometimes he walks out of the house when it's raining and doesn't even know it. He's just on another planet. I don't know how many times we'd be sitting at the dinner table, and he would start one sentence, stop in mid-thought, begin to write out an equation, and then leap onto a completely different topic in fifteen seconds. He didn't know he'd left us in the dust trying to figure out what he was talking about. But put him in front of a blackboard and give him a problem to solve, and he'd be off to the races in his little world."

    "Yeah? Like what would he write on the blackboard?" Moorehouse was half finished with his meal, and Damien had moved toward a more contemplative mood, thinking about home. That brought the ache back. He wanted to leave this place so badly he could taste it. But he wanted out alive and in one piece. He didn't care if his dad was preoccupied. He'd not complain this time. Just getting there was the main thing now.

    "Oh, he'd write equations I couldn't begin to understand. It was so far beyond the calculus that I did in school--"

     "You know calculus? Wow. You must be a brain, too." Jerry Moorehouse was duly impressed with the Marine sitting next to him. Most of the enlisted Marines he'd met were at least high school graduates, and a few had gone to Junior College. But calculus? Wow. Jerry had fought the war of algebra -- quite unsuccessfully.

     "Yeah. I intend to return to school and get my degree in Marine Biology when I get out. I'll call it Biology of the Water and leave off the Marine prefix. The next time I play in the water, I don't want to have to wade in it looking for leeches or little people who want to shoot me. How many years did you enlist for, Moorehouse?"

     That was a challenging subject for Jerry. He would have two and a half years left when he rotated out of the bush. Two and half years plus nine months left, to be exact. It may as well be a million. "I got two and a half after I rotate."

     Damien just smiled. He had enlisted for three years and would have just a few months left in the Corps when he got home. "I figure I have about five or so months to do when I get back to the States." He smiled again. "I'm a short-timer." Then Damien laughed aloud as he looked at Jerry. The poor kid had forever and two weeks to go in the bush and then a lifetime to do at Pendleton or Lejeune. "I'm hurtin' for you, pal."

     "Yeah." 

    Damien had not yet opened the letter from Michael, his best friend from school. That he would save for dessert. Damien wiped his hands on his sweat-stained, beyond-filthy utility jacket and stirred his can of ham and limas to make the meal more edible. His eyes squinted, and his nostrils flared from the fumes of his heat tab. In a hot second, Damien was just mad. Speaking generally to Moorehouse, Damian looked over at a group of Marines about thirty meters away and said, "Jonsie, I hope you ask me to get you out of the next working party--" Damien stirred his meal and fumed. Cpl. Wilson had requested Jonsie to take care of some light-duty matters as a favor. The Company Gunny "allowed" Damien to go in Jonsie's place on that working party several days ago. Damien entertained the idea of throwing the can into the bushes or burying it -- just because.

    When the contents finally boiled, Damien slowly inserted the spoon into his can, bringing the shipment perilously close to his lips. Closing his eyes, Damien blew on it. Damien inhaled and slurped a plump, slimy-grained colored green bean between his lips and onto his tongue. At this instant, physics and boiling heat took over. In less than a second, he ejected the bean like a watermelon seed, wincing and gritting his teeth as if trying to grind the nasty texture from existence. He hoped to erase somehow the fiery contact it made with his taste buds. That stinking green thing had seared what was left of them. With his face contorted, Cpl. Wilson concluded his response by shaking his head in utter disgust. 

    "I will never, ever eat Ham and Mothers again. Mom better not set any in front of me when I get home." Slowly, the odious taste lessened in his mouth. He ran his tongue against his front two teeth to see if the damage would be permanent. The veins on Damien's sweaty neck protruded, and his dark nostrils continued to flare. The look in his brown eyes said to one and all, beware. 

    With his tongue still smarting from the hot bean, Damien set the can back on the once-smoldering stove resting between his boots. Finally, the heat tab burned itself out. Damien prayed zealously that this meal might magically improve when he attempted another bite. Lord, he hated this dismal meal, and his tongue throbbed in pain in the bargain. He just wanted to fill his stomach and be done with it. Jonsie wouldn't trade his Beans and Weenies for either love or money, not for Ham and Mothers. Damien would have thrown in his pound cake, too—uhhh, maybe not. Resorting to a last-ditch effort, he stirred the final few bits of dried onions he'd saved from home into the can and held his breath. Now, he had to segregate the juices or any other nasty thing from touching his palpitating tongue. He wanted to eat. Moorehouse couldn't help but laugh at the faces the dark-skinned Corporal sitting next to him made. Damien eyed Moorehouse's meal—anything but Ham and Mothers. 

