Free Better Times Than These by Winston Groom Page A

what the hell else we gonna do, huh? We in the damned United States Army, man—we in it now.” He stuffed two ten-dollar bills into Spudhead’s shirt pocket.
    “Come on, now, Spudhead, let’s go to bed ’fore we get ol’ Trunk up chewin’ our asses,” Crump said.
    They helped him to his feet, taking him by the elbows and putting their arms around his shoulders.
    “Come on, now, Spudhead, that’s a boy,” Crump said. “Everything’s gonna look better in the morning.”
    “Yeah, Spudhead, we gotta war we gonna fight—we need our sleep if we gonna kill gooks,” DiGeorgio said.
    The transport shift buzzer startled Spudhead out of a half-sleep, and he foggily swung his feet onto the bare metal floor. The harmonica was still in his hand, and he opened his duffel bag and carefully stowed it away. All around him people were stirring, preparing to take their turns up on deck. He thought of Julie and of his father and mother, and wondered what they were doing and if they were thinking of him. He felt a little nauseated, but it wasn’t from seasickness; he had felt that way ever since he learned they were going over. He hurried to lace on his boots and get topside. The sea air had been good for the nausea, and this afternoon he might see more dolphins, or a whale.

10
    I n separate auditoriums aboard the transport, two briefings were taking place.
    They had been gone five days, and by now most of the men had become more or less acclimated to life at sea. The first wave of seasickness had disappeared by this time, and only those hardest hit, like Captain Thurlo, were still in misery; the rest, while they did not feel particularly good when the ship plowed through an unanticipated series of heavy swells, were able at least to function. The days had broken down to a boring but predictable regimen: in the mornings, they would eat chow—which rather than improving had become appreciably worse; there was an hour of calisthenics and laps around the deck; then each company gathered together for instruction: drilling in small-arms assembly, how to avoid getting tropical infections, how to behave toward the South Vietnamese people and how to use the PRC—“prick”—25 radio, over and again until even the dullards and sluggards knew that further repetition was senseless because they had heard it all before.
    Whenever these classes ended, the line for the ship’s store began forming. As each company was dismissed, at least a third of its number sprinted for the line, or where they thought it was, since they never knew until they saw it how long it would be. Sometimes it was several city blocks long, coiling around the deck like a giant python—hundreds of men in single file, waiting their turn at the tiny counter where they could buy chewing gum and camera film and toilet goods and other little items to make life more bearable. Most precious among these were the candy bars and cigarettes—the cigarettes because men could not live without them, and the candy bars because they could not live with the Navy chow.
    The enlisted men were restricted as to how much they could buy at the ship’s store at a given time, while officers and senior noncoms had no such quota. As it developed, this quota usually lasted for about two days, after which each man would have to return to the line for more. Since the ship’s store was usually open only for half an hour in the early morning and at noon, most of the men in the line did not actually get to buy anything, but they waited there anyway—partly because the sailors who ran the store would sometimes keep it open longer than usual, and partly because they didn’t have anything better to do.
    This day, however, was different, because whereas before their afternoons had been free, today’s briefing had been called in the ship’s movie theater—or, more precisely, three assemblies had been called, so as to accommodate all of the men. A briefing was also scheduled for officers in the