Into Cambodia - Keith Nolan [12]
Thompson ended up at Tower 62 on the Xuan Loc perimeter with five other guys, pulling two-hour guard shifts in the wooden tower, with not much else to do but sleep in the hootch at the base of the tower, buy souvenirs, send postcards home, and flirt with the Vietnamese girls who worked on the base. You could also go over to the Enlisted Mens' Club, but Thompson avoided that because there were too many bar fights about nothing or because they were cav and somebody else was infantry or some shit like that. Somebody was always getting beaten up. Thompson took a photo of Easterly, another buddy from training, new-guy pale and drenched in sweat, holding his newly issued M16. Whenever he would look at that picture, he would think, man, we'd been incountry only a week or two, we didn't know shit. After three weeks at Xuan Loc, Thompson and other replacements were directed aboard a Chinook bound for the squadron rear at Di An. It was raining like hell when they arrived. Thompson looked around. Mud. Trenches everywhere. A gigantic trash dump outside the perimeter crawling with gook kids looking for food.
Welcome to the Third World.
G Troop was in base camp at the time, and Thompson joined them as Sheridan driver. The platoon usually had three Sheridans and seven ACAVs operational. They rotated point every day when they ran the roads through the rubber trees at Loc Ninh. If you were riding point, it was pure luck if you didn't hit a mine, but if you were following in trace all you had to do was stay in the tread marks of the vehicle ahead. A lot of the drivers didn't have the concentration for it, but Thompson, if he did say so himself, was the trackingest son of a bitch there ever was, and he had a reputation as the best and luckiest driver in the platoon: He never hit a mine.
And, of course, there were the short-time girls. Thompson wanted nothing to do with the grass or the whores, and when they halted he would simply climb behind the .50-cal on guard with a beer and a can of C rations. To heat them, he'd start the engine, place them on the manifold for five minutes, then use a hot pad and a P38 can opener. From there he'd watch his buddies take their turns with the girl lying on a poncho liner in the brush right in front of the Sheridan. It never took more than five minutes apiece. Thompson thought of these people as gooks no doubt, but he was a middle-class kid and mostly he just felt sorry for them: women so hungry they would sell any part of their bodies for a can of charlie rats, kids who loved Pall Malls and who survived by being slick little bastards. The platoon was passing through a ville, tossing candy and C rations to the horde of children running alongside, when an eight-year-old scrambled onto the back of a moving Sheridan and ripped off a case of rations as the crew tried unsuccessfully to grab him.
Unmotivated by any great crusade, the Blackhorse generally soldiered on because of the strength of their leaders and their mutual interest in survival. Their concerns went no farther than what might lie in wait down that next trail. Writing to a hometown buddy who