 

Things have started to get busier around here lately. But Damien always helped me look on the bright side when they made us do things we didn’t want to do, like working parties.

 

     Following chow, Damien once more wiped his hands on his utilities. He didn't want to soil the letter he'd saved for when he'd finished eating. He'd thought about using his rag of a towel to clean his hands but decided against it. His trousers would have to do. This was one more reason, among so many, that every Marine's jungle utilities in the company were such a mess. Melded into the numerous tares in the warn and bleached fabric was a collection of friend and foe's blood, and the past days and weeks had proven a rich environment for making one's utilities blood stained. This letter from Michael might lighten his spirits a little. He missed their camaraderie and especially their mischief. Damien had been so preoccupied with staying alive that he didn't realize how homesick he was until the long-overdue mail arrived on the last chopper. Damien could always talk to Michael, but not so easily to his father. Dr. Wilson did not know when his chemistry, physics, or biology lectures would end and when his time with his son would commence. Damien needed civilian 'guy talk' about now—not Marine Corps talk, not Vietnam talk—but a conversation with one of his friends outside of Delta Company, even if they were half a world away and couldn't understand his struggles.

 

     Dear Damien, I haven’t heard from you in a few weeks. I was worried and thought I’d write to see how you are faring. Your father reads your letters to the class when you write—hint. I thought I’d let you know that no one suspects what we did at the end of last year; so far, that is. I occasionally overhear a teacher talking about it. Coach McKay thinks you are somehow connected to the blocking sled, but he can’t prove it. I play dumb. Revenge has proven somewhat sweet. Unfortunately, I had to help pull it out of the creek. Oh, where were you when I needed you? It was hard getting it out.

     Lucinda misses you. She has that sort of hangdog look about her. I don’t know why. I hope you’ve had time to write her. I thought I saw Boyd Manchester looking in her direction at lunch—I just thought you might want to know. Are you going to marry her when you finally get home? I think she’s expecting that to hear her talk. You don’t get near a basketball hoop anywhere, do you? That probably is an ignorant question. The team sure could have used you on the court last season. Coach Dobbs thinks the baseball team will fare ok. He misses you on the mound, at short, at third, in the outfield, at bat, at bat, at bat--.  

     I noticed you were promoted. What does a corporal do? Have you seen any action lately? I won’t tell your parents if you’ve been in heavy action. What’s it like shooting at people or getting shot at? Have you ever killed any of the enemy? You don’t say much. Guys aren’t supposed to say things like this, but I wish you were here instead of there. I miss the good times we had. I always wanted a big brother. Margaret doesn’t fill the bill. The parties seem less, I don’t know, less exciting without you spiking the punch and all the other crazy things you came up with. 

     Do you remember Charlie Ruckles? He was killed in a car crash last month. You may remember he put the Ex-lax in the chocolate cake in Home Economics last semester. Mrs. Simmons lost her stoic composure with the effects. It was wonderful. Do you remember how nothing seemed to get to her? Two students were sent to the hospital with severe diarrhea and abdominal cramps. I think Charlie overdid it, but it was so funny because Wendy Armbruster was one of the girls who went to the hospital. You and I should have done it before you left for San Diego.

     I need your advice. Mother and Father are pushing me to decide on a university in the fall. As you know, my father wants me to consider TCU or A&M. Mother is set on Princeton or Yale, at least one of the Ivy League schools. I don’t know if I want to take the pre-med or engineering courses wherever I end up. I don’t know. Donny Rainford has already been accepted to Dartmouth University. All my friends will be leaving in a few months. Wendy Armbruster is going to Amherst. She grates on my last nerve. Charlie Warden said he wanted to stay here and go to TCU. I might be able to make their baseball team, or I could try out at A&M. I’m getting tired of Ft. Worth, but nothing else appeals to me. I don’t want to work for my Father—right now. I don’t enjoy working there. Have you thought about going to college when you get back?

     Uh oh, here comes Mother. I have to clean my room. Take care of yourself. 

 

Your friend, 

Michael      

     

    Damien heard swishing footsteps pushing through the ankle-high grass in his direction, which made him look up from his letter in time to hear Gunny Ballantine bellow, "Wilson. The lieutenant wants you."

 

     Gunny Ballantine was a throwback from the Philistines and a distant relative of Goliath. He wore the most enormous jungle boots Damien had ever seen, and his hands could make a basketball look small. He carried an old, wood-scarred club, his "whuppin' stick." The Gunny didn't need his .45, but the lieutenant insisted he carry it anyway. He had trouble finding a flak jacket that fit his barrel chest, and he had to squeeze his helmet onto his shiny, bald head. What he gave away in looks, he more than made up for in aggression. 

