silver shoe lands on Oriental Avenue. There is a tiny
red plastic  hotel on Oriental Avenue.  Captain  January  grimaces and  then
counts  out thirty-five  dollars in  MPC.  He  hands Mr.  Payback the  small
colorful bills  and then hands him the dice. "Sergeant, you will  be wearing
chevrons  indicating your  proper rank the next time  I see your  or  I will
definitely jump on your program. Do you want to be a grunt? If not, you will
remove that unauthorized peace button from your duty uniform."
     I don't say anything.
     Captain January looks at Rafter Man. "Who's this? Sound off, Marine."
     Rafter Man stutters.
     I say, "This is Lance Corporal Compton, sir. The New Guy in Photo."
     "Outstanding. Welcome  aboard, Marine. Joker, make sleeping sounds here
tonight  and head up to the Hue in the morning. Walter Cronkite is  due here
tomorrow so we'll be busy. I'll need Chili Vendor and Daytona here. But your
job  is  important, too.  General Motors called me about this personally. We
need some  good, clear photographs.  And some hard-hitting captions.  Get me
photographs  of indigenous civilian  personnel who  have been executed  with
their hands tied behind their backs, people buried alive, priests with their
throats cut, dead  babies--you  know what  I  want.  Get  me some good  body
counts. And don't forget to calculate your kill ratios. And Joker..."
     "Yes, sir?"
     "Don't even photograph any naked bodies unless they're mutilated."
     "Aye-aye, sir."
     "And Joker..."
     "Yes, sir?"
     "Get a haircut."
     "Aye-aye, sir."
     As  Mr.  Payback  release  his  little silver car Captain January says,
"Three houses! Three houses! Park fucking Place! That's...eighty dollars!"
     Mr.  Payback counts  out all of his money. "That  breaks me, Captain. I
owe you seven bucks."
     Captain  January  rakes up  the  pile of MPC, a shit-eating grin on his
face.  "You  do not  understand a  business, Mr. Payback.  If  we had Marine
generals who understood business  this war  would be  over.  The  secret  to
winning this war is in public  relations. Harry S. Truman once said that the
Marine  Corps has  a  propaganda  machine almost equal to Stalin's.  He  was
right.  In  war,  truth  is  the  first  casualty. Correspondents  are  more
effective  than grunts.  Grunts merely  kill the enemy.  All that matters is
what  we  write, what we photograph.  History may  be written with blood and
iron but it's  printed with ink. Grunts are  good show  business but we make
them  what they are. The lesser services like to joke about how every Marine
platoon   goes  into  battle  accompanied  by  a  platoon  of  Marine  Corps
photographers. That's affirmative. Marines fight harder because Marines have
bigger legends to live up to."
     Captain  January slaps a large package  on the floor by his desk.  "And
this  is  the final  product of all our industry.  My wife  likes to show an
interest in my work. She asked me for a souvenir. I'm sending her a gook."
     Rafter Man's  expression is so funny that I have to look  away to avoid
laughing out loud. "Sir?"
     "Yes, Sergeant?"
     "Where's the Top?"
     "The First shirt went to Da Nang for some in-country R & R. You can see
him after you come back from Hue." Captain January looks at his  wristwatch.
"Seventeen hundred. Chow time."


     On the way to chow Rafter Man and  I meet Chili Vendor and Daytona Dave
and Mr.  Payback  at the  ISO  enlisted men's hootch.  I  give Rafter Man  a
utility  jacket with  101st Airborne patches all over it. My own Army jacket
has  First  Air Cavalry  insignia. I  select two salty sets  of Army  collar
chevrons  and  we  pin  them on. Now we're  Spec-5's--Army  sergeants. Chili
Vendor  and  Daytona  Dave  and Mr. Payback are all buck  sergeants from the
Ninth Infantry Division.
     We  go to chow down  in the Army  mess  hall. The Army  eats real food.
Cake, roast beef, ice cream, chocolate  milk--all the bennies. Our own  mess
hall  serves  Kool-Aid and  shit-on-a-shingle--chipped  beef  on toast--with
peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dessert.
     "When's the Top due back?"
     Chili Vendor says, "Oh, maybe tomorrow. January on your program again?"
     I nod. "That fucking lifer. He's crazy. He's  just plain fucking crazy.
He gets crazier every  time I see him. Now he's mailing a gook stiff home to
his wife."
     Daytona says, "There it is. But then the Top is a lifer, too."
     "But  the Top is decent. I mean,  maybe  the Crotch is his home, and he
makes  us  do a good job, but he don't harass us with Mickey Mouse  shit. He
cuts the snuffies  some slack when  he can.  The  Top's not a lifer; he's  a
career Marine. Lifers are a breed. A  lifer is anybody who  abuses authority
he doesn't deserve to have. There are plenty of civilian lifers."
     The Army mess sergeant with the big cigar spot-checks I.D.'s.
     The Army mess sergeant  with the big  cigar  takes the shiny mess trays
out of our hands and throws us out of his mess hall.
     We retreat to the Marine  mess hall where we eat  shit-on-a-shingle and
drink lukewarm Kool-Aid and we talk about  how the Army could  have at least
souvenired us  some  leftovers since that's  all the  Marine Corps ever gets
anyway.


