"Racism is destructive. It disempowers people by devaluing their identity. It destroys community cohesion and creates divisions in society. It is the opposite of the democratic principle of equality and the right of all people to be treated fairly. Racism is an ideology that gives expression to myths about other racial and ethnic groups, that devalues and renders inferior those groups, that reflects and is perpetuated by deeply rooted historical, social, cultural and power inequalities in society."
What follows is a work of fiction. This story came about as the result of my having witnessed severe racism firsthand, and my subsequent attempts to understand the nature of racism. The views expressed by the protagonist are in no way a reflection of my own. We are all one!
I was on point that night. Man, I hated being on point. This was the ninth night in a row that third platoon had been on night reconnaissance for Echo Company. Deeper and deeper into that god-forsaken jungle. We hadn’t seen any action since three nights ago, when a couple of snipers took out five of our guys before we finally managed to put a stop to it with some incendiary grenades we tossed into the tree-tops.
Not that I was complaining, it was just that now I was on point and I just knew some shit was going down that night, it had been way too quiet for way too long. I could feel it, I could feel Charlie out there, watching… waiting… Yeah, something was gonna happen, I was getting that sick feeling in my gut, and it wasn’t the bad food, not this time. It wasn’t the reds or the grass either, when you’ve been in the shit awhile, you develop a kind of sixth sense about these things.
Jesus Christ, I thought, why couldn’t the Captain have put one of the niggers up front tonight, why me? I was no coward, but when you’re the first man in line, any-fucking-thing can happen and there ain’t shit you can do about . Any one of these trees up ahead could have a sniper in it. Or all of them. You can’t see em either, those fuckin gooks are so small, and their camo is so good, you don’t even know their there until you hear the first shot. And if you’re the point man, that first shot will usually hit you in the face, and that’s all she wrote. You’re a goner. History. Splitsville man.
Or if you’re lucky, you could step on a tripwire, or maybe a mine. Sure you look for em. Bet your ass you do. But the undergrowth in this goddamn jungle is so fuckin thick it’d be like finding a very small needle in a very large haystack, especially at night. Can’t use a flashlight, shit no. Might give away your position and bring the whole goddamn Viet Cong Army right down on top of you.
Of course, there are worse things than mines and tripwires and snipers, oh my! You could fall into a tiger pit. A tiger pit is a deep hole with a shitload of very sharp bamboo spikes at the bottom. They cover the hole with a tarp or some branches, and you’ll never see it, you’re just walking along, la-di-da, then BAM! All you can do is pray that the bastards poisoned the spikes, so you’ll hurry up and die. I heard somewhere that before LBJ’s little “armed conflict” started, the natives really did use these traps for tigers. Now they use them for killing American soldiers. Yes sir, there’s never a dull moment on the Ho Chi Minh trail.
If I make it through the night it’ll be a fuckin miracle. If I was the Captain, I woulda put one of the niggers on point. Sure, why not? They’re only good for dying anyway. Chickenshit motherfuckers sure as hell ain’t no good for fightin. My daddy always said the only good niggers is dead niggers, and I reckoned he was right. Better a coon gets killed than a decent, hard working, tax paying, law abiding, God fearing, white man. A REAL American, in other words. Most of em won’t even share their grass with you if you run out, and they never call you by your real name, it’s always, “Hey Whiteboy!” Fuckin niggers.
I’m wishing the Captain would call a halt so I can cover my head with my poncho and sneak a quick smoke, when it happens.
I got lucky. Instead of shooting me, the sniper was nice enough to lob a grenade. It lands a few feet behind me, between Danny Epstein and “Mike the Kike” Orris. They’re not so lucky. I yelled “Grenade!” but before they could react it went off. Mike the Kike is instantly vaporized, the fuckin grenade landed right at his feet. Epstein catches enough shrapnel to cut off both his legs above the knees. I had taken a dive into the bush so I’m not hit, but a piece of debris blows a hole clean through my canteen. Oh well, I think to myself, maybe the water will help to hide the fact that I’ve just pissed myself. Epstein is yelling, hollering for the medic. This all happens in less than ten seconds. Then all hell breaks loose.
Third Platoon, myself included, are firing wildly into the jungle in front of us. Another grenade comes at us, landing about where the first one did. Incredibly, Jones the medic, (Bones Jones we call him), who was doing what little he could for that poor bastard Epstein, kicks the grenade into the trees and then goes calmly back to his work. It goes off a split second later, but the trees took the only damage from that one. I see muzzle flashes coming from at least half a dozen trees. We gotta move, fast. We’re sitting ducks where we’re at. I turn my head to yell for the captain, I can see him at the back of the pack hunkered down next to Flier, the radio guy. I’ll bet you can guess what we called him? “Radio Flier“, of course, like the red wagons we all had when we were kids. The Captain is trying to call in an air strike, when he should be ordering us to take cover and fall back. Right then, a mortar shell comes out of nowhere, and the Captain, Radio Flier, and three or four others are blown to pieces. Vaporized. A second mortar round immediately follows, and two more guys get their tickets punched. A third, who isn’t killed, but has had half his body toasted like a marshmallow, is screaming for someone to please help him. Unfortunately, Bones won’t be helping anybody anytime soon. He was trying to drag Epstein to cover when the snipers got him. Jonesy’s dead. Epstein too.