Before returning to Vietnam, he would visit the bars in Oceanside or San Clemente, California, and "volunteer" to be their bouncer for the evening. This was his second tour in 'Nam. He had earned the Navy Cross, a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, one with a "V" device, a handful of Vietnamese Crosses of Gallantry, and two purple hearts. Part of his left triceps was now missing, and he had welts all over his legs from the shrapnel of a Chi-com grenade. Before coming to Delta Company, between his first combat tour and now his second in 1967, he'd done one tour on the drill field at Parris Island. That was probably why he couldn't whisper, and no one wanted to sit beside him in an ambush. But they all wanted him close at hand when the garbage hit the fan—that was for sure.   

     "Great. What did I do this time, Gunny?" Wilson asked, hoping not to hear Ballantine's answer.

     "Nothin' corporal. First platoon has a prisoner, and the lieutenant wants you to go with him for a look-see."

"Gunny, you know I'm a short-timer; thirty-two days and a wake-up. I'm so short I'm sitting on the edge of a dime danglin' my feet. And I'm gettin' shorter by the minute." Damien held up his short-timer's stick he'd been working on and pled his case as all short-timers are obligated to do. He even resorted to begging, which, at this point, didn't seem beneath his dignity. "Are you sure you can't get me out of this? O'Neal isn't busy. Moorehouse here isn't either. Jonsie sure isn't. Gunny, I've got important friends back home, and they wouldn't want me, a real short-timer, going out there where people could do me bodily harm."

     "You're breakin' my heart, Corporal." Ballantine wasn't prejudiced. He hated everybody. The giant smacked his shillelagh against his helmet. "Get your gear and high tail it over to the skipper at the CP. Your piece better be clean." A Marine called his rifle a weapon, a rifle, or a piece. He learned, embarrassingly, at boot camp not to call it a "gun." 

     Damien looked at Moorehouse and then said under his breath, so Ballantine hopefully wouldn't hear, "Never volunteer for anything. Oh man, I hate this place. And I especially hate this green machine--and lifers.  'It don't mean nothin.'"

    Hate seemed such an easy word these days. Damien found little tolerance for these tanned, diminutive people he came here to rescue from communism. That was how it started several years ago and how he reasoned himself into this. Now, after eleven months. he believed that most of them wanted to kill him or wanted him to go home. He hated battling for and taking ground one day, only to abandon it the next, and then for no good reason that he could see, take it back and abandon it again so that Delta or some other company received multiple casualties retaking it. 

    He hated filling body bags and sandbags. He hated the lifers, Marines who chose the Corps as their occupation, who seemed to go out of their way to make his life miserable—like Gunny Ballantine. He hated the weather, whether hot or cold or wet. It got cold here, especially when he was soaked to the bone, and the wind blew. He hated the enemy who refused to quit. He hated the Washington politicians' micromanaging this war right into the ground. Winning had long since vanished from the mental landscape of most Delta Marines. Surviving replaced what remained. He hated the smell of death, and he hated Ham and Mothers. But the unexpected had slipped under the radar screen, too. It embroiled him in its web of deceit, infusing it into his being. 

    Damien had become alive over here. This deadly atmosphere had honed his senses. He'd become an adrenaline junkie. It took him hours to come down off of the high of firefights. He wouldn't admit it, but Corporal Wilson loved the action, the drama, and the suspense of wondering if he could cheat death one more day or moment-by-moment. His M-16 gave him an unrealistic sense of authority. The frags gave him power out of proportion to reality. Damien's heart raced with excitement if he climbed into a CH-46 and saw that the crew chief had that forlorn, "Coyote-going-over-the-side-of-a-cliff" look on his face while standing amidst hundreds of empty spent brass casings. They were flying into a hot LZ. War became a universe of contradictions. Damien couldn't explain it, but the high had become addictive. 

     Damien could think under pressure when some of the men couldn't. He saw better at night over here. He sensed hidden dangers. He'd come to trust that intangible something that veterans learn living months at a time in the bush. This sixth sense was now so much a part of him. No amount of training stateside could infuse this ethereal thing into a man. He heard things. Little unobtrusive noises. Things which the FNG's, the "Cherry's," the fresh meat replacements from the world hadn't the slightest notion of. 

