More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
clay. The thin, wet straps of Mellas’s two cotton ammunition bandoleers
platoon commanders
Lieutenant Colonel Simpson, radio call sign Big John Six, First Battalion’s commanding officer.
name.” “Tyrell,” Broyer said, wondering
What about the enemy. machine gun? Thought it had to be taken out before the helicopters with the howitzers came in. Did I miss something?
immersion foot.
was listening to the top-forty countdown from
“It used to be if you were out in the bush operating independently like we are, no one would second-guess the skipper. They didn’t have the radio power back then. Now they do, and the fucking brass think they’re out on patrol. And now the smallest units are run by the colonels and generals, hell, right up to the president. Colonel and above used to be the level where people dealt with all the political shit like congressmen on junkets, television, reporters, you name it. But now those guys are running the show right down to this fucking river canyon and we’re in the politics too. And the
...more
As the company moved forward, everyone passed a message scratched into the rocks: FIRST THEY SHAVED HIM. THEN THEY HUMPED HIM TO DEATH.
They reached the summit just before dark. It was a narrow razorback ridge of solid limestone, just wide enough for a single person to step along carefully, balanced between sheer drops on both sides. Obviously, no one had bothered to recon it. There was no possible place for a helicopter to land, much less an artillery battery.
there
They both knew that bold moves might have been all right for Stonewall Jackson or George Patton, but this was a different kind of war. They played safe.
After three hours of debate they finally realized that there was no perfect plan. Somebody was going to get killed.
People who didn’t even know each other were going to kill each other over a hill none of them cared about.
His heart, his whole body, was overflowing with an emotion that he could only describe as love.
Mellas was transported outside himself, beyond himself. It was as if his mind watched everything coolly while his body raced wildly with passion and fear. He was frightened beyond any fear he had ever known. But this brilliant and intense fear, this terrible here and now, combined with the crucial significance of every movement of his body, pushed him over a barrier whose existence he had not known about until this moment. He gave himself over completely to the god of war within him.
leave just a single squad guarding the wounded. If
got the squid writing me up right now. That’s
The Marines seemed to be killing people with no objective beyond the killing itself. That left a hollow feeling in Mulvaney’s gut. He tried to ignore it by doing his job, which was killing people.
The NVA had forever. The Americans had until the next election.
Americans had the lowest tolerance on the planet for bad news.
