Analog SFF, July-August 2009 by Dell Magazine Authors

Author:Dell Magazine Authors
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Dell Magazines
Published: 2010-12-15T07:07:36.157000+00:00

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Short Story: DUCK AND COVER

by Don D'Ammassa

We all have to try to understand our surroundings—usually with too little information.

A lot of young men discovered who they really were during the Vietnam war, whether they were drafted or enlisted, fled to Canada or fled to the National Guard and other exemptions. When I disembarked in Cam Ranh Bay in June of 1969, I thought I had a pretty good understanding of myself and others, but my education was just getting started. And sometimes knowing the truth—or part of it anyway—has its drawbacks. When you stand in a crowd and realize that some of the people around you might not actually be people, it changes everything.

During most of my tour, I was more afraid of my fellow Americans than of the Viet Cong. Four members of my battalion were killed in fights among themselves, while the Vietnamese only managed to slightly wound one tail gunner during those same eleven months. Boredom was one of the main problems; there wasn't much to do in Phu Hiep except sit around and drink or smoke pot. Boredom, booze, and automatic weapons are not a good combination in three-digit heat. You could tell who had which vice by walking between rows of hooches—the unfinished rooms in which we slept—after darkness fell and most of us were off duty. The drinkers were loud; the smokers were silent.

I shared my hooch with two other guys: Chapman, who wanted to be a marine biologist, and Russell, the chaplain's assistant. We had smokers on our south side so we rarely heard a peep from them after dark, but unfortunately Elmer Colby was just beyond the north wall. Elmer was a hulking thug who'd joined the army to stay out of jail after one too many bar fights back in West Virginia. He was a heavy drinker and a nasty one. No one was willing to share quarters with him and even the officers avoided him.

One night the three of us were sitting around talking. I had broken down my M-16 and was cleaning it—this section of the coastline was all sand and dust and M-16s tended to malfunction if they weren't pristine. Someone was fumbling around on the other side of the north partition. We didn't have walls, just eight-foot-high barriers separating each hooch from the next. We heard a sudden scratching sound and a moment later were reeling from the latest onslaught of Iron Butterfly played at maximum volume.

I don't have anything against Iron Butterfly. After I got back to the States and a decent interval had passed, I picked up my own copy of In-a-Gadda-da-Vida and I still play it occasionally. But Colby had bought himself a cheap turntable and speakers by mail order and he only owned two albums, the other being Abbey Road by the Beatles. I like them even better, but when you hear the same two albums played over and over again, day after day, with the volume turned all the way up, even good music gets old very quickly.

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