     On the back end of Damien's tour, he had become a Marine in the fullest sense of the word. When life couldn't get any worse, and Damien had reached his soul's empty cubbyhole more than once, the brotherhood of Marines from all of America's past wars stood beside him. They urged him and swore at him—'One more step, Jarhead. One more step.' It was they, their courage, their devotion to something beyond themselves, that made him clean his rifle, hump the bush when he was too tired to move, and grit his teeth and take it. He hated this place, no doubt about that. It had stolen from him people and things that could not and would not be replaced. But it had given him qualities and perspectives so few boys his age hardly imagined existed. 

     Despite these infused pressures and positive commodities, the past month had made him wonder why he couldn't explain if his 'luck' had almost run out. He couldn't shake it.   

      Cpl. Wilson stood and stretched. As he did so, his head felt light, somewhat dizzy. He bent over, putting his hands on his knees for balance. That action gave him heartburn in spades. C-Rats did that to him. He burped out loud—that one's for Charlie and Gunny Ballantine. In a moment, when the trees stopped circling, Damien bent down once more and grabbed his weapon along with several bandoliers of ammo. He always carried his two frags. He stuffed his letter into his left breast pocket and put on his steel pot, which usually made his head i tch. Ready as he ever would be, Damien sauntered over to the CP, utterly disgusted because he didn't want to stop thinking of home, and this patrol forced him, one more time, back to a grunt's lot in life.

     The Command Post was in the shade, under some low-hanging branches from a large tree punctured and scarred not so long ago by a .105 round. The previous week's skirmishes had blown the bark off of it in several other places. Nearby bushes gave them the best concealment in the immediate area.    

      "Doc, hand me those magazines and a couple of frags," Lieutenant Collins said to the nearest corpsman. 

 

     Lieutenant Joseph Collins, Delta Company's skipper, was on a mission. He was promoted to Delta Company CO when Captain Stanwyck left the field and sent up to Battalion S-3A. Major Cronin needed an assistant. Stanwyck had done his six months in the bush, and now it was Collins's turn to take over. 

     Joseph Adolphus Collins graduated from Vanderbilt University with a degree in Chemical Engineering and almost married his high school sweetheart in the second semester of his sophomore year. He accomplished this latter mission over the Christmas break of his junior year. However, in the infinite wisdom of the Corps, they chose to send him to Parris Island that year, which nullified his honeymoon. But he more than made up for lost ti me during the summer. His uncle's cabin on the coast of Alabama, a few miles out of Gulf Shores, soothed Maureen Collins's ruffled feathers. Unfortunately, the Corps' demands on her husband's life had set the tone for a stormy relationship between it and her. 

     Joseph's senior year found him at Quantico and once more separated from Maureen. Her never-ending tug-of-war between his desire to lead men for as long as the Corps called on him and her genetic exigency for the sanity, security, and pay of an engineer made life difficult for them both. Finally, her life, such as it was, had reached its apex for Maureen. She told her mother she'd had enough. She sought and obtained a divorce before Joe could secure a plane ticket home to dissuade her. So long, Maureen.

 

     When he graduated, Joseph was commissioned a second Lieutenant. He reported for fourteen weeks at The Basic School and was sent to Fort Sill for Artillery School. When he filled out his dream sheet, he did not list infantry as any of his first three choices. Because of standing order number one in the Corps by those gutless wonders at HQ Marine Corps who do not get anywhere near the bush themselves, he was assigned to a rifle company and sent straightway to Vietnam. 

     Joseph Collins didn't look like an officer, not really. He didn't fit the physical mold that enlisted men get in their heads about what an officer is supposed to look like. He was not large like the Gunny. He didn't appear athletic under his field gear, and his always-red cheeks gave him a boyish countenance that the recent firefights and all-night running gun battles worked toward scouring from him. His boots were half the size of Ballantine's, and his hands seemed a half size too small. The Lord only knew how that massive Vanderbilt ring stayed on his finger. 

     But Damien couldn't remember hearing Lt. Collins complain. He was accurate with the compass, so the men trusted him. He was very good at calling in fire missions; the rounds always landed where they were supposed to land. The most recent short round was Sgt. Marks's doing. Yet, despite these positives, Damien thought he detected an anger building within the Lieutenant. The Corporal couldn't put his finger on it, but something seemed askew behind that silver bar. The past few weeks, Collins got angry, especially when three men were toe-tagged and medivaced out. One of the three men was Delta's XO, Lt. Kirkpatrick. With the Executive Officer gone, Ballantine was forced into assuming numerous duties not generally assigned to the Company Gunnery Sgt. No one knew when the new Exec would arrive. Collins had also begun to smoke more than usual. He liked Marlboro's. Too much contact lately. No, sir, Damien wanted nothing to do with this patrol.

