Free If I Die in a Combat Zone by Tim O’Brien Page B

started shouting. But the men just giggled and sat on sandbags in their underwear.
    Enemy rounds crashed in. The earth split. Most of Alpha Company slept.
    A lieutenant came by. He told the men to get their gear together, but no one moved, and he walked away. Then some of the men spotted the flash of an enemy mortar tube.
    They set up a machine gun and fired out at it, over the heads of everyone in the fire base.
    In seconds the enemy tube flashed again. The wind whistled, and the round dug into a road twenty feet from my beer shed. Shrapnel slammed into the beer shed. I hugged the Bud and Black Label, panting, no thoughts.
    Charlie was zeroing in on their machine gun, and everyone scattered, and the next round slammed down even closer. More giggling and hooting.
    The lieutenant hurried back. He argued with a platoon sergeant, but this time the lieutenant was firm. He ordered us to double-time out to the perimeter. Muttering about how the company needed a rest and that this had turned into one hell of a rest and that they’d rather be out in the boonies, the men put on helmets and took up their rifles and followed the lieutenant past the mess hall and out to the perimeter.
    Three of the men refused and went into the barracks and went to sleep.
    Out on the perimeter, there were two dead GIs. Fifty-caliber machine guns fired out into the paddies, and the sky was filled with flares. Two or three of our men, forgetting about the war, went off to chase parachutes blowing around the bunkers. The chutes came from the flares, and they made good souvenirs.
    In the morning the first sergeant roused us out of bed, and we swept the fire base for bodies. Eight dead VC were lying about. One was crouched beside a roll of barbed wire, the top of his head resting on the ground like he was ready to do a somersault. A Squad of men was detailed to throw the corpses into a truck. They wore gloves and didn’t like the job, but they joked. The rest of us walked into the rice paddy and followed a tracker dog out toward the VC mortar positions. From there the dog took us into a village, but there was nothing to see but some children and women. We walked around until noon. Then the lieutenant turned us around, and we were back at LZ Gator in time for chow.
    “Those poor motherfuckin’ dinks,” the Kid said while we were filling sandbags in the afternoon. “They should know better than to test Alpha Company. They just know, they ought to know anyhow, it’s like tryin’ to attack the Pentagon! Old Alpha comes in, an’ there ain’t a chance in hell for ’em, they ought to know that , for Christ’s sake. Eight to two, they lost six more than we did.” The Kid was only eighteen, but everyone said to look out for him, he was the best damn shot in the battalion with an M-79.
    “Actually,” the Kid said, “those two guys weren’t even from Alpha. The two dead GIs. They were with Charlie Company or something, I don’t know. Stupid dinks should know better.” He flashed a buck-toothed smile and jerked his eyebrows up and down and winked.
    Wolf said: “Look, FNG, I don’t want to scare you—nobody’s trying to scare you—but that stuff last night wasn’t shit ! Last night was a lark. Wait’ll you see some really bad shit. That was a picnic last night. I almost slept through it.” I wondered what an FNG was. No one told me until I asked.
    “You bullshitter, Wolf. It’s never any fun.” The Kid heaved a shoveful of sand at Wolf’s feet. “Except for me maybe. I’m charmed, nothing’ll get me. Ol’ Buddy Wolf’s good bullshitter, he’ll bullshit you till you think he knows his ass from his elbow.”
    “Okay, FNG, don’t listen to me, ask Buddy Barker. Buddy Barker, you tell him last night was a lark. Right? We got mortars and wire and bunkers and arty and, shit, what the hell else you want? You want a damn H bomb?”
    “Good idea,” Kid said.
    But Buddy Barker agreed it had been a lark. He filled a sandbag and threw it onto a