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

I say, "Sir, where'd this money-"
Mr. Shortround shrugs. "Money? I don't see any money." He takes off his
helmet. On the back of the helmet: Kill a Commie for Christ. Mr. Shortround
lights a cigarette. "About half a million P's. Maybe a thousand dollars per
man in American money."
Cowboy says, "You got to write about our John Wayne lieutenant." Cowboy
punches Mr. Shortround on the arm. "Mr. Shortround is a mustang. When the
Crotch made him a lieutenant he was just a corporal, just a snuffy like us.
He's very little, but he is oh so bad." Cowboy tilts his head back and sucks
in a long swallow of tiger piss. Then: "We were taking this railroad
terminal. That's where the safe was. We blew it open with a block of C-4.
The gooks were coming down on us with automatic weapons, B-40's, even a
fucking mortar. The Lieutenant got six confirmed. Six! He wasted those
zipperheads like a born killer."
"There are NVA here," says Crazy Earl. "Many, many of them."
"That's affirmative," says Cowboy. "And they are as hard as slant-eyed
drill instructors. They are highly motivated individuals."
Crazy Earl holds his bottle by the neck and smashes it across a fallen
statue of a fat, smiling, bald-headed gook. "This ain't a war, it's a series
of overlapping riots. We blow them away. They come up behind us before we're
out of sight and shoot us in the ass. I know a guy in One-One that shot a
gook and then tied a satchel charge to him and blew him into little
invisible pieces because shooting gooks is a waste of time-they come back to
life. But these gooks piss you off so bad that you get to shoot something,
anything. Bros, half the confirmed kills I got are civilians and the other
half is water buffaloes." Earl pauses, burps, drawing the burp out as long
as he can. "You should have seen Animal Mother wasting those Arvins. As soon
as we hit the shit the Arvins started di-di mau-ing for the rear and Animal
Mother spit and then blew them away."
"I miss Stumbling Stewey," says Alice, the black giant. He explains to
me and Rafter Man: "Stumbling Stewey was our honcho before Stoke, the
Supergrunt. Stumbling Stewey was real nervous, you know? Very nervous. I
mean, he was nervous. The only way the dude could relax was throwing hand
grenades. He was always popping frags all over the area. Then he started
holding on to them right up to the last second. So one day ol' Stumbling
Stewey pulled the pin and just stood there, staring, just staring and
staring at that little ol' olive-drab egg in his hand..."
Crazy Earl nods, burps. "I was just a New Guy the day Stumbling Stewey
blew himself away and Stoke the Supergrunt took the squad. Stoke made me
assistant squad leader. He could see that I didn't know nothing, and all
that good shit, but he said he liked my personality." Crazy Earl takes a
swallow from another bottle of beer. "Hey, Cowboy, get your horse! Quick! My
crabs are having a rodeo!"
Donlon, the radioman, says, "I hope we stay here. This street fighting
is decent duty. We can see them here. We got cover, resupply, even some
areas where you can cut a few Z's without digging a hole. No rice paddies
full of slope shit to swim in. No immersion foot. No jungle rot. No leeches
falling from the trees."
Crazy Earl flips a beer bottle into the air and the bottle arches down
and smashes upon a broken wall. "Affirmative, but we blow up all these