     The two radiomen, LCpl's Simmons, a tall, lanky Texan—with three months and six days left in the bush, and Castillo, a medium-built Latino with—four months and twenty-two days to go, strapped on their radios for their pre-mission radio checks. Simmons lit up his fifteenth Kool of the day and articulated it into his handset while Castillo moved several paces away from Simmons so Simmons could communicate with the battalion. "Oregon Mike, Oregon Mike, this is Delta Six -- radio check. How do you read me over? Oregon Mike, this is Delta Six--radio check. How do you read me over?" Simmons had learned to talk like a radioman even without the radio.

     Castillo, the Delta Company wise guy fifteen meters from Simmons, checked his radio with Bull. He keyed his handset near a squat bush, hoping not to be overheard by the lieutenant, "Delta Two, Delta Two--this is Delta Six, radio check. Eenie, meenie, miney, moe—how do you read my radio?" Bull Zimmerman, third platoon radioman, bent down and away from the Gunny so as not to be heard laughing. He cupped his hand around his mouth and spoke into his handset, "Zat you? Yo, zat you? Delta Six, I read you two by two—too loud and too often. Bye, y'all." Castillo squeezed his handset to ask, "Where's the women and booze you promised?" Bull came back, "Wake me up when dinner's ready, honey. Six out." 

     Having repeated this unacceptable form of military communication for the umpteenth time, Castillo looked around to see the Gunny glaring in his direction. The Gunny, however, didn't remove the contagious smile from Castillo's sun-dyed skin and dirty face. Walking back into the CP, he said, "Radio check complete, Sir." His pseudo-serious manner fooled no one. Several seconds elapsed before Simmons's radio crackled its response, "Delta Six, Delta Six, this is Oregon Mike. I read you loud and clear, over." Simmons acknowledged the man on the other end of the radio, "Roger that, Oregon Mike. Delta Six, out." The battalion radioman knew better than to joke on his radio; too many officers around. 

    Damien, the final arrival, shuffled into the CP. Three men were standing near the lieutenant, who stood chain-smoking while he studied his map intently. He moved his compass over the papered surface, making mental checks. Each member of the newly formed patrol rechecked his assorted ammo and grenades draped about him.

     "What are you smilin' about, Castillo," the lieutenant asked, knowing the answer before he sent the question.

    "Nothing, Sir." 

     

Damien arrived in country about 8 months before I joined Delta. 

        

     "All right. Listen up. First platoon has captured what they suspect is a VC. I need to see what they have. No, Corporal Wilson, I don't want to hear one more time how short you are, clear?" Damien nodded and showed his teeth but nothing more. The lieutenant unveiled the coordinates on his map to the three men to orient them to the CP's location, route, and destination. "Since you all 'volunteered' for this assignment, keep your spacing at fifteen meters when we move out. I know I harp on this, but we'll be in the open for about seventy-five meters until we run into that long section of tall brush and bamboo at the end of this paddy. First platoon is several hundred meters beyond that thicket, so--, unfortunately, we'll be forced to stay on this dike until we reach them. The engineers have cleared this area of mines; I hope so anyway. As it stands, we have no other options, gents." 

     Each of the enlisted Marines on the patrol thought the same thing: why did they invent the helicopter? The Regimental CO and Battalion CO both have their own choppers. Why can't they get that little gook? But after so many months, not only in the Corps but also in the military, they knew the answer. It was mind over matter. We, the Marine Corps leadership, don't mind, and you, the grunts don't matter.  

     The lieutenant paused for a second and looked at his watch. Then he resumed his instructions. "Stay on me, but keep your eyes open and your head on a swivel. I say again, don't bunch up. We're not taking a corpsman, so don't get anybody hurt. But if I do go down, we have two nets for support: Company and Battalion. Cpl. Wilson will assume command if that need arises. Any questions?"

       "No sir," came the reply from the dirty, sweat-soaked men surrounding him.

     "Gunny, make sure mortars are up and ready before we move out," the lieutenant continued. Another pause, another long drag from his cigarette, and then he urged, "Gunny, go ahead and set up LaSarge's gun right there—to cover us. We're gonna be in the open forever."

      Dennison"s mortar crew was busy stripping increments off the High Explosive, or HE rounds. He would use one round of Willie Peter or white phosphorus to mark the target when the call came. Cpl. Dennison studied his map, moving his compass over it. Then he looked at the yellow range card. "First checkpoint is seventy-five meters, elevation -- eighty-one, point five, deflection zero, charge zero. The ammo humpers pulled all the charges off each round. Dennison adjusted the M4 sight accordingly. 

