War Year Read Online Free PDF Page B

The food was all gone, of course. I got a cup of coffee that tasted like diesel fuel. It woke me up a little, but I still felt like I’d had only two hours’ sleep after cowering in a ditch all night.
    Refilled my canteen cup with coffee and dumped enough sugar in it to kill the taste, then carried it back to our billet. It was 0845; we didn’t have to report for training until 0900.
    I sat on a pile of sandbags and watched the people mill around. There was a line of about fifty guys doing a police call, walking in a straight line picking up cigarette butts and such. They seemed more interested in it than usual (usually you just walk along looking at the ground, picking up something when you think someone’s watching). A couple of them were really excited, showing off their finds to each other. What’s so interesting about a cigarette butt?
    The coffee was making me sick, so I tossed out the last half-cup of it. Where it splashed, I saw a glistening piece of metal.
    That’s what they were picking up. I brushed the dust off the thing and looked at it. Everybody’d talked about shrapnel in Basic—it’s the stuff that causes the most casualties—but this was the first actual piece of it that I’d ever seen. It was a chunk of lead about an inch square with razor-sharp edges. I handled it carefully, but it still made a little nick on my finger. It looked like it could go right through a person without slowing down.
    Here in ’Nam they called them “frags” instead of shrapnel. That’s what they were—fragments—like when an artillery shell goes off, the explosive inside shatters the lead casing into hundreds of frags.
    This one must have been one of the frags that had been whistling over my head last night. I wrapped it up in a scrap of paper and put it in my shirt pocket.
    They were lining up in front of the billet, so I walked over to join in the fun.
    â€œAwright, listen up.” Old Sergeant O’Donnell stepped in front with a clipboard in his hand. “Today yer lucky. We just gotta go across the street for half-a-day’s training. I know you guys didn’t get much sleep last night. Tough shit. Neither did I. Anybody falls asleep, he goes on KP tomorrow morning.” Some of the guys looked like they couldn’t stay awake in the middle of a rock band.
    We marched more or less in step to a bunch of wooden benches across the street. Whoever was supposed to teach us hadn’t showed up yet—probably getting some sleep!—so I just sat down and smoked to stay awake.
    â€œWhy the fuck did we have to get a master sergeant?” Willy slumped down next to me on the bench and lit a cigarette. “He’s gonna be nothin’ but trouble.”
    â€œMaybe every bunch has to have one.”
    â€œFuck, no—billet next to ours has a corporal in charge.”
    The sergeant came back with a captain walking in front of him. O’Donnell looked at us flopped around on the benches and yelled, “ Tench-hut , goddammit!” We came to attention in a creaky sort of way.
    â€œAt ease, men.” The captain waved a hand in our general direction. “Sit down. Smoke if you want to.
    â€œI’m Captain Price, Artillery, here to tell you how the army uses artillery to support the infantry in the field. Any artillery boys in the crowd?” A couple of hands went up. “Well, you two might just as well close your eyes and get some sleep—if you don’t know everything I’m tellin’ these guys, and more besides, your ass is grass anyhow.
    â€œYou were supposed to get instruction on the .45 automatic this morning, from Sergeant Something-or-other. But one of the rocket rounds last night hit the shed where we keep all the demonstration .45’s—so you’re just gonna have to learn about that on your own, if you get issued a .45. Doesn’t make any difference to me one way or the other, of course,