plazma
Bluelighter
Vietnow
Duck… grinding your face into the dirt of a foreign land, inhaling the rich bouquet of earth as you attempt to prolong your existence for one more pitiful span of seconds. Feel the heave and tremble of the ground as it’s pulverised by another shellburst. I raise my helmeted head carefully as the shell fragments whine away into the jungle, or thud into the ground. Glancing around it’s hard to determine exactly what the hell is going on, what is going on? I don’t know, we’re fighting the enemy, but we don’t know who the enemy is, it could be the villagers, but they’re our allies aren’t they? The people pounding us with high explosive and Russian made bullets in huge amounts aren’t the enemy, they’re not my enemies, but we’re fighting them anyway. The real enemies must be the officers, the generals, the fucking politicians who put us here as paper fire-fighters to stop a roaring blaze. Chewing Dexedrine, the sour taste and kick in the stomach, feeling light and clear as crystal, lying there in the jungle fighting for my life against someone with whom I have no issue. Is this what every war is like? The bullets tear through the underbrush, chopping through branches and leaves like a chainsaw. I can hardly hear anything as I raise my eyes again, I can’t even see the people trying to kill me. The lieutenant is the one who’s trying to kill me, the captain is trying to kill him, the major’s trying to kill the captain and the colonel’s trying to kill the major, that’s the way it goes. We’re all fighting to protect the freedom of a people that we wouldn’t know from shit except that we’re here, fucking their sisters and buying drugs from their brothers. Destroying the country in order to save it… yeah… right…
I fire back blindly into the tree line, the M-16 bucking and twisting in my hands as I massacre the virgin forest, no longer virgin, but raped and desecrated by years of violence and insanity. The warm metal damp with sweat and the empty brass casings dancing before my eyes as I scream out my rage at nothing in particular except this stupid pointless fucked up war. With all its trappings of glory and conscription, and militarism and honour and democracy, stained with the blood, shit and semen of millions of dying young men. I can’t even talk to anybody now, it would risk dismembering my tongue as my jaw grinds from the anxiety and amphetamines. There’s nobody to talk to anyway, a bunch of walking talking fully dysfunctional corpses, merely resisting the pull of the grave as a matter of principle. They’re wearing uniform, my uniform, NOT my uniform, the uniform I wear because I’m here, because I’m one of them. Oh fuck another lapse like this and I’m done for… concentrate for fucks sake man or you won’t live to see Saigon again… won’t live to see base camp again, won’t live to see the world… fuck the world! Everywhere outside Vietnam is somewhere else, must be another universe, one where the rules of logic and decency and humanity still apply. I can hear another vague scream from somewhere, a liquid gurgling and a persistent cry for someone’s mother… I wish to Christ he’d shut the fuck up and die without distracting the rest of us, there’s no way he’s going to be able to be evac’d from this shithole LZ. Somewhere my magazine has clicked empty and my rifle stopped bucking and cracking, but amidst the distraction I’ve hardly noticed. Sneaking a glance behind me I can see the grass of the clearing dancing in the slight breeze. The forest encroaching like a living animal, we fight within it, but it swallows us all. OH FUCK! A movement, a glimpse of something not forest, not part of the landscape and I fire the rifle at it again and again and again as I see the Slope jerking and falling, seeing shreds of flesh and clothing ripped away by the invisible claws of the bullets I command. There’s something primal about killing, the amphetamine only enhances the pleasure by erasing any guilt, but the bad feelings come later. Will come later, I know, before I can drown them in an opiate haze or the dense fug of marijuana smoke. I blink, the dirt and grime covering my face and sweat running into my eyes. A figure jumps up briefly, from the uniform he’s with my side, the ones who are really trying to kill me. Springing along on short legs the bastard runs towards the safety of my slight ditch, compromising me as he draws the fire towards me. I could shoot him, and it would look like enemy fire but I can’t be bothered. Fuck him, the Lieutenant, doing his bit for God and country and shit, JOINED UP, a fucking volunteer, West Point, motivated ALL AMERICAN, looking for GLORY, fighting this war for mom and dad and APPLE PIE. The shining face of American democracy saves me the effort by choosing this moment to amaze me with a trick that they must teach them at West Point. As the Slope machinegunner adjusts his fire the Lieutenant stumbles before sprawling in a messy heap half on top of me, guts leaking all over my fatigues. Disembowelled by the bullets, struggling to prevent the better half of his lower intestinal tract from connecting with the earth of this country and losing miserably. I couldn’t even be bothered to look at him, his lapse of dignity beneath me as he leaks into a richly deserved early grave.