     After chow we play tag back to our hootch. Laughing and breathing hard,
we take a moment to  pull  down  the  green  plastic ponchos  nailed  on the
outside of the hootch. During the night the  ponchos  will keep light in and
rain out.
     We lie  on  our racks and  swap scuttlebutt. On the ceiling, the combat
correspondent's  motto in six-inch block letters: FIRST TO GO, LAST TO KNOW,
WE WILL DEFEND TO THE DEATH OUR RIGHT TO BE MISINFORMED.
     Mr.  Payback performs  his  sea  stories  for  Rafter  Man:  "The  only
difference between a sea story and a fairy tale is  that a fairy tale begins
with 'Once upon a time...'  and a sea story begins with 'This  is  no shit.'
Well, New Guy, listen up, because this is no shit. January orders me to play
Monopoly.  All fucking  day. Every day of  the fucking week. There's nothing
lower than a lifer. They fuck me over, man, but I don't say a word. I do not
say a word. Payback is a motherfucker, New Guy. Remember that. When Luke the
gook zaps  you in the back and Phantoms bury him in napalm canisters, that's
payback. When you shit on people it comes back to you, sooner or later, only
worse. My whole program is a mess because of lifers. But Payback will  come,
sooner or later. I'd walk a mile for a payback."
     I laugh. "Payback, you hate lifers because you are a lifer."
     Mr.  Payback  lights up  a joint. "You're the one  who's tight with the
lifers, Joker. Lifers take care of their own."
     "Negative. The lifers are afraid to talk to me, I got so many ops."
     "Operations? Shit." Mr. Payback turns to Rafter Man. "Joker thinks that
the bad  bush  is down  the road in the ville. He's  never been in the shit.
It's hard to talk about it. Like on Hastings--"
     Chili  Vendor interrupts: "You weren't  on Operation Hastings, Payback.
You weren't even in country."
     "Oh, eat shit and die,  you  fucking Spanish American. You poge.  I was
there,  man. I was  in the  shit with  the grunts,  man. Those guys have got
guts, you know? They are very hard individuals. When you've been in the shit
with grunts you're tight with them from then on, you know?"
     I grunt. "Sea stories."
     "Oh, yeah? How long have you been in country, Joker? Huh? How much T.I.
you got? How much fucking time in?  Thirty months, poge. I got thirty months
in country. I been there, man."
     I  say,  "Don't  listen to any of Mr.  Payback's  bullshit, Rafter Man.
Sometimes he thinks he's John Wayne."
     "That's  affirmative," says Mr. Payback. "You listen to Joker, New Guy.
He knows ti ti--very little. And if  he  ever  does  know anything it'll  be
because he learned it from me. You just know he's never been in the shit. He
ain't got the stare."
     Rafter Man looks up. "The what?"
     "The thousand-yard stare. A Marine gets it after he's been in  the shit
for too long. It's  like you've really seen...beyond. I  got  it.  All field
Marines got it. You'll have it, too."
     Rafter Man says, "I will?"
     Mr. Payback takes a few  hits off the joint and then passes it to Chili
Vendor. "I used to be an atheist, when I  was a New Guy, a long time ago..."
Mr. Payback takes his Zippo lighter out of his  shirt pocket and hands it to
Rafter Man. "See? It says, 'You  and me, God--right?'"  Mr. Payback giggles.
He seems  to  be trying to focus his vision on  some  distant object.  "Yes,
nobody is an atheist in a foxhole. You'll be praying."
     Rafter  Man looks at me, grins,  hands the lighter back to Mr. Payback.
"There sure is a lot of stuff to learn."
     I'm whittling  a piece  of ammo crate with my K-bar jungle  knife.  I'm
carving myself a wooden bayonet.
     Daytona Dave says, "Remember that gook kid that tried to eat  the candy
bar? It bit me. I was down in the ville, scarfing  up some  orphans and that
little Victor Charlie ambushed me. Ran up and bit  the shit out of my hand."
Daytona holds  up his left  hand, revealing a little red  crescent of  tooth
marks. "The kids says that our chop-chop is number ten. I bet I get rabies."
     Chili Vendor grins. He turns to Rafter  Man.  "There it  is,  New  Guy.
You'll know  you're salty when you stop  throwing  C-ration cans to the kids
and start throwing the cans at them."
     I say, "I got to  get back into the shit. I ain't heard a shot fired in
anger in weeks. I'm bored to  death. How are we ever going  to get  used  to
being back  in the World? I  mean, a day without blood is like a day without
sunshine."
     Chili  Vendor says, "No  sweat. The old mamasan  that does our  laundry
tells us things even the lifers in Intelligence don't know. She says that in
Hue  the whole fucking  North Vietnamese  army is  dug in deep inside an old
fortress they call the Citadel. You won't come back, Joker.  Victor  Charlie
is gonna shoot  you  in the  heart. The Crotch will ship your scrawny little
ass home in a three-hundred-dollar aluminum box all dressed up like a  lifer
in a blouse from  a set of dress blues. But no white hat. And no pants. They
don't give you any pants. Your friends from school and all of  the relatives
you never liked anyway  will be at  your funeral and they'll call you a good
little Christian  and they'll say you  were a hero  to get  wasted defeating
Communism and you'll just lie there with a cold ass, dead as a mackerel."
     Daytona Dave sits up. "You can be a hero for a little while, sometimes,
if you can stop thinking about your own ass long enough, if you give a shit.
But civilians don't know what to do, so they  put up statues in the park for
pigeons to  drop turds on.  Civilians  don't know.  Civilians  don't want to
know."
     I say, "You guys are bitter. Don't you love the American way of life?"
     Chili Vendor shakes his  head. "No Victor Charlie ever raped my sister.
Ho Chi Minh never bombed Pearl Harbor. We're prisoners here. We're prisoners
of the  war. They've  taken away our  freedom  and they've given it  to  the
gooks, but the gooks don't want it. They'd rather be alive than free."
     I grunt. "There it is."


