Free War Year by Joe Haldeman

coming up; birds and monkeys (and lizards, I later found out) screeching at each other. The Professor was already up, heating a can of C-rations the way he’d showed us yesterday.
    â€œMorning, Farmer, drink coffee?”
    â€œYeah, sure.” He tossed me three little brown paper envelopes. Instant coffee, sugar, and powdered milk.
    â€œUse one of those beer cans for a cup, heat it up with some C-4.” I had a steaming can of coffee in less than a minute.
    â€œI forgot to bring any C’s,” I said. And I was hungry.
    â€œThey’ve got a couple of boxes down by the command bunker. But I wouldn’t advise eating anything unless you’re starving.”
    â€œI am, just about. Why not?”
    â€œWe’re goin’ on a burial detail this morning. Smell anything unusual?”
    There was a faint sickly sweet smell, mixture of molasses and shit. “Dead people?”
    â€œDead and half-rotten, in this heat. We’ve gotta put ’em under the ground, so don’t eat anything if you don’t have to.”
    â€œI thought they sent your… sent people’s bodies back to the States.”
    â€œSure, American bodies. Those are Vietnamese you smell. We search ’em, then bury ’em.”
    The coffee didn’t taste so good. “Why do the engineers have to do it?”
    â€œSometimes the bodies are booby-trapped. Booby traps’re our job, not the infantry’s.”
    â€œWe gonna have to disarm booby-traps?”
    â€œNothing so fancy. We just blow ’em up from a distance.”
    â€œSounds messy.…”
    â€œYeah.”
    I poured my coffee out on the ground. It had too much cream anyhow.
    â€œThere’s one over here. X-ray?” That was one of the infantrymen who came with us to help with the pick-and-shovel work, and provide security. They all called us X-ray, as if to remind us that we weren’t heroic grunts like them.
    â€œOkay,” Prof said. “You two stay here for a minute. I’ll check it out for booby-traps.” He went into the woods where the guy had yelled, and came back a couple of minutes later, wiping his right hand on his fatigues.
    â€œAll set. Here.” Prof handed each of us a cigar and lit one up himself.
    â€œThanks anyhow, Prof. I don’t smoke the things.”
    â€œNo time like the present to start, Horowitz. Keep it in your mouth and it cuts the smell.” Willy lit up and so did I.
    The body was lying on its back with arms and legs stretched out all the way. The Prof called it rigor mortis. The skin on his face and hands was black, blacker than a Negro’s. His body was all puffed up to where it filled his uniform like a balloon. His mouth was stretched open wide, a swollen black sausage of a tongue forced between even yellow rows of teeth. His eyes were wide open and filled with ants. His body was covered with ants and flies.
    â€œYou guys are lucky. Don’t have to start out with a bad one.” Prof took a deep drag on his cigar and kneeled beside the body.
    â€œThis is how you check it out. First, make sure there aren’t wires or strings attached to the body. Don’t see any, do you?”
    â€œUh uh.” I couldn’t keep myself from looking at the eyes.
    â€œOkay. Now you have to check underneath. They can pull the pin on a grenade and prop it under the body, so it won’t go off ’til you move it. Sometimes you can tell by just looking. Usually you gotta feel.” He put his hand palm down on the ground and slid it under the body’s back, sliding it back and forth. “Okay. He’s clean. Now, Farmer, you do it.”
    â€œAw, Prof, I get the idea…”
    He stood up. “Still, you gotta do it.”
    I kneeled down where the Prof had and slid my hand under the corpse. Through the tight cloth of the uniform, I could feel the dead skin. Cold, spongy, slimy. I spit out the cigar and puked all over the dead man’s