The blood feels warm on my back at first as I snake my way back towards the rest of the platoon. I can’t stop chewing, grinding my teeth, the screams of those wounded, dismembered, amputated, punctured, and pissing their RED American blood into the grass and dirt. I stopped wondering about the strange dichotomy between the red of American blood when spilt and the communists we’re supposedly fighting against a long time ago, I don’t wonder at anything anymore. I just count my days, like everyone else, but I still think, it’s dangerous, if they catch you at it they’ll kill you, but then they’re trying to kill you anyway. The platoon is busy as a whole conducting an interesting exercise in attempting to look like they’re fighting for their lives while actually exposing themselves to the least possible amount of danger. The Sergeant isn’t fooled, he’s smart, but he’s the dumbest one here, he believes in what we’re fighting for. I don’t even know what we’re fighting for, let alone believe in it, neither does he, but he believes what They tell him, and that makes him far more dangerous than the VC. Another nameless white face is pleading with me to give him water, and help him, I glance as I crawl over the top of him to cover and notice that the three neatly punched holes in his green cloth upper thigh and the spurting blood indicate another consignment for the graves commission. They’re all nameless white faces, we’re all nameless white faces, the VC are just nameless yellow faces. Killing each other for pretence.
I hear the thudding in the air before I even bother glancing up, I know it’s on the way, the mother figure, the lady death, the Huey. It carries us to the killing grounds, and picks what’s left of us up again, for pizza and ice cream, a joint, a few hours twitching sleep before we’re thrown out again into the jungle to bleed for freedom. The slight figure perched in the doorway of the beautiful fat lady flings bright pretty tracer rounds into the green jungle from his M-60. The jungle sucks them up like droplets of water into a puddle, their passage hardly noticed. The helicopter isn’t a machine piloted by men, it’s an individual entity, with the various uniforms inside merely performing their essential functions like a heart or liver. It swoops gracefully, and an answering colourful stream of droplets swarms towards it from the jungle, like water from a hose. The answering stream from the helicopter is cut off almost abruptly as the crew chief slumps into his harness, sagging as he is blasted jerkily from this plane of existence. The upturned faces echo pain, hope, fear, love and hatred as the thin cord connecting us with any hope of survival comes perilously close to snapping. The Huey swoops down faster, braking at the last moment to stop from slamming into the earth. I can hear the rounds gliding past and into the jungle, occasionally connecting with a human body with a soggy thud, or a metallic twang as the metal of the helicopter is pierced. The men run for the helicopter, attempting to maintain an illusion of bravery as the Sergeant grabs the dogtags from the dead and races towards the Huey. The wounded, all three of them are loaded on board as with a sudden tug the helicopter is pulled towards the sky. Once your feet leave the ground of this forsaken land, you somehow feel disconnected with the person who was a few minutes before fighting for his life, there is no past or future, there just IS. And I’m left in the blank limbo of the flight to comparative safety, watching the bloody death and mutilation through the eyes of another.
Blink. Hop Skip Jump. Open eyed trance. Yeah though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for I am the evilest motherfucker in the valley! The calendar is our bible, counting days our religion. Blink. We practice human sacrifice to appease the dark gods we worship. R&R, rest and recuperation, religion and resurrection, realism and reanimation. Oh we rest alright. Good clean cut American boys, buying our drugs, our skag, our acid, fucking these tiny Vietnamese women. I watch from the sidewalks, feeling like a rock, the currents of this world flow around me like a river of human waste. Fuck the war, what war? Damn I wish the world was like this. But of course you aren't paid to think, and it doesn't pay to think. Think too much and kaboom, your comrades, oh wrong word, too close to commies. They'll wake up in time to clean your brain off the roof of your hootch, pickled in LSD and Dexedrine. Too many people gone that way, Killed in the course of duty. Dear Sir/Madam, after realising that this war was a crock of shit, your dear son Pvt. John Doe painted the ceiling of his Government Issue accommodation with his cerebral cortex, cerebrum and cerebellum. It's rather hard to clean off, but we've put as much as we could into the body bag with him. Don't worry, he did his duty to the last, or so we're told, send more men please, we're getting tired. Regards and worst wishes. Pvt. X.
Fuck that.