I see that the burned guy is Cruz, a Puerto Rican I was in Basic Training with. The smell of his charred flesh reminds me uncomfortably of bacon frying, and despite my disgust, my stomach rumbles hungrily. I hadn’t had a bite of real food in weeks.
Then I hear a sound that if I hadn’t already done it, would have made me piss my pants for sure. The Captain must have had enough time to call in that air strike before he cashed in his chips. Too bad he never gave the order to move out. The sound I hear is the sound of a Grumman A6 Intruder about to drop a shitload of napalm all over us. It is the sound of a hi-tech angel of death. If we don’t get the fuck out of here right now, we’re all gonna bear a striking resemblance to the crispy side of my old buddy Cruz.
If this had happened during the day, I wouldn’t be here to tell you this shit. Fortunately for me, the fast-movers couldn’t hit point targets at night.“Fall back, we gotta get outta here, there’s an air strike coming!”
I don’t’ hang around to see if anyone’s listening. Hell, there were only a couple of us left alive, at that point. I take my own advice and head back down the trail as fast as my legs can carry me. After about the first ten yards I catch a bullet in the leg, but do you think that slowed me down? Shit no! If anything I run a little faster. Most of Third Platoon has been wiped out, but the few of us left alive are getting the fuck outta Dodge.
A minute or so later the heat wave knocks me to the ground. The air is so hot, even the shallowest breath burns your lungs. I hear the final scream of someone who didn’t make it out in time. It doesn’t last long. I lay where I am for a few seconds, then struggle to my feet. My wounded leg, which had only been throbbing dully before, now feels like someone has poured gasoline (or maybe napalm) into the bullet hole and struck a match. It hurts like a motherfucker, in other words.
I discover I can no longer run, the best I can manage is a kind of half-assed trot. The last ragged remnants of the platoon are soon way ahead of me. After a couple more miles, I am forced to walk. I fell down for the first time not long after that. Another quarter mile or so and I fell down again, and this time I didn’t get right back up.
I must have blacked out, the pain was so bad. Sometime later, I regained consciousness. Goddamn I’m thirsty, I thought to myself. I try to say this aloud, but the best my poor scorched throat can do is a dry croak, that hurts so bad I nearly blacked out again.
My leg had been bleeding pretty heavily while I was out of it. I tear off a strip of my shirt, and rig a crude tourniquet. Thinking fondly of an ice cold glass of water, I gazed into the jungle. Standing in the bush about a hundred yards off was a soldier.
Not Charlie, thank god, but an honest-to-goodness American G.I.! He was a nigger, but at least I knew he wasn’t gonna try to kill me. Well, I was pretty sure anyway, a lot of bad shit went down in Nam, and it wasn’t entirely uncommon for a grunt to waste another grunt, accidentally or otherwise. He didn’t say anything, and he didn’t move he just stood there, looking at me. I try to call out to him, and after several attempts, eventually manage a hoarse shout. “Come here man, I’ve been shot, and I need water, my canteen was shot too!” But he still doesn’t say anything, and he still doesn’t move, he’s just standing there, looking at me.
Then he waved his arm at me like come-on, let’s go, and he turned around and walked deeper into the jungle. “Wait!” I yell, “You’re going the wrong way, come back here!” He doesn’t. What the hell, I think, maybe he knows something I don’t. And besides, I still wanted that drink from his canteen.
I climbed shakily to my feet and hobble off in the direction he was going. When I get to about the same spot where he was first standing, I see him. Again, he’s about a hundred yards ahead. Still not talking, just fucking standing there looking at me. “Where the fuck are you going anyway man?” I tried to yell, but my poor throat had had enough abuse, and it comes out as hardly more than a whisper. He waved me on again, and disappears into the bush. For the next several hours, I followed him in this way. The countless stars and nearly-full moon gave off just enough light to make out the nigger in front of me.
I can’t yell at him, but I cuss him like a damn dirty dog under my breath. He’s always just ahead of me, waiting. Sometimes he waves me on, sometimes he just turns and walks away. I fell down a lot, and even though I’m in plain sight of him several times, he never makes a move to help me! Eventually, I blacked out again.