     With my magic marker  I  "X"  out a section of thigh  on the nude woman
outlined  on  the  back  of  my  flak  jacket.  The  number  58  disappears.
Fifty-seven days and a wake-up left in country.
     Midnight. The boredom becomes unbearable. Chili Vendor suggests that we
kill time by wasting our furry little friends.
     I say, "Rat race!"
     Chili Vendor hops off his canvas cot and into a corner.  He breaks up a
John  Wayne  cookie. In the corner, six  inches off the desk, we've nailed a
piece of  ammo crate to form a  triangular pocket. There's a  little hole in
the  charred board.  Chili Vendor puts the cookie fragments under the board.
Then he snaps off the lights.
     I toss Rafter Man one of my booties. Of course, he doesn't know what to
do with it. "What--"
     Shhhh.
     We wait in ambush, enjoying the anticipation of violence. Five minutes.
Ten minutes.  Fifteen minutes. Then  the  Viet Cong rats crawl  out of their
holes.  We  freeze. The  rats  skitter along the  rafters,  climb  down  the
screening, then hop  onto  the  plywood deck,  making little  thumps, moving
through the darkness without fear.
     Chili Vendor waits until the skittering converges in the  corner.  Then
he jumps out of his rack and flips on the overhead lights.
     With  the  exception of Rafter Man we're  all on our feet  in the  same
second, forming a semicircle across the corner. The rats zip and zing, their
tiny pink feet clawing for  traction on the plywood. Two or three escape--so
brave, or so terrified--in such situations motives are immaterial--that they
run right over out feet and between our legs and through the deadly gauntlet
of carefully aimed boots and stabbing bayonets.
     But most of the rats herd together under the board.
     Mr. Payback takes a can of lighter fluid from his bamboo footlocker. He
squirts lighter fluid into the little hole in the board.
     Daytona Dave strikes  a  match. "Fire  in the  hole!"  He  pitches  the
burning match into the corner.
     The board foomps into flame.
     Rats  explode  from beneath  the  board like  shrapnel  from  a  rodent
grenade.
     The  rats  are  on  fire. The rats  are little flaming kamikaze animals
zinging  across the plywood deck, running under  racks, over gear, around in
circles, running  faster  and faster and in  no particular direction  except
toward some place where there is no fire.
     "GET  SOME!" Mr. Payback is screaming  like  a lunatic.  "GET SOME! GET
SOME!" He chops a rat in half with his machete.
     Chili  Vendor holds a rat by the tail and, while it  shrieks, pounds it
do death with a boot.
     I throw  my  K-bar  at a rat on  the other side of the hootch. The  big
knife misses the rat, sticks up in the floor.
     Rafter Man doesn't know what to do.
     Daytona Dave charges around  and around with fixed bayonet,  zeroing in
on  a burning rat like a fighter  pilot  in a dogfight. Daytona follows  the
rat's crazed, erratic course around  and around, over all obstacles, gaining
on him with every step. He butt-strokes the rat and then bayonets him, again
and again and again. "That's one confirmed!"
     And, as suddenly as it began, the battle is over.
     After the rat race  everyone collapses. Daytona is  breathing hard  and
fast. "Whew. That was a good group. Real hard-core. I thought I was going to
have a fucking heart attack."
     Mr. Payback coughs, grunts. "Hey, New Guy, how many  confirmed did  you
get?"
     Rafter Man is still sitting on his canvas cot with my boot in his hand.
"I...none. I mean, it happened so fast."
     Mr. Payback laughs. "Well, sometimes it's fun to kill something you can
see.  You better  get  squared  away, New Guy. Next time the rats will  have
guns."
     Daytona Dave is wiping his face with a  dirty green skivvy shirt.  "The
New  Guy will  do okay.  Cut  him  some slack. Rafter ain't got  the  killer
instinct,  that's all. Now me, I got  about  fifty  confirmed. But everybody
knows that gook rats drag off their dead."
     We all throw things at Daytona Dave.