Oh what a beautiful morning… The sun shining pink and orange armageddon over the lush green poisonous toxic waste jungle. Looks better through the sights of a .50cal, it still looks like the enemy, but you can fight back. Hawk and spit over the sandbag to your left. Slight squeak and resistance, as I move slightly, swinging the barrel of the Fiddy from side to side. Nothing out there. Glance to my right, the walking corpse beside me, can't even remember faces now. Fucking pale as shit country boy, rat faced sallow and scared. Tags say Joseph Mulaney. Afraid to look at my own, maybe I'm different to who I think I am today. Doesn't pay to mindfuck when there's gooks out there. Wake up under rubber playing that game. Ask the corpse for a coffin nail, doesn't smoke. Swearing and whistling like there's nothing wrong, there isn't is there? The world has always been like this, I can't even remember the blur that was my life before. Not as real, tangible and hard edged as this one. There's nothing wrong with war, everyone does it, massacres their young men, tortures them with bamboo skewers and razor edged GI knives, electric generators. Blasts them over square meters in screaming puddles of anguish. It's a lovely morning for death. Inhaling the smoke, millionth cigarette of the day, lovely, lovely, everything's peachy. Mulaney yawns, I can't even fucking yawn, forget when I slept. Jaw chattering, hardly speak for fear of biting lips and tongue, off. The fat brass and copper bullets sit neatly in their rows in the ammo cans. Sulkily gleaming in their suppressed urges of death. Clinking softly, in their belts leading up into the breach of my ugly, fat fiddy. You grow to love the fiddy, yes you do. More than a mother, sister, whore, mommy told you you'd be safe with her, you know its crap, the fiddy exudes power. You holding the grips of that fiddy, you're a small god. Each door slamming shot, bolt slapping back and flicking a fat brass cartridge smoking into the air, while the whipcrack blast of lead whizzes from the barrel, three hundred and fifty per minute. You grow to love and cherish firearms in country. The right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed. For then they would not be able to splatter and puncture each other in times of crisis and emergency. The M-16 is a truly evil bitch, you hate her, but she's all you have when it's you and Johnny Gookboy out there. Slap in a magazine, breathe a prayer to Jesus and hope it fires without jamming. The rumour is that the Army only uses them to promote religion, for all we know it's as likely true as not. I still keep my wandering eyes along the jungle, the barbed wire reflects the glints of sunlight from sharpened tips, spool after spool of it. No slopes today mister, you wan boom boom? Patting the barrel of the fiddy like a pet. Insanity is worse than malaria, but it's fun once you have it. You can't take pills to prevent it, but we self medicate to cure. The walking dead of the US Army Corps, your tax dollars in Vietnam keep this soldier on drugs, your tax dollar buys Saigon Pussy! The M-60 is a curse and cure, she's an ugly heavy brute to carry, ever watched those gunners struggle in the mud? But you help em. Why? Because second we hit Gook, that bitch becomes Marilyn Monroe. Medium support machine gun, sucks to carry extra belts for it, but Uncle Sam says go forth and murder young children, and gladly do we go forth and fuck shit up.
The dawn dies a swift death as the heat hits us. All the pretty colours lose their shine after your skin begins to ooze sweat. Dripping from your nose, damp cigarettes, metal hot to the touch. Morning duty, welcome to Vietnam. Population too many communists, enough babies to cover most of our bayonets and nowhere near enough mature women to cover the US Army's collective cocks. The bunkers and shelters of Hill 695 begin to teem with olive green, the walking dead of the US Army Corps, every day a resurrection day. Does this mean we get Easter eggs?
Welcome to Vietnam, welcome to hell. Hell is what? What meaning does hell have when it's all you've ever known all you will know. Fuck that scene, it's not cool. Blink again, no sleep, jungle patrol, search and destroy, rape and pillage. Batting aside jungle creepers, thick as snakes, tangling your rifle barrel, each step a tiny death. Each footstep as cautious as a blind man walking on smashed glass. Leaf litter softly crunching, eyes roving searching for that small waiting wire, the metal pin, the concealed pit. We hate the grenades worst, they're never close enough away to kill you instantly. Death by slow gurgling scream, intestines ripped and shredded neatly in amphorous blobs on the brown leaf litter. Death by artery spurting red onto green creepers and leaves, looking like macabre Christmas decorations. Those deaths, they are the worst. I don't give a flying fuck about those that die, but they demoralise those still alive, that could kill me and I hate them for it. Still walking slowly, barrel swinging, strap over shoulder, safety catch on, finger on trigger. Ready to spew metal death into the suspecting jungle. Slowly, slowly, but time pays off with life. This patrol was one nobody wanted, so we went anyway, the Sergeant stepping slowly, three men in front of me, all 15 of us, waiting to meet death. I didn't get point, thank whatever sick minded deity presides over this little corner of hell. Another crunching step, a slight "twank" a few meters behind me. Eyes rolling around, my muscles hypertensed, flinging me forward with a scream as I soar like an eagle through the air, rolling into whatever hollow my body can find. Thoughts flying through my head, flicking like a billion films at once. New boy, 17 or 18, white hick, pale blue eyes, thin face and religious demeanour, from some Baptist town nobody's ever heard of. Fighting communism, protecting Ma and Pa and the folks back home. Wish he'd taken the time to listen to the Sergeant now, he's already dead, and it's going to be messy. I can see what his father's going to see, reading the letter once the man's knocked on his front door, blowing his house down. His mother sitting on a rocking chair in the living room, weeping. Think again dear souls, because war is glory and hardship for the greater good. Your son died nobly for a Christian cause, bayoneting and raping young women for higher ideals.
