Sure is a different world here on the Kekekabic Trail. Don't know if I was done with overlooks and water trails snaking to the horizon but it sure appeared that way. What'd been big lakes and views was now ponds, swamp and creeks in no hurry to get anywhere. Maybe Minnesota's not all it's cracked up to be. Needs the slightly foreign nearness of Canada to inspire. Once the border faded behind miles of forest I found myself surrounded by miles of our Swedish 'not so bad, you could do worse' majesty. Guess my state leans toward the understated. We've got a good taciturn thing goin' on here. Don't want any snow-capped mountains or palm-treed beaches drawing unwanted outsiders. Minnesota, like Oklahoma, is okay.
For the moment I passed beneath blue sky and through shadowed sunlight. Temperature rose. As did mosquitoes. Balance of life strikes again. Odd how that works out. Gets warm enough to roll up my sleeves and my forearms sprout skeeters. Made a mental note to dig out the bug juice on my next break.
On that break I carefully plucked a sucker off my arm. Didn't want to cause it any undo pain before crushing crushing her life into the next world. Heard it's the females that lust for blood. Maybe Bram Stoker should have named his main character Countess Draculette. Striped butt, beady little 'look of contempt' eyes and nearly transparent wings. Happily brought to mind the dragon fly hatches in spring when skeeters became the hunted. Mostly it was her arrogant, peeved look that caught my attention. Gave the feeling she might spit in my eyes. Or maybe slap me around 'til I came to my senses. Tough monkey.
Camp on Gabimichigami had a split personality. Bayward, rolling navy blue water with sunlit green shores, striped every so often by birch white. Inward, foot pounded, dusty earth and boulder. Paradise and prison camp. Tight to a abrupt gray rock face sat the fire grate. Found no sense in its placement. No view when cooking. A view's important to me. Happy cooks make happy food even if they're only boiling water. Took a few minutes 'til my attitude swung around. The face of the stone was a world in itself. Lichens, mosses, swirls, whirls, glittering flecks of mica. All of them speaking of duration. Tens of years, thousands, millions. Hard to take life one day at a time in the face of such a story. The slab also provided a good, if not exactly comfortable, spot to sit, lean back and wait for my water to boil. Breeze off the bay kept the skeeters in the bushes behind camp. Good spot for them to enjoy and impotently desire the aromas of Emil.
Almost pulled out my fishing pole. But would have required hiking back to my supply cooler. Rod, reel and lures turned out to be two pounds of dead weight. Pulled them then packed them in the cooler to await my return. Never too late to do something needless and learn from it. If there truly is such a time that's too late, it's as patient as this stone. Just waiting for my brain and body to erode a little more.
Chili in the bag for dinner tonight. Each LRRP meal a different one so far. More so in name than in flavor. What the heck, they were made for the Army. Lucky for me they weren't all powdered eggs and beans.
Read Archie's letter by the fading light of my cooking fire. Outside of cooking (see boiling water above), that was my work for the evening. Learned to do nothing more than necessary when in camp. Like Scarlett O'Hara said, "After all, tomorrow is another day." Not bad for a fictional trollop in a novel glamorizing a way of life that briefly existed for only a few and led to the death of hundreds of thousands of Americans for differences that could have been resolved in better ways. And that tomorrow always appreciated my feet being rested.
Dear Uncle Emil,
I'm still alive. No thanks to my mouth. The other day while moving into our night position I got into an argument with one of my squad leaders. Had I been smart (had I been really smart I'd have been back home. That alone should have been a clue I was in trouble) I'd have buttoned my lip. After all he was my immediate commander. But I'm not smart and haven't actually learned the ways of the Army and its chain of command so I worked hard to get the last word in. Finally he looked me in the eye and said, "When we get out of the field I'm going to kill you." Don't know if he meant it but the way he said it was pretty convincing.
Didn't work out that way. The next day Bravo Company took part in a battalion-sized operation. More than anything the operation proved we don't know what the hell we're doing when it comes to war in the delta. While we waited for our choppers to fly us into an area in a bend of the Mekong River called Snoopy's Nose, the nose was pounded by every piece of artillery in the regiment. Kind of like sending the VC a calling card saying 'Here we come,' get ready. And they did.