     We rest  for a while and then we gather up the  barbecued rats and take
them outside to hold a funeral in the dark.
     Some guys from utilities platoon  who live  next door come out of their
hootch to pay their respects.
     Lance Corporal Winslow Slavin, honcho of the combat plumbers, struts up
in a skuzzy green flight suit. The flight suit is ragged, covered with paint
stains and oil splotches. "Only six? Shit. Last night my boys got seventeen.
Confirmed."
     I say,  "Sounds like a squad of  poges to  me. Poges kill  poges. These
rats are Viet Cong field Marines. Hard-core grunts."
     I pick up one of the rats. I turn to the combat plumbers. I hold up the
rat and I kiss it.
     Mr. Payback laughs, picks up one of the dead rats, bites off the tip of
its  tail. Then,  swallowing,  Mr. Payback  says,  "Ummm....love them crispy
critters." He grins. He bends over, picks up  another dead rat, offers it to
Rafter Man.
     Rafter Man is frozen. He can't speak. He just looks at the rat.
     Mr. Payback laughs.  "What's  wrong,  New Guy?  Don't you want to  be a
killer?"
     We  bury  the enemy rats  with  full military  honors--we scoop  out  a
shallow grave and we dump them in.
     We sing:
     So come along and sing our song
     And join our fam-i-ly
     M.I.C....K.E.Y....M.O.U.S.E.
     Mickey Mouse, Mickey Mouse...

     "Dear God," says Mr. Payback, looking up into the ugly sky. "These rats
died like Marines. Cut them some slack. Ah-men."
     We all say, "Ah-men."
     After the  funeral we insult the combat plumbers  a few more  times and
then  we return to  our hootch.  We lie awake in our  racks. We discuss  the
battle and the funeral for a long time.
     Then we try to sleep.


     An  hour later.  It's raining. We roll up in our poncho liners and pray
for morning. The  monsoon rain  is cold and heavy and comes without warning.
Wind-blown water batters  the ponchos  hung around  the hootch to protect us
from the weather.
     The terrible falling of the shells...
     Incoming.
     "Oh, shit," somebody says. Nobody moves.
     Rafter Man asks, "Is that---"
     I say, "There it is."
     The  crumps start  somewhere  outside  the  wire  and walk in  like the
footsteps of a monster. The crumps are becoming thuds. Thud. Thud. THUD. And
then it's a whistle and a roar.
     BANG.
     The  rain's  rhythmic  drumming is broken by  the  clang and  rattle of
shrapnel falling on our tin roof.
     We're all  out of our racks with our weapons in our  hands like so many
parts of the same body--even Rafter Man, who has begun to pick up on things.
     Pounded by cold rain, we double-time to our bunker.
     On  the  perimeter M-60 machine  guns are banging and  the M-70 grenade
launchers are blooping and mortar shells are thumping out of the tubes.
     Star flares burst all along the wire, beautiful clusters of green fire.
     Inside  our  damp  cave  of  sandbags we  huddle  elbow-to-elbow in wet
skivvies, feeling the  weight of the darkness, as helpless as cavemen hiding
from a monster.
     "I hope they're just fucking with us," I say. "I hope they're not going
to hit the wire. I'm not ready for this shit."
     Outside our bunker: BANG, BANG, BANG. And falling rain.
     Each  of us  is waiting for the  next  shell to nail  him right  on the
head--the mortar as an agent of existential doom.
     A scream.
     I  wait for a time  of silence and I crawl out to take a look. Somebody
is  down. The whistle of an incoming  round forces  me  to retreat into  the
bunker. I wait for the shell to burst.
     BANG.
     I crawl out, stand up, and I run to  the  wounded  man. He's one of the
combat plumbers. "You utilities platoon? Where's Winslow?"
     The man is whining. "I'm dying! I'm dying!" I shake him.
     "Where's Winslow?"
     "There." He points. "He was coming to help me..."
     Rafter Man and Chili  Vendor come out and Rafter Man helps me carry the
combat  plumber to  our  bunker.  Chili Vendor  double-times off  to  get  a
corpsman.
     We  leave  the  combat  plumber  with  Daytona  and  Mr.  Payback   and
double-time through the rain, looking for Winslow.
     He's in the mud outside his hootch, torn to pieces.
     The mortar shells stop falling. The machine guns on  the perimeter fade
to short  bursts.  Even so, the grunts standing line continue  to  pop green
star clusters in case Victor Charlie plans to launch a ground attack.
     Somebody throws a poncho  over Winslow. The rain taps the green plastic
sheet.
     I say, "It  took a lot of guts to do what Winslow  did. I mean, you can
see Winslow's guts and he sure had a lot of them."
     Nobody says anything.