All this in the blink of an eye and the grenade explodes in a muffled crashing noise. The swatting sound of the small steel fragments biting home into pale terrified skin, a fizzing noise as they pass over my head, swatting the undergrowth. Eardrums compressing, and the rush of hot air outwards. Then the silence, I hate the fucking silence, for those five terrible seconds after a blast, after a gunshot, it feels like a lifetime. It's the time it takes for a small town boy who was whole a few seconds ago, walking along, thinking of home made peach pie, or perhaps a girl with buck teeth to adjust to lying on the dirt of a country he knows and cares less than sweet fuck-all about bleeding his agonised last in a fucking jungle. To adjust to the ripped and ruptured intestines and stomach, his punctured lungs, and lacerated legs and arms. Before he screams. I steel myself, it's always worse than the last time, you get toughened to death, nobody blinks. I don't care a fuck about the boy, but there's something personal, intimate about watching a death like this. Rather wrestle in a pit of vipers than hear one single breath of that scream. The sobbing moan, wet and wailing begins. The medic darts in towards the wounded boy, I watch from where I lie, looking back over my shoulder. The boy propped against a tree, dragged by another walking corpse. This walking corpse is about to become genuine. I can see the pale face, smudged with dirt, blue lips, spattered with glutinous blood. Blood dripping from his ears, eyes rolling back in his head. Babbling incomprehensible, in between agonised moans, clutching at his torn intestines, while the medic bats his arms away. I can almost see right through him. The depth of colour and shades of mangled flesh, pinkish fat, purple muscle, all torn apart and mingled in a bizarre cannibal smorgasbord. Slight spurts of dark arterial blood with every remaining beat of his heart, the medic glances at the Sergeant, who inclines his head. The boy inhales, and screams again. No risk, the fucking kid is going to kill us all, we're in the middle of gook country. He's going to fucking kill us with his death. The Sergeant steps forward, unsafes his rifle for a second, touching it to his shoulder briefly as he caresses the trigger with a lovers touch. And with a brutal precision the whipcrack sounds, a cartridge flicks spinning and catching rays of sunlight into the air as the boy's head slaps backwards, virtually shot off. No trace of those blue eyes now, just a splattered dripping treetrunk, and a shattered ruin of a skull. The Sergeant lowers his rifle, snatches the dog tags off the boy as he flicks his hand, making a spinning motion. Then flicks it again towards the jungle. Like obedient dogs, we disperse towards the edges of this slight open space, dropping into cover behind tree roots, into hollows. The slight clicks and snaps as the '60 gunner drops and arms his weapon echo in the complete and deafening silence. I slump and hunch over my rifle, eyeing the jungle.
The jungle loves me, it loves us all, it embraces us like a lover, accepting our blood dripping into it. We in turn embrace the jungle, we bomb it into shreds, with a lovers touch we caress it with Agent Orange, and we demolish it with bulldozers. We are here to protect the free nation of South Vietnam, free only as long as we stand here, free from what? Our freedom is beautiful to behold, a million whores, a million homeless children. A billion landmines, a country blown apart, burned and shot and bayoneted a country that is tortured and shot while trying to escape. How will our leaders celebrate this victory? It's hard to take an ear from a country, amputate Saigon and hang it on a chain? Every sin a virtue.
Sitting in a helicopter can't even remember getting on it. Feeling the metal hot to the touch behind my back, butt on helmet, no balls shot off for me. Don't know what day it is, what week, what year, what lifetime, what planet, don't give a fuck. Could be a different galaxy, but it's always the same shit, different day. See a fat obese rubber slug lying on the floor, dog tags stuck in the zipper for safekeeping. Tinkling in the vibrations. Lovely sight, refreshing to see someone die before me. Already dead? Possibility, but who cares, think this world's insane? We're all your sons, rape and pillage, burn a village, still want us to kiss you goodnight? Watching the wet looking jungle scoot past underneath like a beaten dog. Undulating slight hills and valleys look far enough and you'll see the clear blue sea. It's like a separate continent, a lunatic asylum for the globe. The whoop whoop whoop of the huey blades as it carries us back to wherever the fuck we're supposed to be. Wiping the sweat from my forehead with my sleeve, glancing around, nobody wants to meet anybody's eyes, this way we're all still in denial. Don't tell and I won't either. I don't give a fuck. Wet hair, stink of unwashed bodies, can't cover that smell of death, of blood and guts that still permeates the air, we can't really smell it. It's in our heads, but it's as real as the corpse inside that body bag. Close my eyes try and avoid seeing anything else. I want to wake up, but if I woke up I'd still be here. Our insanity is a warm blanket on a cold night. We embrace it, we celebrate it, we tell nobody. We're smooth man, real smooth. Every young man who comes to kill and torture enters our exclusive club, are we the SS of our generation? They tell us we're doing good, real good work. Stopping those commies, but didn't Hitler tell the same. When will it stop? When I die, not even then. I'm going to die, and for my sins, I'll go to Vietnam. Every old man we shoot, every child we bayonet, every woman we rape, tallied up on a cosmic scorecard, black carded for all eternity. And this is why I stop thinking, try and stop. Because it never stops. Never sleep, never dream, always this fucking jungle, always this soulless destruction which we enjoy so much. Never stopping.
Fuck you GI! Fuck you! Vietnam, I love you.