Bravo went in as a sweeping force. The idea was to drive the bad guys into another company set up as a blocking force. Believe that's a classic hunting method dating back to the Stone Age. As it turned out the VC knew the tactic inside out and turned the tables. When we landed, all eighty of us got on line and moved forward. Didn't walk quietly either. Each of us pulled the trigger every so often. Bang! Bang! Bang! Here we come.
Maybe a quarter mile later our line was split by a swamp. Most of my platoon went left of it. Me and a couple other troops from second squad went to the right with the rest of the company. Once we passed the swamp the three of us hightailed it back to our platoon and left a big hole in the line. No more than fifty yards later we came on a tree line where second platoon took fire. Then took more fire from their rear. Probably from the little patch of swamp we'd all ignored.
For the next fifteen minutes second platoon was caught in a crossfire. Twenty-two were killed or wounded. While this was going on the rest of us sat and waited for orders. I even pulled my boots off to cool my feet. Ate some crackers and peanut butter. Finally the word came down to saddle up. We were to flank the tree line and catch the Vietcong from the rear. Slowly we moved forward with a brand new man, scared to the soles of his boots (couldn't blame him), walking point. Here's where fate lent a hand. A minute or two into our creep the squad leader who'd threatened to kill me saw a GI canteen on top of a rice paddy dike, stooped to pick it up, a rookie mistake and was shot through the hand. Had to call in a dust off to pick him up and we never saw the man again. We never made it to the rear of the tree line. Before our arrival, three Vietcong scampered off with third platoon in hot pursuit.
The VCs quickly holed up in a bunker between us and third platoon. Nothing in the third's arsenal could penetrate the concrete-like bunker and a LAW (like a little bazooka) was pulled out. So there we in the first platoon were, hunkered down behind the bunker with a little rocket pointed our way. Once again I kissed the ground. While in Vietnam I've come to learn the ground is a grunt's friend. We walk on it, sleep on it, dig in it, hide behind it, fight while pressed tight to it and pull bunker guard under bags of it. Our bases are surrounded by walls of it. For the moment I wanted to become one with it should the man with the cardboard tube fire just a little high. Well, no such luck. The rocket hit the bunker square on but had no effect on the occupants. Once again they took off running only to be caught by a wall of bullets.
Might be interesting to know how our engagement was written up. We killed three of them. They killed three of us and wounded twenty. That doesn't sound like numbers that'd get a battalion commander promoted. The best part from my point of view was not having our squad leader court martialed for murder.
Of course, not all of our time is involved with fire fights and ambushes. Thank God for that. Usually it's pretty dull but the food is good so long as you don't have to eat it. Sorry to lay this stuff on you but you're about the only one I can write to about what we're going through. Can't write it to my Mom or Lauren. I keep their letters on the tame side for fear of upsetting them. I figure someone should know what's going on over here and that someone is you.
I asked for it,
Archie
Folded the letter and returned it to its sleeve. What a piddly-assed war. The kind that'll wear a country down little by little. I know there's a bunch of Vietnamese that want us there. Even more that want us out. And should we happen to win - whatever that might mean - the war wouldn't be over unless we killed each and every one of the North Vietnamese and Vietcong. Or stayed there forever and built bases like we have in Europe. We'd be pouring money and lives down that hole for generations. And to what end? Simplest thing would be to do what we're doing at the moment and pull out. Peace with honor is what President Nixon calls it. Must have himself some good PR men to come up with a fine sounding bag of gas like that. No matter how they say it, to me it says we lost our first war. Didn't like it when we went in full force, don't like it that we're leaving such a mess behind. Oh well, it'll all resolve itself over the years. Always does. What's a few million needless deaths? Done that before.
Oh yeah, what about the soldiers who're still there? Who's going to be the last to die? By now Archie's out of that mess so it won't be him. The last seven to leave Vietnam will be a dead soldier and the six men needed to load the box. No parades for any of them. That lesson was learned on the West Coast. Half the people for the war, half against it. College students burning draft cards, GIs burning villages, Detroit in flames over the Civil Rights movement. Half a million men at war, a hundred million watching it on TV while eating supper. Man on the moon, men in the jungles. Total mess. Going to be hard to sleep tonight.
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