The Shake Davis Series: Laos File, Peleliu File, Chosin File, Beirut File, Contra File, Havana File, Aztec File, and Bangkok File

by Dale A. Dye

Fresh beer in hand, Shake ambled through the ramshackle interior of the Drifters Reef. Everywhere he looked there were marks of passage from visitors of one ilk or another. Walls, tables, chairs, stools, stanchions and nearly every other kind of flat surface were festooned with unit stickers, decals and patches from all branches of the military, foreign and domestic. There were bills of worldwide denominations, usually signed by the people who left them behind. There were hats of all descriptions—usually bearing a military logo—tacked or stapled all over the bar’s sagging ceiling. It was a quasi-tradition in the Drifters Reef that anyone who entered wearing a hat bought the house a round of drinks and sacrificed the offending cover to enshrinement on the ceiling. He knew the feeling and the philosophy behind the symbols. When you find yourself in a rare and esoteric place, there’s an impulse to leave a mark for posterity, knowing you are so far off any beaten track that your mark will likely be there forever, appreciated only by those few who make a similar trek. It was something like a dog finding the fire hydrant at the farthest edge of his world and pissing on it to let the rest of the pack know an intrepid explorer had passed that way.