     After the green  ghouls from graves registration  stuff Winslow  into a
body bag and take him away, we go back to our hootch.  We flop on our racks,
wasted.
     I say, "Well, Rafter, now you've heard a shot fired in anger."
     Soaking wet in  green skivvies, Rafter Man is sitting  on his rack.  He
has something in his hand. He's staring at it.
     I sit up. "Hey, Rafter. What's that?  You souvenir yourself a  piece of
shrapnel?" No response. "Rafter? You hit?"
     Mr. Payback  grunts. "What's  wrong, New Guy? Did a few rounds make you
nervous?"
     Rafter Man looks up  with a new face. His lips are twisted into a cold,
sardonic smirk.  His labored breathing is  broken by grunts. He  growls. His
lips are  wet with saliva. He's looking at Mr. Payback. The object in Rafter
Man's hand is a  piece  of flesh, Winslow's  flesh, ugly yellow, as big as a
John Wayne cookie, wet with blood. We all look at it for a long time.
     Rafter Man puts the piece of flesh into his mouth, onto his tongue, and
we thing he's going to vomit. Instead, he grits his teeth. Then, closing his
eyes, he swallows.
     I turn off the lights.


     Dawn. The heat of the day  comes quickly, burning  away the mud puddles
left by the monsoon  rain.  Rafter Man and  I ditty-bop down to  the Phu Bai
landing zone. We wait for a med-evac chopper.
     Ten minutes later a Jolly Green Giant comes in loaded.
     Corpsmen  run up  the  ramp at  the  rear of the vibrating machine  and
reappear  immediately,  carrying  canvas  stretchers. On the  stretchers are
bloody rags with men inside. Rafter Man and I  run into the chopper. We lift
a stretcher and run down the metal ramp. The chopper is already beginning to
lift off.
     We place the stretcher on the deck  with the others, where the corpsmen
are  sorting the dead from the  living,  changing bandages, adjusting plasma
bottles.
     Rafter  Man and I run into the  prop wash, running sideways beneath the
thumping  blades into  a tornado of hot wind  and stinging  gravel. We stop,
hunched over, holding up our thumbs.
     The  chopper pilot is an invading Martian  in an orange flame-retardant
flight suit and  an olive-drab  space helmet. The  pilot's  face is a shadow
behind a dark green visor.  He gives  us a thumbs-up.  We run around  to the
cargo ramp and  the door gunner  gives us a hand  up  into  the belly of the
vibrating machine just as it lifts off.
     The  flight  to  Hue  is  north eight  miles. Far below, Viet  Nam is a
patchwork  quilt of greens and yellows. It's a beautiful country, especially
when seen from the air. Viet Nam  is like  a page from a Marco Polo  picture
book. The deck is pockmarked  with shell  holes, and napalm air strikes have
charred vast patches of earth, but the land is healing itself with beauty.
     My  ears  pop.  I  pinch  my  nose and puff  out  my cheeks. Rafter Man
imitates me. We sit on bales of green rubber-impregnated canvas body bags.
     As  we  near Hue, the  door gunner smokes marijuana and fires his  M-60
machine  gun at a farmer in the rice paddies below. The door gunner has long
hair,  a  bushy  moustache,  and is naked except for an unbuttoned  Hawaiian
sport shirt. On the Hawaiian sport shirt are a hundred yellow hula dancers.
     The hamlet beneath us is in free fire zone--anybody can shoot at it  at
any  time and for any reason. We watch the farmer run in the shallow  water.
The farmer knows  only  that his family needs  some rice  to eat. The farmer
knows only that the bullets are tearing him apart.
     He falls, and the door gunner giggles.


