Dispatches

by Michael Herr

A few days later Sean Flynn and I went up to a big fire-base in the Americal TAOR that took it all the way over to another extreme, National Guard weekend. The colonel in command was so drunk that day that he could barely get his words out, and when he did, it was to say things like, “We aim to make good and goddammit sure that if those guys try anything cute they won’t catch us with our pants down.” The main mission there was to fire H&I, but one man told us that their record was the worst in the whole Corps, probably the whole country, they’d harassed and interdicted a lot of sleeping civilians and Korean Marines, even a couple of Americal patrols, but hardly any Viet Cong. (The colonel kept calling it “artillerary.” The first time he said it Flynn and I looked away from each other, the second time we blew beer through our noses, but the colonel fell in laughing right away and more than covered us.) No sandbags, exposed shells, dirty pieces, guys going around giving us that look, “We’re cool, how come you’re not?” At the strip Sean was talking to the operator about it and the man got angry. “Oh yeah? Well fuck you, how tight do you think you want it? There ain’t been any veecees around here in three months.”