Free War Year by Joe Haldeman Page A

chest. Prof put a hand under my arm and pulled me to my feet.
    â€œOkay. It’s a hard job, I know. Here, wash your mouth out.” He handed me a canteen.
    Horowitz kneeled down where the Prof and I had and repeated the action. Somehow, he didn’t puke, though he looked a little green when he got up.
    The infantry was digging a hole about ten feet away. “This deep enough, X-ray?”
    Prof went over and checked it out. “It’ll do. One of you guys want to give us a hand with the stiff?”
    â€œHell, no. We just dig the hole, man. That’s your job.”
    Prof stomped back. “Horowitz, take one sleeve. I’ll take the other. The grunts don’t want to get their hands dirty.”
    â€œI’ll help,” I said.
    â€œDon’t have to if you don’t feel up to it. Nothin’ to be ashamed of.”
    â€œIt’s just a piece of meat. I don’t mind.” Like hell I didn’t. But I know, if a horse throws you, you gotta get right back up on him. Or you’ll never ride.
    He was heavy. Horowitz took one sleeve and I took the other. Dragging him to the grave, my stomach tried to heave a couple of times, but it must have been empty.
    We buried corpses all morning and through half the afternoon. After a while we saw what the Prof had meant, that we didn’t “start out with a bad one.” There were some bad ones, later on. Chunks of bodies we had to gather up onto a poncho and dump them into the hole. Man-shaped charcoal lumps, feather-light, burned crisp by napalm. And worse…
    Finally we worked our way back around to the first grave and walked back up to the perimeter.
    â€œChrist, Professor,” Horowitz asked, “why don’t we just move on, let them bury their own if they want to?”
    â€œUsually, we do move on, never stay in one place longer than overnight. Took too many casualties, though. Have to stay here a couple of days, get replacements sent out.”
    â€œStill, why couldn’t we just leave ’em—the smell’s not that bad, back where we’re camped out.”
    â€œIt’s a public health problem, Horowitz. The flies. If a fly lands on your C-rations… just remember where he’s been.”
    â€œAnd open another can.”
    â€œYeah.”

SEVEN
    We spent three days at the grave-surrounded “patrol base,” with helicopters coming in almost hourly, bringing in new replacements, mail, and supplies from Alamo, and twenty-five cases of beer from God knows where. I managed to take it easy the last couple of days; once the base was dug in and the dead were buried, there wasn’t much work for the engineers.
    Our X-ray squad that had been with A Company all left that first day—one dead, two “lightly wounded.” In fact, most of the casualties in the ambush had come from the center file, which was very unusual… normally, an ambush comes from one or both sides, and the flanks take most of the punishment.
    So Willy and Prof and I were the engineer squad, and would be for at least a month. Prof assured us that it couldn’t be as bad for us; engineers were the safest people in the whole company. But I couldn’t help thinking that if Willy and I had come a few days earlier, it would’ve been us going out on that Medevac, wounded or dead.
    A couple of days of sitting around, drinking beer, and reading (most of the guys were playing cards, but I only had ten dollars, which wouldn’t last a minute) just about cured me of the shakes. The company set up ambushes all around the camp, but they didn’t catch anybody, day or night.
    We broke camp on the morning of the fourth day. Took about an hour to fill the holes—emptied sandbags, rolled ’em up, and tied them to our packs—and destroy all of the supplies we couldn’t take with us.
    We walked, and we walked, and we walked some more. Just like the Prof said, we walked in three lines; right