Cont'd below.
Duck… grinding your face into the dirt of a foreign land, inhaling the rich bouquet of earth as you attempt to prolong your existence for one more pitiful span of seconds. Feel the heave and tremble of the ground as it’s pulverised by another shellburst. I raise my helmeted head carefully as the shell fragments whine away into the jungle, or thud into the ground. Glancing around it’s hard to determine exactly what the hell is going on, what is going on? I don’t know, we’re fighting the enemy, but we don’t know who the enemy is, it could be the villagers, but they’re our allies aren’t they? The people pounding us with high explosive and Russian made bullets in huge amounts aren’t the enemy, they’re not my enemies, but we’re fighting them anyway. The real enemies must be the officers, the generals, the fucking politicians who put us here as paper fire-fighters to stop a roaring blaze. Chewing Dexedrine, the sour taste and kick in the stomach, feeling light and clear as crystal, lying there in the jungle fighting for my life against someone with whom I have no issue. Is this what every war is like? The bullets tear through the underbrush, chopping through branches and leaves like a chainsaw. I can hardly hear anything as I raise my eyes again, I can’t even see the people trying to kill me. The lieutenant is the one who’s trying to kill me, the captain is trying to kill him, the major’s trying to kill the captain and the colonel’s trying to kill the major, that’s the way it goes. We’re all fighting to protect the freedom of a people that we wouldn’t know from shit except that we’re here, fucking their sisters and buying drugs from their brothers. Destroying the country in order to save it… yeah… right…
I fire back blindly into the tree line, the M-16 bucking and twisting in my hands as I massacre the virgin forest, no longer virgin, but raped and desecrated by years of violence and insanity. The warm metal damp with sweat and the empty brass casings dancing before my eyes as I scream out my rage at nothing in particular except this stupid pointless fucked up war. With all its trappings of glory and conscription, and militarism and honour and democracy, stained with the blood, shit and semen of millions of dying young men. I can’t even talk to anybody now, it would risk dismembering my tongue as my jaw grinds from the anxiety and amphetamines. There’s nobody to talk to anyway, a bunch of walking talking fully dysfunctional corpses, merely resisting the pull of the grave as a matter of principle. They’re wearing uniform, my uniform, NOT my uniform, the uniform I wear because I’m here, because I’m one of them. Oh fuck another lapse like this and I’m done for… concentrate for fucks sake man or you won’t live to see Saigon again… won’t live to see base camp again, won’t live to see the world… fuck the world! Everywhere outside Vietnam is somewhere else, must be another universe, one where the rules of logic and decency and humanity still apply. I can hear another vague scream from somewhere, a liquid gurgling and a persistent cry for someone’s mother… I wish to Christ he’d shut the fuck up and die without distracting the rest of us, there’s no way he’s going to be able to be evac’d from this shithole LZ. Somewhere my magazine has clicked empty and my rifle stopped bucking and cracking, but amidst the distraction I’ve hardly noticed. Sneaking a glance behind me I can see the grass of the clearing dancing in the slight breeze. The forest encroaching like a living animal, we fight within it, but it swallows us all. OH FUCK! A movement, a glimpse of something not forest, not part of the landscape and I fire the rifle at it again and again and again as I see the Slope jerking and falling, seeing shreds of flesh and clothing ripped away by the invisible claws of the bullets I command. There’s something primal about killing, the amphetamine only enhances the pleasure by erasing any guilt, but the bad feelings come later. Will come later, I know, before I can drown them in an opiate haze or the dense fug of marijuana smoke. I blink, the dirt and grime covering my face and sweat running into my eyes. A figure jumps up briefly, from the uniform he’s with my side, the ones who are really trying to kill me. Springing along on short legs the bastard runs towards the safety of my slight ditch, compromising me as he draws the fire towards me. I could shoot him, and it would look like enemy fire but I can’t be bothered. Fuck him, the Lieutenant, doing his bit for God and country and shit, JOINED UP, a fucking volunteer, West Point, motivated ALL AMERICAN, looking for GLORY, fighting this war for mom and dad and APPLE PIE. The shining face of American democracy saves me the effort by choosing this moment to amaze me with a trick that they must teach them at West Point. As the Slope machinegunner adjusts his fire the Lieutenant stumbles before sprawling in a messy heap half on top of me, guts leaking all over my fatigues. Disembowelled by the bullets, struggling to prevent the better half of his lower intestinal tract from connecting with the earth of this country and losing miserably. I couldn’t even be bothered to look at him, his lapse of dignity beneath me as he leaks into a richly deserved early grave.