     He checked his compass once more and then looked through and over his sight at his aiming point. Sixty's didn't use aiming stakes; eighty-one's did. He put the white line along the left edge of a huge tree just past the brush line. He knew precisely where first platoon was, one hundred meters to the right of the tree. Dennison adjusted the elevation knob several degrees, then he turned the zero of the micrometer knob toward the "L" or left, fifteen mils toward the setting he wanted. Next, Hal Dennison centered his longitudinal level with the elevation crank and looked at both bubbles to see if they were level. Noting the deflection bubble was just a hair off, he readjusted the nut on the bipod leg, and the cross-level bubble came to the center. This process took him a matter of seconds.

      "Lieutenant, mortars are up." 

     "LaSarge. LaSarge!" bellowed the Gunny. "Get over here! Get your crew together, and set your gun up over there. You’ll cover the patrol." A machine gun or a mortar tube, both crew-served weapons, you called a gun.

     "But Gunny, I ain't had my chow yet!" LaSarge could protest with the best of them.

     "Look, clown. I don't want any lip from you." Ballantine smacked his helmet several times with his club, hard enough to knock any normal human senseless. Then he said, "The Skipper wants it done now. What do I gotta do, LaSarge, thump you on your melon? I will!" he barked, pointing the shillelagh menacingly toward LaSarge. 

    LaSarge exhaled, partly from hunger, partly from fear, and partly from respectful exasperation. Ballantine was eight times larger than he was. The little Indian from South Dakota had his crew move the machine gun into the most recently assigned position and set it up. He'd seen Ballantine grab a large Marine off of a six-by truck and slam him against the tailgate, and then proceeded to chew him out. The gunny went nose to nose for any petty insubordination.  

 

Damien kind of took me under his wing. He would sit with me on some of my watches at night, and he even went out on an LP, that’s a listening post, one time with me when he didn’t have to. I really appreciated that. I got to return the favor several times when I got a few packages from my girlfriend with cookies and stuff. He sure liked the chocolate chip cookies my girl sent to me. Thank you, Mrs. Wilson, for the goodies you have sent.

 

   Twenty feet away, two Marines, digging a fighting hole, scrambled head-over-teakettle out of their excavation. They shouted, stomped their boots, and swung their entrenching tools wildly at something in the thick grass. This sudden animation scattered a large flock of perched and nesting drongos skyward from the nearby eucalyptus trees. The large bird's excited flapping and a harsh jumble of metallic aviary notes, chuckles, and calls co-opted the two men's indiscernible and foul Marine vocabulary.  

     "What's goin' on, Gunny? You Marines, what's goin' on?" The lieutenant's anxious, probing voice demanded an answer. 

     "Sir, it was one of them foot-long centipedes. I hate them things. We was just tryin' to kill it. It crawled up into this pile of rocks right here before we could get it. It's in there somewhere."

    A slow smile spread across the lieutenant's face. This noisy diversion sliced into the rising tension amid the small band of men huddled near the map. Since no one got bit, Gunny returned to his affairs, and the lieutenant turned back to the patrol and the promise of a prisoner. Collin's intensity betrayed somewhat his rising concern about the distance he had to cover until they reached at least some concealment. 

It seemed the last few days to Damien that the lieutenant wanted to jump right into the middle of the fire. This man liked leading his men. He was a natural Skipper. But he also hated toe-tagging Marines. The former led too often to the latter. Collins checked one final time with each radioman assigned frequency. He also scanned their ammo allotment and other equipment for his assurance.

    "I'll lead," he stated matter-of-factly. "Simmons, you're second. Wilson, you follow Simmons and Castillo, you're tail-end Charley. Alright, load and lock." 

   The four men automatically tapped their magazines on the palms of their hands or helmets to seat the rounds. This done, they shoved the magazines into their weapons. Each man then chambered a round and put his rifle on safe. The lieutenant stepped out from under the overhanging branches of the trees, under which he and the CP group spread their gear into the insecurity and death of Vietnam. Collins squeezed his stub of smoke out with his fingers. The small amount of unsmoked tobacco scattered in the sudden breeze and settled in the high grass. 

 

D amien didn’t seem to mind working with a new guy and he made sure I kept my weapon real clean. We have a gunny who likes to have surprise rifle inspections before we go out on patrol. Damien saved me some considerable embarrassment and pain several times. The gunny gets upset when our rifles aren’t clean.

