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Connecticut. We don’t have any decent radio personalities, so at night we listen to New York stations.”
    Siner nodded knowingly as he began to feel at ease.
    “Boy, it must be rough out here. Look at you Sarge, you’re filthy. Were you in a firefight today?”
    Everybody laughed.
    “No, Siner,” I embarrassingly admitted, “I look like this because I fell in the mud. I haven’t been here long enough to get sniped at, let alone be in a firefight. I’m just as cherry as you are.”
    PFC Siner was the tallest man in the platoon, but his size hid his calm demeanor. He had already spent two years in college, where he learned to take a slow methodical approach to situations, a trait many of us would come to admire. I had no way of knowing it at the time, but in the months ahead, Howard Siner would become one of my best and most trusted friends in Vietnam.
    If there was anything tolerable about being in the field, it was that there was no military etiquette. We never stood at attention, saluted officers, or had inspections. The only formality we displayed was when we called the Lieutenant “Sir” and Krol “Sergeant.” The most intolerable thing about the field was just being there, especially the physical demands.
    Each man carried his world on his back. Up to seventy pounds of food, ammunition, and creature comforts were packed into a bulging rucksack. We were so familiar with its contents that we could easily retrieve a toothpick from it on a moonless night. Any personal items, like a wallet, a photograph, matches, or toilet paper were usually carried in our pockets inside tiny plastic bags to protect them from sweat or other moisture.
    Mornings started with brushing our teeth from a canteen of rice patty water rendered potable by adding two purification tablets. Some men shaved, many did not, and no one ever used deodorant. Chow consisted of our choice of any one of a dozen equally unappetizing C-ration selections, which we either ate or went hungry. One meal, ham and lima beans, was so bad we called it “Ham and Mother-fuckers.” But no meal was more hated than the infamous jellied version of ham and eggs. Even the villagers, who were always looking for a free meal, wouldn’t eat it. A heat tablet that sat inside a tiny stove fashioned from a discarded cracker tin warmed the food. Nearly everyone drank coffee or hot chocolate, while a fortunate few made lemonade from powdered mixes sent from home.
    Manners meant nothing in the field, even during mealtime. A person might urinate only five feet away, while another is burping, farting, or scratching his nuts. When someone needed to perform their daily constitutional, there was no privacy either. A buddy went along to guard against a VC sniper shooting him in mid-shit.
    We rarely bathed. During the hottest part of the day, if we were located near a stream, some men took sponge baths, or jumped in clothes and all. We wore the same sweat-soaked fatigues for weeks at a time. The only way to get a clean or new uniform was if something got torn open. The only reserve clothing we carried was an extra pair of socks and a medium-size bath towel. The towel was issued for shaving and bathing, but it was most often used to wipe the sweat from our brows or draped over the shoulders to keep the rucksack straps from digging in.
    April was the dry season, but about every fourth day a brief rain shower soaked us just before dusk, too late for anything to dry out. As hot as it was in the daytime, we were often cold during the night because everything was still wet. The soggy conditions were ideal for developing ugly pus-seeping body sores that never seemed to heal. This skin ailment, known to GIs as jungle rot, thrived in the damp areas of poorly ventilated wet clothing. Not everyone got the sores, but we took no chances either. No one wore under-shorts because crotch rot was a very real and painful blight.
    We slept on the ground, usually on a waterproof poncho, sometimes covered