The blood feels warm on my back at first as I snake my way back towards the rest of the platoon. I can’t stop chewing, grinding my teeth, the screams of those wounded, dismembered, amputated, punctured, and pissing their RED American blood into the grass and dirt. I stopped wondering about the strange dichotomy between the red of American blood when spilt and the communists we’re supposedly fighting against a long time ago, I don’t wonder at anything anymore. I just count my days, like everyone else, but I still think, it’s dangerous, if they catch you at it they’ll kill you, but then they’re trying to kill you anyway. The platoon is busy as a whole conducting an interesting exercise in attempting to look like they’re fighting for their lives while actually exposing themselves to the least possible amount of danger. The Sergeant isn’t fooled, he’s smart, but he’s the dumbest one here, he believes in what we’re fighting for. I don’t even know what we’re fighting for, let alone believe in it, neither does he, but he believes what They tell him, and that makes him far more dangerous than the VC. Another nameless white face is pleading with me to give him water, and help him, I glance as I crawl over the top of him to cover and notice that the three neatly punched holes in his green cloth upper thigh and the spurting blood indicate another consignment for the graves commission. They’re all nameless white faces, we’re all nameless white faces, the VC are just nameless yellow faces. Killing each other for pretence.
I hear the thudding in the air before I even bother glancing up, I know it’s on the way, the mother figure, the lady death, the Huey. It carries us to the killing grounds, and picks what’s left of us up again, for pizza and ice cream, a joint, a few hours twitching sleep before we’re thrown out again into the jungle to bleed for freedom. The slight figure perched in the doorway of the beautiful fat lady flings bright pretty tracer rounds into the green jungle from his M-60. The jungle sucks them up like droplets of water into a puddle, their passage hardly noticed. The helicopter isn’t a machine piloted by men, it’s an individual entity, with the various uniforms inside merely performing their essential functions like a heart or liver. It swoops gracefully, and an answering colourful stream of droplets swarms towards it from the jungle, like water from a hose. The answering stream from the helicopter is cut off almost abruptly as the crew chief slumps into his harness, sagging as he is blasted jerkily from this plane of existence. The upturned faces echo pain, hope, fear, love and hatred as the thin cord connecting us with any hope of survival comes perilously close to snapping. The Huey swoops down faster, braking at the last moment to stop from slamming into the earth. I can hear the rounds gliding past and into the jungle, occasionally connecting with a human body with a soggy thud, or a metallic twang as the metal of the helicopter is pierced. The men run for the helicopter, attempting to maintain an illusion of bravery as the Sergeant grabs the dogtags from the dead and races towards the Huey. The wounded, all three of them are loaded on board as with a sudden tug the helicopter is pulled towards the sky. Once your feet leave the ground of this forsaken land, you somehow feel disconnected with the person who was a few minutes before fighting for his life, there is no past or future, there just IS. And I’m left in the blank limbo of the flight to comparative safety, watching the bloody death and mutilation through the eyes of another.
Blink. Hop Skip Jump. Open eyed trance. Yeah though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for I am the evilest motherfucker in the valley! The calendar is our bible, counting days our religion. Blink. We practice human sacrifice to appease the dark gods we worship. R&R, rest and recuperation, religion and resurrection, realism and reanimation. Oh we rest alright. Good clean cut American boys, buying our drugs, our skag, our acid, fucking these tiny Vietnamese women. I watch from the sidewalks, feeling like a rock, the currents of this world flow around me like a river of human waste. Fuck the war, what war? Damn I wish the world was like this. But of course you aren't paid to think, and it doesn't pay to think. Think too much and kaboom, your comrades, oh wrong word, too close to commies. They'll wake up in time to clean your brain off the roof of your hootch, pickled in LSD and Dexedrine. Too many people gone that way, Killed in the course of duty. Dear Sir/Madam, after realising that this war was a crock of shit, your dear son Pvt. John Doe painted the ceiling of his Government Issue accommodation with his cerebral cortex, cerebrum and cerebellum. It's rather hard to clean off, but we've put as much as we could into the body bag with him. Don't worry, he did his duty to the last, or so we're told, send more men please, we're getting tired. Regards and worst wishes. Pvt. X.
Fuck that.