     The  med-evac chopper sets down on a landing  zone near Highway One,  a
mile south of  Hue. The LZ  is  cluttered  with walking  wounded,  stretcher
cases, and body bags. Before Rafter Man and I are off the LZ our chopper has
been loaded with wounded and is airborne again, flying back to Phu Bai.
     We wait for a  rough rider convoy in front of a bombed-out gas station.
Hours pass. Noon. I take off my flak jacket. I pull my old, ragged Boy Scout
shirt out of my NVA rucksack. I  put on my  Boy  Scout shirt so that the sun
won't roast  the flesh  from  my  bones. On the  frayed  collar,  corporal's
chevrons that are so salty that  the black enamel has worn off and the brass
shows through. Over the right breast  pocket, a  cloth rectangle which reads
First Marine Division, CORRESPONDENT. And in Vietnamese: BAO CHI.
     Sitting on a bullet-riddled yellow oyster that says SHELL OIL, we drink
Cokes that cost five dollars a bottle. The mamasan who sells us the Cokes is
wearing a conical white hat. She bows every  time we speak. She  squawks and
chatters like an old black bird. She  flashes her black teeth at  us. She is
very  proud of  her teeth. Only a  lifetime of chewing betel  nuts  can make
teeth as black as hers. We  don't understand  a word  of her magpie chatter,
but the  hatred in  the smile  frozen  on her  face says  clearly, "Oh well,
Americans may be assholes but they are very rich."
     There  is  a  popular  sea  story  which  says  that old Victor Charlie
mamasans  sell  Cokes with  ground-up glass in them. Drinking, we  wonder if
that's true.
     Two Dusters, light tanks  with twin 40mm guns, grind by. The men in the
Dusters ignore our thumbs.
     An  hour  later a  Mighty Mite zooms by at eighty  miles  an  hour, the
maximum speed of the little jeep. No luck.
     Then a convoy of six-bys  appears, led by two M-48 Patton tanks. Thirty
big  trucks roar by at full speed. Two more Patton tanks are riding security
at tail-end Charlie.
     The first tank speeds up as it passes us.
     The second tank slows down, bucks, jerks to a halt. In  the turret is a
blond tank commander who is not wearing a helmet or a shirt. He waves us on.
We put  on our  flak jackets. We pick up our gear  and swing it up onto  the
tank. Then Rafter Man and I climb up onto a block of hot, vibrating metal.
     Down in a hatch  by  our  feet is the  driver. His head  protrudes just
enough for him to see; his hands are on  the controls. The driver jerks  the
wobble stick  and  the tank lurches forward,  bouncing, grinding, faster and
faster  and faster. The roar  of an  eight-hundred-horsepower  diesel engine
accelerates to a rhythmic rumble of mechanical power.
     Rafter Man and I fall back against the  hot turret. We are hanging onto
the long  ninety-millimeter gun  like monkeys. The  cool  air  of  speed  is
delicious  after  hours in Viet  Nam's one-hundred-and-twenty- degree yellow
furnace. Our sweat-soaked shirts are cold. Flashing by: Vietnamese hootches,
ponds with  white ducks  in  them, circular  graves  with chipped  and faded
paint, and endless  shimmering pieces of  emerald  water newly  planted with
rice.
     It's  a wonderful day. I'm so happy that I am alive, in one  piece, and
short. I'm in  a world of shit, yes, but  I am alive.  And I am not  afraid.
Riding  the  tank gives me  a  thrilling sense  of power and well-being. Who
dares to shoot at the man who rides the tiger?
     It's a  beautiful  tank.  Painted on  the long  barrel: BLACK  FLAG--We
Exterminate Household Pests. Flying on a radio antenna, a ragged Confederate
flag. Military vehicles are beautiful because they are built from functional
designs which make  them  real, solid, without artifice. The tank  possesses
the beauty  of its hard lines;  it is fifty tons of rolling armor on  tracks
like  steel watchbands. The  tank  is our  protection,  rolling  on  and  on
forever, clanking out the dark mechanical poetry of iron and guns.
     Suddenly the tank shifts to the left. Rafter Man and I  are thrown hard
into the turret. Metal  grinds metal. The tank hits a bump, shifting sharply
to  the right and jerking to a  halt, throwing us forward.  Rafter Man and I
hang onto the gun and say, "Son-of-a-bitch..."
     The blond tank commander climbs out of  the  turret hatch and jumps off
the back of the tank.
     The tank driver has run the tank off the road.
     Fifty  yards  back  a  water  buffalo  is  down on its  back,  legs out
straight. The water bo bellows, tosses its curved horns. On the deck, in the
center of the road, I see a tiny body, facedown.
     Chattering  Vietnamese  civilians  pour  out of  the roadside hootches,
staring and pointing. The Vietnamese civilians crowd around to see how their
American saviors have crushed the guts out of a child.
     The  blond tank commander speaks to the Vietnamese civilians in French.
Then, walking back  to the  tanks, the blond tank commander is pursued by an
ancient papasan. There are tears in the papasan's eyes. The withered old man
shakes his bony little fists and throws Asian curses at the tank commander's
back.  The Vietnamese civilians  grow  silent.  Another child is  dead, and,
although it is very sad and painful, they accept it.
     The blond tank commander climbs up onto his tank and reinserts his legs
into the turret hatch. "Iron Man, you fucking shitbird. You will  drive this
machine  like it's a tank and not a goddamn sports car. You hit  that little
girl, you  blind idiot. Hell, I  could see  her  through  the fucking vision
blocks. She was standing on that water bo's back..."
     The driver turns, his face  hard.  "I didn't see them, skipper. What do
they think  they're doing,  crossing in front of me  like  that? Don't these
zipperheads  know that tanks got the  right-of-way?"  The  driver's face  is
coated with a thin film of oil and sweat; iron has entered into his soul and
he has become a component of the tank, sweating oil to lubricate its meshing
gears.
     The blond  tank commander says, "You fuck up one more  time,  Iron Man,
and you will be a grunt."
     The driver turns back to the front. "Aye-aye, sir. I'll watch the road,
Lieutenant."
     Rafter Man asks, "Sir,  did we kill that  girl?  Why  was  that old man
yelling at you?" Rafter Man looks sick.
     The blond tank commander takes  a green ballpoint pen  and little green
notebook out of his hip  pocket. He writes  something in the  notebook. "The
little girl's grandfather? He was yelling  about how  he needs his water bo.
He wants a condolence award. He wants us to pay him for the water bo."
     Rafter Man doesn't say anything.
     The  blond  tank  commander  yells  at  Iron  Man:  "Drive,  you  blind
son-of-a-bitch."
     And the tank rolls on.