The sky had just began to show the first, faint signs of false dawn, when I woke up. The fucking deaf-mute nigger G.I. Is still standing in the same place. I give him the finger, then close my eyes again. I’m exhausted, my whole body aches, and blood-soaked, swollen, and shot up left leg is nothing but fiery-hot pain, from foot to crotch. My scorched throat and lungs made every breath agony.
Fuck it, I thought, I might as well just lie here and die! I’m as good as dead anyway, it’s only a matter of time before we run into some gooks. I opened my eyes again and was surprised to see that the nigger was now smiling at me!
Still smiling, he brought out his canteen and took a good, long drink. Before putting it away again, he held it in front of him and shook it at me, still wearing that big, shit-eating grin. I couldn’t believe it! The son of a bitch was taunting me! I’m lying there slowly bleeding to death, and that goddamn porch monkey not only refuses to help me, or even just speak to me, he actually has the balls to tease me with his canteen?!
It was just too much, I snapped! Before I knew what I was doing, my M16 was in my hands and I was pulling the trigger!
Nothing happened. I’d been using my rifle as a crutch for a long time, and the barrel was completely full of dirt! My fucking gun was jammed!
For some reason, instead of feeling relieved, this pissed me off even more. “I’m still gonna kill you, you bastard!” I whispered/screamed at him as I struggled to get back on my feet, “I’ll kill you and take your goddamn canteen, you fucking moon cricket!” So once again I was following him through the jungle, only this time I was actually chasing him! I fully intended to kill him, or die trying!
A while later, we came upon a beautiful little lake, perfectly hidden away in the middle of that jungle. The deaf mute nigger led me along it’s shore, disappearing into a group of trees ahead. As I entered the cover of the trees several minutes later, I discovered a helicopter sitting there along the lake’s sandy shore. It was one of ours, an American Bell AH-1G Huey Cobra. I looked around for the other guy, but he was nowhere in sight. He must not have seen the chopper and went on into the jungle across the clearing. But that was bullshit, and I knew it. There was no way he could have missed that fucking helicopter sitting there in plain view. Was my new buddy a deserter? Oh well, I thought, if he would have told anyone that I’d tried to kill him there might have been a court martial. I might have beat the charges, but I couldn’t be sure of that. Without him, I would get a purple heart and a ticket home. Tough luck, my man, you really should have given me some fucking water.
As I approached the helicopter I fell down for the last time that night. From the ground, I saw two guys come running around the other side of the chopper. As they helped me to my feet, I saw from the insignia on their flight suits that it was the pilot and co-pilot.
“Jesus buddy, you look like you just been through hell and back!” said the pilot, the one on my right. “Where’d ya come from?” asked the other one. “I’m in third platoon, Echo Company. We were doing recon on the trail and ran into a nasty ambush.” I answered, struggling to make my voice heard.
“Echo Company? You’re one lucky son of a bitch you know that?” “What do you mean?” “Man I hate to have to tell you this, but the rest of your platoon was retreating back down the trail the way you came in, and ran into some more gooks. They were totally wiped out, I’m sorry. Hey, at least you made it, right man? You made it!”
“We were on our way in to try and pick up any survivors, when we took a few rounds. We lost our gunner, and we had to make an emergency landing here, to try and patch up the radiator, and fill the bird up with water so we could get our asses back to base. We were just about to take off when we saw you fall down.”
“Did you see anyone else?” I asked him “No. Why, was there someone else?” “No, I’m alone”, I answered. “Well, lets get you into the chopper, and we’ll get the hell out of here” said the co-pilot. “I gotta warn you though, our Gunner is still back there, and he’s shot the fuck up pretty bad.”
As they helped me into that helicopter, I noticed that their gunner had indeed been shot the fuck up pretty bad, his chest was a wad of raw hamburger and he was clearly dead. He was also clearly the deaf mute nigger I’d been following/chasing through the jungle all goddamn night! He’d been shot damn near to pieces, but his face hadn’t been hit, and there was no mistaking it. How could this be? It was impossible, but I swear to you that dead gunner in that chopper was the same man who had taunted me with his canteen! And he’d saved my life!
“How long have you guys been here?” I asked the pilot. “Just a couple hours.” It was impossible, I had been following that man all night. “Hey, you sound pretty awful buddy, you hold on a sec, I’ll get my canteen. “It’s all right” I croaked, as I reached over and took out the gunner’s canteen. I pulled his head into my lap and poured some between my saviors lips, before taking a long, soul-satisfying drink. Watching me in astonishment, the pilot asked, “What the hell are you doing?”
Thanks to the water, I’m able to answer him perfectly clearly, and I see in his eyes he’s surprised at the strength he hears in my voice as I answer. “What the fuck does it look like I’m doing? I’m having a drink with my friend here. You got a problem with that?”
He didn’t.
No comments:
Post a Comment