Oh what a beautiful morning… The sun shining pink and orange armageddon over the lush green poisonous toxic waste jungle. Looks better through the sights of a .50cal, it still looks like the enemy, but you can fight back. Hawk and spit over the sandbag to your left. Slight squeak and resistance, as I move slightly, swinging the barrel of the Fiddy from side to side. Nothing out there. Glance to my right, the walking corpse beside me, can't even remember faces now. Fucking pale as shit country boy, rat faced sallow and scared. Tags say Joseph Mulaney. Afraid to look at my own, maybe I'm different to who I think I am today. Doesn't pay to mindfuck when there's gooks out there. Wake up under rubber playing that game. Ask the corpse for a coffin nail, doesn't smoke. Swearing and whistling like there's nothing wrong, there isn't is there? The world has always been like this, I can't even remember the blur that was my life before. Not as real, tangible and hard edged as this one. There's nothing wrong with war, everyone does it, massacres their young men, tortures them with bamboo skewers and razor edged GI knives, electric generators. Blasts them over square meters in screaming puddles of anguish. It's a lovely morning for death. Inhaling the smoke, millionth cigarette of the day, lovely, lovely, everything's peachy. Mulaney yawns, I can't even fucking yawn, forget when I slept. Jaw chattering, hardly speak for fear of biting lips and tongue, off. The fat brass and copper bullets sit neatly in their rows in the ammo cans. Sulkily gleaming in their suppressed urges of death. Clinking softly, in their belts leading up into the breach of my ugly, fat fiddy. You grow to love the fiddy, yes you do. More than a mother, sister, whore, mommy told you you'd be safe with her, you know its crap, the fiddy exudes power. You holding the grips of that fiddy, you're a small god. Each door slamming shot, bolt slapping back and flicking a fat brass cartridge smoking into the air, while the whipcrack blast of lead whizzes from the barrel, three hundred and fifty per minute. You grow to love and cherish firearms in country. The right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed. For then they would not be able to splatter and puncture each other in times of crisis and emergency. The M-16 is a truly evil bitch, you hate her, but she's all you have when it's you and Johnny Gookboy out there. Slap in a magazine, breathe a prayer to Jesus and hope it fires without jamming. The rumour is that the Army only uses them to promote religion, for all we know it's as likely true as not. I still keep my wandering eyes along the jungle, the barbed wire reflects the glints of sunlight from sharpened tips, spool after spool of it. No slopes today mister, you wan boom boom? Patting the barrel of the fiddy like a pet. Insanity is worse than malaria, but it's fun once you have it. You can't take pills to prevent it, but we self medicate to cure. The walking dead of the US Army Corps, your tax dollars in Vietnam keep this soldier on drugs, your tax dollar buys Saigon Pussy! The M-60 is a curse and cure, she's an ugly heavy brute to carry, ever watched those gunners struggle in the mud? But you help em. Why? Because second we hit Gook, that bitch becomes Marilyn Monroe. Medium support machine gun, sucks to carry extra belts for it, but Uncle Sam says go forth and murder young children, and gladly do we go forth and fuck shit up.
The dawn dies a swift death as the heat hits us. All the pretty colours lose their shine after your skin begins to ooze sweat. Dripping from your nose, damp cigarettes, metal hot to the touch. Morning duty, welcome to Vietnam. Population too many communists, enough babies to cover most of our bayonets and nowhere near enough mature women to cover the US Army's collective cocks. The bunkers and shelters of Hill 695 begin to teem with olive green, the walking dead of the US Army Corps, every day a resurrection day. Does this mean we get Easter eggs?
Welcome to Vietnam, welcome to hell. Hell is what? What meaning does hell have when it's all you've ever known all you will know. Fuck that scene, it's not cool. Blink again, no sleep, jungle patrol, search and destroy, rape and pillage. Batting aside jungle creepers, thick as snakes, tangling your rifle barrel, each step a tiny death. Each footstep as cautious as a blind man walking on smashed glass. Leaf litter softly crunching, eyes roving searching for that small waiting wire, the metal pin, the concealed pit. We hate the grenades worst, they're never close enough away to kill you instantly. Death by slow gurgling scream, intestines ripped and shredded neatly in amphorous blobs on the brown leaf litter. Death by artery spurting red onto green creepers and leaves, looking like macabre Christmas decorations. Those deaths, they are the worst. I don't give a flying fuck about those that die, but they demoralise those still alive, that could kill me and I hate them for it. Still walking slowly, barrel swinging, strap over shoulder, safety catch on, finger on trigger. Ready to spew metal death into the suspecting jungle. Slowly, slowly, but time pays off with life. This patrol was one nobody wanted, so we went anyway, the Sergeant stepping slowly, three men in front of me, all 15 of us, waiting to meet death. I didn't get point, thank whatever sick minded deity presides over this little corner of hell. Another crunching step, a slight "twank" a few meters behind me. Eyes rolling around, my muscles hypertensed, flinging me forward with a scream as I soar like an eagle through the air, rolling into whatever hollow my body can find. Thoughts flying through my head, flicking like a billion films at once. New boy, 17 or 18, white hick, pale blue eyes, thin face and religious demeanour, from some Baptist town nobody's ever heard of. Fighting communism, protecting Ma and Pa and the folks back home. Wish he'd taken the time to listen to the Sergeant now, he's already dead, and it's going to be messy. I can see what his father's going to see, reading the letter once the man's knocked on his front door, blowing his house down. His mother sitting on a rocking chair in the living room, weeping. Think again dear souls, because war is glory and hardship for the greater good. Your son died nobly for a Christian cause, bayoneting and raping young women for higher ideals.
