"Gustav Hasvord. The Short-Timers " - читать интересную книгу автора

Rafter Man falls off the roof.
I jerk Rafter Man to his feet. I shove him. He falls into a sandbagged
bunker.
All around the hill orange machine-gun tracers flash up into the sky.
Outgoing mortars. Outgoing artillery. Incoming rockets. All kinds of noise.
Illumination rounds pop high above the rice paddies. The flares sway down,
glowing, suspended beneath little parachutes.
I listen for a few moments and then I grab Rafter Man and I pull him
into our hootch. "Get your piece."
I pick up my M-16. I snap in a magazine. I throw a bandolier of full
magazines to Rafter Man. "Lock and load, recruit. Lock and load."
"But that's against regulations."
"Do it."
Outside, headquarters personnel from the surrounding hootches are
stumbling into rifle pits on the perimeter. They crouch down in the damp
holes in their skivvies. They stare out through the wire.
Down on the airfield in Da Nang Victor Charlie's rockets are raining
down on the concrete corrals where the Marine Air Wing parks its F-4 Phantom
fighter bombers. The rockets blink like flashbulbs. The flashbulbs pop. And
then the sound of drums.


The Informational Services Office on the hill is a carnival with green
performers-many, many of them. The lifers are all being fearless leaders.
The New Guys are about to wet their pants. Everyone is talking. Everyone is
pacing and looking, pacing and looking. Most of these guys have never been
in the shit. Violence doesn't excite them the way it excites me because they
don't understand it the way I do. They're afraid. Death is not yet their
friend. So they don't know what they're supposed to say. They don't know
what they're expected to do.
Major Lynch, our commanding officer, marches in and squares us away. He
tells us that Victor Charlie has used the Tet holiday to launch an offensive
all over Viet Nam. Every major military target in Viet Nam has been hit. In
Saigon, the United States Embassy has been overrun by suicide squads. Khe
Sanh is standing by to be overrun, a second Dien Bien Phu. The term "secure
area" no longer has any meaning. Only fifty yards up the hill, near the
commanding general's private quarters, a Viet Cong sapper squad has blown
apart a communications center with a satchel charge. Our "defeated" enemy is
lashing out with a power that is shocking.
Everybody starts talking at once.
Major Lynch is calm. He stands in the center of chaos and tries to give
us orders. Nobody listens. He makes us listen. His words snap out like
bullets from a machine gun. "Zip up those flak jackets. Put on that helmet,
Marine. Load your weapons but do not put a round in the chamber. Everybody
will shut the fuck up. Joker!"
"Aye-aye, sir."
Major Lynch stands in front of the Marine Corps flag-blood red, with an
eagle, globe, and anchor of gold, U.S.M.C. and Semper Fidelis. He taps my
chest with his finger. "Joker, you will take off that damned button. How is
it going to look if you get killed wearing a peace symbol?"