 

     Simmons didn't bother counting the Skipper's steps. He knew the distance by sight—even in the dark. When the lieutenant reached it, Simmons stepped up on the dike and moved toward the distant brush. Two men up and out. Wilson counted in his head out of habit, 'seven--eight--nine --' In his full concentration and growing unease, he didn't sense Castillo moving behind him when Simmons reached about the ten-meter point. Castillo bumped Damien from behind. Wilson quickly turned to confront the laughing radioman, Castillo. He hadn't heard Manny. That wasn't good. Being a short-timer had disadvantages: a growing preoccupation with the hope that he might leave this place and less concentration on "business." Damien couldn't let down now, but he had--for an instant.

 

Damien laughed a lot and made me laugh when I got really scared during Incoming and things like that.      "Hey. You stupid son-of-a b--How you gonna act, Manny? You know what payback is?" 

    "Lighten up, man!" Castillo's jubilant grin somehow managed to disarm almost all potential belligerents. It served him well once again. Manny could go toe-to-toe in a heartbeat with any Marine in the company except Ballantine. Nobody tried Ballantine. Damien wouldn't hesitate to drop Manny—but not now. 

Slowly, Manny's smile turned Wilson's agitation into a mocking type of corrosive smirk, "When we get back here, I'm gonna kick your butt!"

    "Lighten up, Damien. You're just too tense, man. Man, we probably aren't comin' back. It don't mean nothin.' You better give me your girl's address. Somebody has to replace you—might as well be me. Hey, vato?" Damien just shook his head. It was Castillo's Latino enunciation of anything English that further softened Damien's accruing mental anguish. This Latino had helped him slip mentally away—if only for a second—from another of the endless forays out into 'Injun Country.' Damien knew they were heading toward a thick brush line, and who knew what else: another ambush, another sniper, another dead Marine? Maybe Damien would finally catch one between the running lights? Not now, thought Damien. Put that back in the box. 

     Wilson stepped up onto the dike and began his advance into the open. Three men up and out. Castillo in the rear also knew the fifteen meters blindfolded. He finally moved out. Four advancing, exposed targets stepped on the dike to a steady rhythm--four Marines, very alert. Damien mopped the sweat running down from under his helmet onto his face with what once had been a green towel. From months of rain, sweat, dirt, heat, blood, and the general abuse it received, it now looked like a faded, torn, dirty, stained rag. Damien sucked the salty perspiration into his mouth that slipped past his "rag" and spat it out. He blinked hard and wiped his stinging eyes with the threadbare cloth. The dirt in the fabric mingled with his perspiration, and within minutes, he struggled to see the man ahead of him. "God, that hurts--. Wait up!" Damien spoke loud enough to be heard by Simmons, who called to the lieutenant, whom he could listen to swearing. The small column halted, and each man went to one knee—lowering their silhouettes. They were all out in the open now, far too exposed. The slightest dirt particle in the eye hurts terribly. Damien rubbed it with his sleeve, alleviating some of the sting. 

    "Ready, Wilson? All right. Let’s move. We gotta get off this dike." Collins spat the words back at the three Marines following him. Simmons shook his head in agreement. Each man stood once more and advanced quicker along the top of the beaten paddy dike.  One ten meters more and the turn, then some concealment. By now, Damien crunched salty, gritty mud, Vietnam's foul and rancid earth. Castillo had watched Damien's spitting fit with amusement before his own began. 

     Each man wrestled in his own way with the heat and its harsh effects on man and equipment. Gravity pulled Damien's perspiration further down his neck. The pull directed the new and the old crusted dirt into muddy worry lines and small eddies of brown wet crud. The rush of water slipped past his utility jacket, which absorbed it, chafing and scraping his skin. Wet lines of body salt also had long since formed on everything each man wore. And his flak jacket held all this body heat near his rib cage--life as usual in the bush. At least they weren't humping a lot of ammo and gear.  

    Cuckoo shrikes, with their disagreeable squawks, hawked late-morning meals of aerial and ground insects. They dove and zoomed in on the late morning humidity. These men lived within their tiny, broken universes for a year rather than the broader nature that whirled and flapped around and among them. Damien's tongue began to hurt again. He should have gotten an aspirin from the doc.

 

He made me feel proud. I guess it's because he helped me get squared away, not get into much trouble, and avoid the things that can hurt you over here.   

 

     The pace remained steady, then slowed a bit at the end of the paddy. No trouble so far. The lieutenant turned left, following the dike, and toward the far corner of the rice paddy. Simmons concluded the path and then turned left. Wilson reached it and turned left. Castillo turned to check the area behind him, and he, too, changed direction. 