     On the outskirts of Hue, the ancient Imperial Capital, we see the first
sign of the battle--a cathedral, centuries old, now a bullet-peppered box of
ruined stone, roof caved in, walls punctured by shells.
     Entering Hue, the  third largest city in  Viet Nam,  is  a  strange new
experience. Our was has been in  the paddies, in hamlets  where  the largest
structure was a bamboo hut. Seeing the effects of war upon a Vietnamese city
makes me feel like a New Guy.
     The weather is dreary but the city is beautiful. Hue has been beautiful
for so long that not even war and bad weather can make it ugly.
     Empty streets. Every  building  in  Hue has  been hit with some kind of
ordnance. The ground is still wet from last night's rain.  The air is  cool.
The whole city is enveloped in a white mist. The sun is going down.
     We roll past  a  tank which has  been  gutted by B-40  rocket-propelled
grenades. On the barrel of the shattered ninety-millimeter gun: BLACK FLAG.
     Fifty yards down  the road  we pass two wasted  six-bys. One of the big
trucks has been knocked onto its side. The cab of the truck is a broken mass
of  jagged,  twisted steel.  The  second  six-by has  burned  and is only  a
skeleton of black iron. The windshields of both trucks have been strung with
bright necklaces of bullet holes.
     As we roll past Quoc Hoc High School I punch Rafter Man on the arm. "Ho
Chi  Minh went  there,"  I  say.  "I  wonder  if  Uncle  Ho  played  varsity
basketball. I wonder who Uncle Ho took to the senior prom."
     Rafter Man grins.
     Shots pop, far away. Single rounds. Short  bursts of automatic weapons.
The fighting has stopped,  for the moment.  The shots  we hear are just some
grunt trying to get lucky.
     Near the University of Hue the tank grinds to a halt and Rafter Man and
I  hop  off. The University of Hue is now a collection point for refugees on
their way  to  Phu Bai. Whole  families with  all of their  possessions have
occupied the classrooms and  corridors since the battle began. The  refugees
are too tired to run anymore. The refugees look cold and drained the way you
look after death sits on your face and smothers you for so long that you get
tired of screaming. Outside, the women cook pots  of rice. All over the deck
there are piles of human shit.
     We wave good-bye to the blond  tank commander and his tank grumbles and
rolls away. The tank's steel cleats crush some bricks which have been thrown
into the street by explosions.
     Rafter Man and I  stare across the River  of Perfumes. We  stare at the
Citadel.  The  river  is  ugly. The  river  is muddy.  The  steel suspension
bridge--The Bridge of the Golden Waters--is  down, blown by  enemy  frogmen.
Torn  girders  jut out of the  dark water  like the  broken bones  of a  sea
serpent.
     A hand grenade explodes, far away, inside the Citadel.


     Rafter Man and I head  for the MAC-V, Military Assistance Command--Viet
Nam, compound.
     "This is a beautiful place," says Rafter Man.
     "It  was.  It  really  was.  I've  been here  a  few  times  for  award
ceremonies.  General Cushman  was here.  I  took his picture  and he took  a
picture of me taking a picture of him.  And Ky was here, all duded up in his
black silk flight jacket with silver general's stars all over it and a black
cap  with  silver  general's   stars  all  over  that,  too.  Ky  had  these
pearl-handled  pistols  and  wore a purple ascot. He looked like  a Japanese
playboy. He had his program squared away, that Ky. He believed in a Viet Nam
for  the  Vietnamese.  I  guess that's  why  we kicked him out.  But  he was
beautiful  that day.  You  should have  seen all the schoolgirls in their ao
dai, purple and white, carrying their little parasols..."
     "Where are they now? The girls?"
     "Oh,  dead, I guess. Did you  know that there's a legend  that Hue rose
from a pool of mud as a lotus flower?"
     "Look at that!"
     A squad of Arvins are looting a  mansion. The Arvins of the Army of the
Republic of Viet Nam look funny because  all of their  equipment  is too big
for them. In baggy uniforms and oversized helmets they look like little boys
playing war.
     I say,  "Decent.  Number one. We got some slack, Rafter. Remember this,
Rafter Man, any time you can see an Arvin  you are safe from Victor Charlie.
The Arvins run like rabbits at the first sign of violence. An Arvin infantry
platoon  is  about  as  lethal  as  a garden  club  of old  ladies  throwing
marshmallows. Don't believe all that scuttlebutt about Arvins being cowards.
They just hate the Green Machine more than  we do. They  were drafted by the
Saigon government, which  was drafted by the lifers who drafted us, who were
drafted by  the lifers who think that they can  buy the war.  And Arvins are
not stupid.  The  Arvins are not stupid when they are doing  something  they
enjoy,  like stealing.  Arvins sincerely believe that  jewels and  money are
essential military supplies. So we're safe  until the  Arvins start yelling,
'Beaucoup VC, beaucoup VC!'  and then  run away.  But be careful. Arvins are
always  shooting at  chickens, other people's  pigs,  and trees. Arvins will
shoot anything except transistor radios, Coca-Colas, sunglasses,  money, and
the enemy."
     "Don't they get money from their government?"
     I grin. "Money is their government."
     The sun is gone. Rafter Man and I double-time.  A sentry challenges us;
I tell him to go to hell.
     Fifty-six days and a wake-up.


