That you could do anything if you needed to. Or even if you didnât need to you could do it anyway? Do you know what I mean? You know what I mean. I donât know if Morris would know what I mean and I am surely sure Beck wouldnât know what I mean but I think you know what I mean.
You would be proud of me here, Ivan. You would be so proud of me that I am proud just thinking about how proud of me you would be. Does that make sense? Doesnât matter, right because things donât have to make sense here.
Except it does. It all does. Everything here has started to make sense to me. More than anything ever did anywhere. And I owe all that to you. I owe all that I am to you. I might be in Canada if it wasnât for you you know that? Of course you know that. Only you know and I know certain stuff isnât that right Ivan?
I dedicated one to you, buddy. A kill. Just so you know. I bet nobody ever did that for you before I bet that. I just thought of it, it came into my head and it was right. For Ivan, I said, to Ivan. Like you are a god. Like you are. How does that feel? Well there is more where that came from. Lots and lots and lots more cause I feel like I could kill this whole country by myself if I got the order to. I am great at that. I have never been great at anything almost never even been pretty good at anything but I am great great great at taking orders no matter what they are. But donât worry I will leave some for you.
Some guys here are no good at taking orders and I hate that. I canât stand or understand that. Donât you hate that?
Iâm different you know. You wouldnât recognize me. I am so different a man now and I am never going back. And I am gonna keep paying you back for this for all you done for all you made of me.
Be proud of me okay? Just do that.
Your brother ,
Rudi
I have three excellent guys I spend a lot of my time with. Squid and Hunter and Marquette are guys youâd almost want to spend time with even if you didnât need them covering your back with an M-16 every time you went to the bathroom. Gillespie, I donât know about. Heâs mostly okay, but I get a feeling from him thatâs different. Heâs even worse about rules than the rest of them â and thatâs pretty bad. Canât stand to follow orders. Or maybe heâs just selective about who he wants giving them out, which makes Marine life sort of complicated. He thinks everybody above the rank of corporal is as dangerous as the enemy. And whenever you talk to him he smiles, really hard and constant, and it never feels like a smile at all. Thatâs probably the part I donât like most. I would feel a lot better about him if he just let his face tell the truth instead of doing all that grinning. His nickname is Sunshine, but not when heâs around to hear it.
But heâs all right, Gillespie. As far as guys go. The way I hear it, weâre pretty lucky, at this point in the war,at this spot in-country, that we arenât surrounded by Americans who all want to kill each other. You know how it is when itâs really hot in the city for a long time in the summer? How everybody gets on everybody elseâs nerves and the crime rate goes up and all that? Thatâs what itâs like here. Only everybodyâs armed to the teeth, and itâs hotter than wherever else you could be.
But we donât have it all bad at this spot at this time. Chu Lai actually has one of the nicest beaches Iâve ever seen. And when itâs face-melt hot, thereâs nothing like the beach.
âMaybe if the man could give you the feeling that he knew what he was doing, it would be different.â Marquette is talking. Heâs leading our little formation as we hit the last part of the road before the sand. It is a little bit comical, our formation. We take our guns with us everywhere, of course, but otherwise, we are traveling light. Except for our boxer
Krystal Shannan, Camryn Rhys