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

"Aye-aye, sir!"
"Get up to Phu Bai. Captain January will need all his people."
Rafter Man steps forward. "Sir? Could I go with Joker?"
"What? Sound off."
"I'm Compton, sir. Lance Corporal Compton. From Photo. I want to get
into the shit."
"Permission granted. And welcome aboard." The major turns, starts
yelling at the New Guys.
I say, "Sir, I don't think that-"
Major Lynch turns back to me, irritated. "You still here? Vanish,
Joker, most ricky-tick. And take the New Guy with you. You're responsible
for him." The major turns and starts snapping out orders for the defense of
the First Marine Division's Informational Services Office.


Chaos at the Da Nang airfield; enemy rockets have wasted hootches,
Marines, and Phantom jets. I talk to a poge in thick glasses. The poge is
reading a comic book. By using my voice as an instrument of command I
convince the poge that I'm an officer and that I'm on a personal errand for
the Commandant of the Marine Corps. Rafter Man and I are given a priority
rating and have to wait only nine hours before we're stuffed into the
cavernous belly of a C-130 Hercules cargo plane with a hundred Marine Corps
lifers.
Thousands of feet below, Viet Nam is a narrow stripe of dried dragon
shit upon which God has sprinkled toy tanks and airplanes and a lot of
trees, flies, and Marines.
As we descend for a landing at Phu Bai Combat Base, Rafter Man hugs his
three black-body Nikons like metal babies.
I laugh. "When the grunts see that the famous Rafter Man is here,
they'll just know that the war must be over."
Rafter Man grins.


Rafter Man won his nickname the night he fell out of the rafters at the
Thunderbird Club, the enlisted men's slop chute back in the First Marine
Division headquarters area. An Australian comedian and two fat Korean belly
dancers were entertaining an SRO audience. Rafter Man was hammered, but so
was I, so I couldn't stop him. We were back near the entrance and Rafter Man
decided that the only way he was going to get a good look at the seminude
belly dancers was to climb up into the rafters and crawl out above the mass
of green Marines.
General Motors and his staff had stopped by to catch the show. They did
that sometimes. General Motors liked to keep in touch with his Marines.
Rafter Man fell off the rafters like a green bomb, crashing through the
general's table, spilling beer, smashing pretzels, and knocking the general
and four of his staff officers on their brass behinds.
Hundreds of enlisted men, having assumed that Rafter Man was some kind
of unconventional mortar round, were one mass of green laundry. Then heads
began to pop up.
The staff officers jerked Rafter Man to his feet and started yelling