     In the  morning we wake up inside the MAC-V compound, a white two-story
building  with bullet-pocked walls. The compound has  been enclosed behind a
wall of sandbags and concertina wire.
     We gather up our gear and prepare to leave while a light colonel  reads
a statement  made by  the military mayor  of Hue. The statement  is a denial
that  there is  looting in Hue  and a warning that looters will  be shot  on
sight. A dozen  civilian  war  correspondents sit on  the deck, wiping sleep
from  their  eyes,  half-listening, yawning. Then  the light colonel  adds a
personal  comment.  Someone has awarded a Purple Heart to a big  white goose
that  got  wounded while the  compound was  under attack. The light  colonel
feels that the civilian correspondents do not understand that war is serious
business.
     Outside, I point to  a wasted NVA hanging in the wire. "Was  is serious
business, son, and  this is our gross national product." I  kick the corpse,
triggering panic  in  the  maggots  in the  hollow  eye  sockets and in  the
grinning mouth and in each of the bullet holes in his chest. "Gross?"
     Rafter Man kneels down to get a better look. "Yes, he is confirmed."
     A CBS camera crew appears, surrounded by  star-struck grunts who strike
combat-Marine poses, pretending to  be what they are.  They all want  Walter
Cronkite  to  meet  their  sisters.  In white short-sleeved shirts  the  CBS
cameramen hurry off to photograph death in living color.

     I stop a master sergeant. "Top, we want to get into the shit."
     The master  sergeant  is  writing  on  a  piece  of yellow  paper  on a
clipboard.  He  doesn't  look  up, but  jerks  his thumb  over his shoulder.
"Across the river. One-Five. Get a boat ride by the bridge."
     "One-Five? Outstanding. Thanks, Top."
     The master sergeant walks away, writing on the yellow paper. He ignores
four skuzzy grunts who run into the compound, each man holding up one corner
of a poncho. On the  poncho is a dead Marine. The grunts are screaming for a
corpsman and  when  they  put the poncho  down,  very gently, a pool of dark
blood pours out onto the concrete deck.
     Rafter Man  and I hurry  down to the  River of Perfumes.  We talk to  a
baby-faced  Navy  ensign who  souvenirs  us a ride  on a  Vietnamese gunboat
ferrying reinforcements to the Vietnamese Marines.
     As we skim down the river Rafter Man asks, "Are these guys any good?"
     I nod. "The best the  Arvins  got.  They're  not as tough as the Korean
Marines, though. The ROK's are so hard that they got muscles in  their shit.
The Blue Dragon Brigade. I was on an op with them down by Hoi An."
     A shot pops from the shore. The bullet buzzes over.
     The  gunboat crew opens up with a fifty-caliber machine gun and a forty
mike-mike cannon.
     Rafter Man watches with joy  in his eyes as the bullets  knock  up thin
stalks of water along the river bank. He holds his piece at port arms, first
to fight.


     The Strawberry Patch, a large triangle of land between  the Citadel and
the River of Perfumes, is a quiet suburb  of  Hue. We get off the gunboat at
the Strawberry  Patch and wander around with the Vietnamese Marines until we
see a little Marine with an expensive pump shotgun slung  across his back, a
case of C rations on his shoulder, and DEADLY DELTA on his flak jacket.
     I say, "Hey, bro, where's One-Five?"
     The little Marines turns, smiles.
     I say, "You need a huss with that?"
     "No thanks, Marine. You people One-One?"
     "No, sir,"  I say. Officers do not wear rank insignia in the field  but
snuffies learn  to fix  a  man's rank  by  his  voice.  "We're  looking  for
One-Five. I got a bro in the First Platoon. They call him Cowboy. He wears a
cowboy hat."
     "I'm  Cowboy's platoon  commander. The  Lusthog Squad is in the platoon
area up by the Citadel."
     We walk along with the little Marine.
     "I'm Joker,  sir. Corporal Joker. This is Rafter Man. We work for Stars
and Stripes."
     "My  name  is  Bayer.  Robert  M.  Bayer the third.  My  people call me
Shortround, for obvious reasons. You here to make Cowboy famous?"
     I laugh. "Never happen."


     The  gray sky is clearing.  The white mist is moving away, exposing Hue
to the sun.
     First Platoon's area  is  within sight  of  the  massive  walls  of the
Citadel. While First Platoon  waits  for  the  attack to  begin, the Lusthog
Squad is partying.
     Crazy Earl points a  forefinger at  the three  of us. "Resupply! Number
one!" Then: "Hey, cowpuncher, the Joker is on deck."
     Cowboy looks up and grins. He's holding a large  brown  bottle of tiger
piss--Vietnamese  beer. "Well, no shit. It's the Joker and  his New Guy. Lai
dai, bros, come on, sit and share, sit and share."
     Rafter Man and I sit down in the dirt and Cowboy throws loose stacks of
Vietnamese  piasters into  our  laps.  I  laugh,  surprised.  I pick up  the
brightly colored  bills, large bills, in large denominations. Cowboy  shoves
bottles of t