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

just do our job. We're shot at and missed, shit on and hit. The gooks are
grunts, like us. They fight, like us. They got lifer poges running their
country and we got lifer poges running ours. But at least the gooks are
grunts, like us. Not the Viet Cong. The VC are some dried-up old mamasans
with rusty carbines. The NVA, man, we are tight with the NVA. We kill each
other, no doubt about it, but we're tight. We're hard." Crazy Earl tosses an
empty beer bottle to the deck and picks up his Red Ryder air rifle. He fires
the air rifle at the bottle and the BB ricochets off the bottle with a faint
ping. "I love the little commie bastards, man. I really do. Grunts
understand grunts. These are great days we are living, bros. We are jolly
green giants, walking with the earth with guns. The people we wasted here
today are the finest individuals we will ever know. When we rotate back to
the World we're gonna miss having somebody around who's worth shooting.
There ought to be a government for grunts. Grunts could fix the world up. I
never met a grunt I didn't like, except Mother."
I say, "Never happen. It would make too much sense. It's better that we
save Viet Nam from the people who live here. Of course, they love us; we'll
kill them if they don't. When you've got them by the balls their hearts and
minds will follow."
Donlon says, "Well, we're rich and we got beaucoup beer and beaucoup
chow. Now all we need is the Bob Hope show."
I stand up. The beer has gone to my head. "I'll be Bob Hope." I
hesitate. I touch my face. "Oh, wow, my nose ain't big enough." Mild
laughter.
A hundred yards away a heavy machine gun fires a long burst. Scattered
small arms fire replies.
I do impressions.
"Friends, I am Bob Hope. You all remember me, I'm sure. I was in some
movies with Bing Crosby. Well, I'm here in Viet Nam to entertain you. The
folks back home don't care enough about you to bring you back to the World
so you won't get wasted, but they do care enough to send comedians over here
so that at least you can die laughing. So have you heard the one about the
Viet Nam veteran who came home and said, 'Look, Mom, no hands!'"
The squad laughs. They say: "Do John Wayne!"
Doing my John Wayne voice, I tell the squad a joke: "Stop me if you're
heard this. There was a Marine of nuts and bolts, half robot-weird but
true-whose every move was cut from pain as though from stone. His stoney
little hide had been crushed and broken. But he just laughed and said, 'I've
been crushed and broken before.' And sure enough, he had the heart of a
bear. His heart functioned for weeks after it had been diagnosed by doctors.
His heart weighed half a pound. His heart pumped seven hundred thousand
gallons of warm blood through one hundred thousand miles of veins, working
hard-hard enough in twelve hours to lift one sixty-five ton boxcar one foot
off the deck. He said. The world would not waste the heart of a bear, he
said. On his clean blue pajamas many medals hung. He was a walking word of
history, in the shop for a few repairs. He took it on the chin and was good.
One night in Japan his life came out of his body-black-like a question mark.
If you can keep your head while others are losing theirs perhaps you have
misjudged the situation. Stop me if you've heard this..."
Nobody says anything.