plazma
Bluelighter
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.
-------------THE END---------------
Just my words on Vietnam... some more anti-war sentiment i guess....
------------------
Try combining a sense of childlike wonder at the beauty of the world, with cynicism at the state it's in, and stay sane. It isn't easy...
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.
-------------THE END---------------
Just my words on Vietnam... some more anti-war sentiment i guess....
------------------
Try combining a sense of childlike wonder at the beauty of the world, with cynicism at the state it's in, and stay sane. It isn't easy...