     The first obstacle appeared thirty meters beyond their most recent turn and just out of sight of the company CP. The earth pushed into a muddy fist, jutting upward like a hiccup. A nasty tangle of rusty barbed wire stood haphazardly sentinel at its crown. The men stopped in place and squatted as Collins worked his way over the uncooperative obstacle—four stationary targets. 

    Having snagged the leg of Collins utilities, the wire suddenly released its spiked grip, making a ripping, twanging sound as the wire shot back into its original twisted and bent position. The leader slid several feet down the other side of the embankment, whereupon he entangled himself in another semi-coiled roll of old concertina. Now thoroughly ensnared, Collins tried to free his utilities from the barbs.

     Simmons moved up to the apex of the fist and the wire. He also attempted to hoist himself over the wire with a leg swing. As his leg reached its highest point, the wire attacked him with hordes of nasty, predatory barbs snagging his jungle utilities fast at the crotch. Fortunately, the wire didn't mistreat any essential personal equipment. Damien caught most of Simmons' profane salvo. Two men struggled, unable to move because of this old wire. 

 

I’m so sorry that he was taken from you like he was. Doc Morley says he didn’t suffer hardly any if that helps. 

 

     Damien half trotted toward Lance Corporal Simmons to try and assist him when he noticed that Collins was also stuck. Just as he neared the second entangled Marine, the earth erupted, and Damien partially vanished amid a mud-brown curtain of clods, dust, and debris. 

     The deafening explosion threw Damien several feet into the air. Upon reaching the height of his aerial arc, gravity cruelly slapped him back onto the trail with a thud. Once more, the ground had misled him. The mine he never saw had severed and then discarded the lower half of his left leg into the unused, dry paddy. For a while longer, his heart kept its pace, spurting his youthful red life's blood onto the trail, where it flowed from his stumped leg and onto the ground around him, where it congealed in pools of dark red. Simmons, moaning in agony from the impact of the concussion and shrapnel, slumped heavily upon the jumbled pile of wire.

     Damien stared skyward, mute. He blinked slowly several times. Towered piles of clouds drifted, observant but uninterested overhead, and the argent blue sky above him faded into dark and interminable sadness--. 

 

I’ve lost some buddies over here, but not like Damien. He was one of a kind. I know you will miss him very much, but please know he was one of the finest Marines I ever knew and one of the bravest. He was a hard worker and made me a better Marine, too.

 

    This impersonal cruelty blurred everything. It left Cpl. Wilson's facial skin progresses from its inherent pigment to an ever-darkening gray pallor and onward to the expected inevitability:—mortal terminus. As his life ebbed, all that remained of Damien lay in his body's fitful twitching, his lifeless limbs, and his hollowing eyes and ashen hue. A man or a radio squawked somewhere in his impaired hearing, but it sounded rubbery inside his head. The initial heaving of his chest from the internal trauma inflicted upon the whole of his body slowed its movement. He felt little pain. 

    A smudged figure hampered his remaining field of vision. Still, he detected a movement of something annexed to him, his body perhaps. Nothing could stop the disagreeable course away from this war and his world. His chest finally calmed, and his eyes rolled backward. Any perceived voices and all movement ceased for him. Damien Wilson, Corporal, United States Marine Corps, human being, stopped. 

      Within ten minutes, he lay under a careworn poncho. Castillo had already retrieved his severed leg and laid it beside Damien. Within twenty-four hours, Damien would lie engulfed by the stillness at Graves Registration, where the positive ID—dental records and fingerprints—would be made. Headquarters Battalion would send a message to HQMC to inform them of the Marine's name, as well as the date and cause of death. They, in turn, would serve notice to the Inspector & Instructor staff closest to the fallen Marine's home of record. The I & I staff would send out an officer and enlisted man to notify the family and assist them up and through the funeral and interment. Within a week, the news would reach home.

 

Damien talked a lot about you both, and I know he loved you. I almost feel as if I know you from the way he spoke. He was proud of having a father as a professor at a private school.  

 

Sincerely, 

PFC Brian Moorehouse                       

 

     One restless day, half a dozen clicks southwest of Da Nang, a mine killed Cpl. Damien A. W. Wilson. Serial number 2335730. USMC. Blood type: A POS. Religion: Baptist. Gas Mask Size: Large. On the evening news, neither Chet nor David mentioned the event. Cronkite must have missed it, too. It was just one of so many military deaths that week in Vietnam. As a prism changes the direction of light, death seems to as well, and this death sent a tornado careening into the lives of the remaining two Wilsons and, inadvertently, into the Lloyd's family structure, bringing it to its knees. With this death, two families teetered, as it were, on the verge--