All this in the blink of an eye and the grenade explodes in a muffled crashing noise. The swatting sound of the small steel fragments biting home into pale terrified skin, a fizzing noise as they pass over my head, swatting the undergrowth. Eardrums compressing, and the rush of hot air outwards. Then the silence, I hate the fucking silence, for those five terrible seconds after a blast, after a gunshot, it feels like a lifetime. It's the time it takes for a small town boy who was whole a few seconds ago, walking along, thinking of home made peach pie, or perhaps a girl with buck teeth to adjust to lying on the dirt of a country he knows and cares less than sweet fuck-all about bleeding his agonised last in a fucking jungle. To adjust to the ripped and ruptured intestines and stomach, his punctured lungs, and lacerated legs and arms. Before he screams. I steel myself, it's always worse than the last time, you get toughened to death, nobody blinks. I don't care a fuck about the boy, but there's something personal, intimate about watching a death like this. Rather wrestle in a pit of vipers than hear one single breath of that scream. The sobbing moan, wet and wailing begins. The medic darts in towards the wounded boy, I watch from where I lie, looking back over my shoulder. The boy propped against a tree, dragged by another walking corpse. This walking corpse is about to become genuine. I can see the pale face, smudged with dirt, blue lips, spattered with glutinous blood. Blood dripping from his ears, eyes rolling back in his head. Babbling incomprehensible, in between agonised moans, clutching at his torn intestines, while the medic bats his arms away. I can almost see right through him. The depth of colour and shades of mangled flesh, pinkish fat, purple muscle, all torn apart and mingled in a bizarre cannibal smorgasbord. Slight spurts of dark arterial blood with every remaining beat of his heart, the medic glances at the Sergeant, who inclines his head. The boy inhales, and screams again. No risk, the fucking kid is going to kill us all, we're in the middle of gook country. He's going to fucking kill us with his death. The Sergeant steps forward, unsafes his rifle for a second, touching it to his shoulder briefly as he caresses the trigger with a lovers touch. And with a brutal precision the whipcrack sounds, a cartridge flicks spinning and catching rays of sunlight into the air as the boy's head slaps backwards, virtually shot off. No trace of those blue eyes now, just a splattered dripping treetrunk, and a shattered ruin of a skull. The Sergeant lowers his rifle, snatches the dog tags off the boy as he flicks his hand, making a spinning motion. Then flicks it again towards the jungle. Like obedient dogs, we disperse towards the edges of this slight open space, dropping into cover behind tree roots, into hollows. The slight clicks and snaps as the '60 gunner drops and arms his weapon echo in the complete and deafening silence. I slump and hunch over my rifle, eyeing the jungle.
The jungle loves me, it loves us all, it embraces us like a lover, accepting our blood dripping into it. We in turn embrace the jungle, we bomb it into shreds, with a lovers touch we caress it with Agent Orange, and we demolish it with bulldozers. We are here to protect the free nation of South Vietnam, free only as long as we stand here, free from what? Our freedom is beautiful to behold, a million whores, a million homeless children. A billion landmines, a country blown apart, burned and shot and bayoneted a country that is tortured and shot while trying to escape. How will our leaders celebrate this victory? It's hard to take an ear from a country, amputate Saigon and hang it on a chain? Every sin a virtue.
Sitting in a helicopter can't even remember getting on it. Feeling the metal hot to the touch behind my back, butt on helmet, no balls shot off for me. Don't know what day it is, what week, what year, what lifetime, what planet, don't give a fuck. Could be a different galaxy, but it's always the same shit, different day. See a fat obese rubber slug lying on the floor, dog tags stuck in the zipper for safekeeping. Tinkling in the vibrations. Lovely sight, refreshing to see someone die before me. Already dead? Possibility, but who cares, think this world's insane? We're all your sons, rape and pillage, burn a village, still want us to kiss you goodnight? Watching the wet looking jungle scoot past underneath like a beaten dog. Undulating slight hills and valleys look far enough and you'll see the clear blue sea. It's like a separate continent, a lunatic asylum for the globe. The whoop whoop whoop of the huey blades as it carries us back to wherever the fuck we're supposed to be. Wiping the sweat from my forehead with my sleeve, glancing around, nobody wants to meet anybody's eyes, this way we're all still in denial. Don't tell and I won't either. I don't give a fuck. Wet hair, stink of unwashed bodies, can't cover that smell of death, of blood and guts that still permeates the air, we can't really smell it. It's in our heads, but it's as real as the corpse inside that body bag. Close my eyes try and avoid seeing anything else. I want to wake up, but if I woke up I'd still be here. Our insanity is a warm blanket on a cold night. We embrace it, we celebrate it, we tell nobody. We're smooth man, real smooth. Every young man who comes to kill and torture enters our exclusive club, are we the SS of our generation? They tell us we're doing good, real good work. Stopping those commies, but didn't Hitler tell the same. When will it stop? When I die, not even then. I'm going to die, and for my sins, I'll go to Vietnam. Every old man we shoot, every child we bayonet, every woman we rape, tallied up on a cosmic scorecard, black carded for all eternity. And this is why I stop thinking, try and stop. Because it never stops. Never sleep, never dream, always this fucking jungle, always this soulless destruction which we enjoy so much. Never stopping.
Fuck you GI! Fuck you! Vietnam, I love you.
Cont'd below.
Thank you! 