Saigon Blues (The Vietnam War Book 3) by Steven Hardesty

Author:Steven Hardesty
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Stevens & Marlin Publishing, LLC
Published: 2012-05-18T23:00:00+00:00

10 Oct 68,

False dawn. We crouch lower and wait. Dawn! Tom sends a couple of Hueys guarded by Crocodile gunships to extract us. Going up and away, I see the mess we’ve made of the forest. The broken bunker at bridge nine surrounded by the protecting tracks and tanks. The little fold of ground in which we’d cowered through the last of the night, nearly disarmed, looks so stupidly exposed. Sergeant Rudolph, sitting beside me in the Huey’s open side, our butts on the deck and our legs dangling down over Vietnam, says, “That was damn conservative fighting, California. I could get to like it. I might just survive these Shraps after all.”

Conservative? I want to say. We fired an ambush, we ran, we ran into fleeing Chucks, we ambushed, we ran, we hid in a hole in the ground all night because we didn’t have enough bullets to save our lives if Chuck had found us, and now we’re flying back to Lazy Tom to sleep in the dirt and that was conservative?

The grunt Batco has me on the landline to basecamp. He says into my ear, “No wounded, no dead? Damn. You did better than most. We counted marks of seven dead at the ambush site. Those bods are yours. We counted pieces of another six north of bridge nine. Can’t say who nailed or if six is the big number. Place was all shot up by the Crocos. But there’s blood trails enough for six and some more. I’m going to give you one of those. Your score is eight for the night. Double, almost triple, the Shrap usual. For a redleg doing grunt work, you did okay, son. Let’s see if you can keep it up.” He rings off.

Rudolph is there beside me: “Pep talk from Emmet Kelly?”

“I think that’s what it was. Says he’s giving us credit for eight kills last night.”

“Generous. Usually not that free with our kills.”

“He was surprised no one was hurt.”

“Yeah. Not usual we do that good. We’re dorks in the Boy Scouts.” Rudolph is twenty-five with three stripes and a rocker, an old, old soldier who hasn’t gotten himself promoted fast enough despite the war.

“Get the troops rearmed, Field First. Tell them to zonk fast. I got tracks to get us down the asphalt before we cut loose into the trees. Pull out at 1800 before the road closes.”

Rudolph goes away.

Rafe says, sudden, “We did have a talk, California, didn’t we?”

“Plan Cassidy. That’s what it’s going to be. No more craziness like last night.”

“Thanks, buddy. I’m gonna write Momma I’m coming home alive.”

Home. What a word! “What’s home?”

“Who knows? Rather be there than here.”

Blueleg H.Q. gives us an ambush target for the night, based on a thousand bits of hours-old military intelligence, useless stuff. We are expected to go out there and kill or at least get killed. To show what brave troopies Yankee soldiers can be. To clear out the riffraff that is the most of us. To terrify Chuck in his happy night.

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