If I Die in a Combat Zone. Tim O’Brien
‘Look,’ the squad leader sighed. ‘Don’t get smart ass. I take orders, you know. Sooner we get to the night position, sooner we get resupplied, sooner we get to sleep, sooner we get this day over with. Sooner everything.’ The squad leader cleaned his face with a rag, rubbed his neck with it.
Barney sat down. ‘Why we stopping now?’
‘Good,’ the squad leader said. ‘Someone here understands it’s better to keep moving.’
Bates laughed, an aristocrat. ‘I don’t know about Buddy Barney, but actually, I was dreaming on the march. I was right in the middle of one. Daughter of this famous politician and me. Had her undressed on a beach down in the Bahamas. Jesus.’ He gestured vaguely, trying to make us see, sweeping away the heat-fog with his hand. ‘Had her undressed, see? Her feet were just in the water, these luscious waves lapping up all around her toes and through the cracks between them, and she had this beach towel under her. The only thing she was wearing was sunglasses.’
‘You really think about politicians’ daughters out here?’ Barney asked.
‘Lovely,’ Bates said. He closed his eyes.
We ate our noon C rations, then walked up a trail until the end of day.
We dug foxholes and laid our ponchos out for when it was time to sleep.
‘Look at this,’ Barney said. ‘It’s a starlight scope. Mad Mark gave it to me to hump. Must weigh twenty-five pounds, lift the damn thing.’
It weighed twenty-five pounds, counting the black case with its silver handle.
‘We’ll try it out tonight,’ Barney said. ‘Damn thing better work for twenty-five pounds.’
‘You look like a New York businessman on the way to work,’ Bates muttered. ‘Looks like a briefcase or something.’
‘What you got?’ Chip sat with us.
‘Starlight scope.’
‘Something to look at stars through, right? Good idea.’ Chip wore a bush hat in place of a helmet; claimed he didn’t take a good picture in a helmet.
‘How does it work?’
‘Fucking kaleidoscope or something,’ Barney said. ‘Damned if I know.’
‘Supposed to let you see in the dark. They mentioned the thing back in boot camp, but that’s the last I heard of it till now.’ Bates squatted down, opened the case, and hefted the starlight scope out of its black box.
‘Star light, star bright,’ Chip chanted, ‘first star I see tonight.’
‘Look at the size of this mother! What’s the dial for? Need a law degree and two Ph.D.s to figure out how to work the thing.’ Bates fiddled with the dial. He took the rubber protective cap off the lens, put the starlight scope to his eyes.
‘Wish I may, wish I might,’ Chip chanted, ‘have the wish I wish tonight.’
‘Shit,’ Bates said.
Barney put his hand before the lens. ‘What do you see?’
Bates giggled. He scanned the sky.
‘What the hell you see there, Bates?’
‘Wow, it’s a peep show, man.’
‘Dream on, dream on.’
‘Here, let me look,’ Chip said. Bates handed it over. Chip played with the scope. ‘Dancing soul sisters,’ he said. He giggled and stared into the machine. ‘Star light, star bright.’
Barney tried it. ‘Christ, you can’t see a thing.’
‘Certainly not, it’s not dark yet. No stars. You need stars for a starlight scope.’
We waited until dark, then tried it again. Tinkering with the dial, Bates got the scope to work.
The machine’s insides were secret, but the principle seemed simple enough: use the night’s orphan light – stars, moonglow, reflections, faraway fires – to turn night into day. It contained a heavy battery, somehow juicing up the starlight, magically exposing form and giving sight.
‘Fairytale land,’ Chip murmured. ‘I see at night.’
‘Any gooks?’
‘I see a circus,’ Chip whispered. ‘Like the colours in a jet plane at night, up in the cockpit where the instrument panel is kind of shimmering green. All the rocks and trees out there is green at night. I didn’t know that.’
‘You aren’t supposed to see the night,’ Bates said, taking his turn. ‘Trees, you can see them. The hooches over there, just as quiet as can be, not a movement. God, everything’s dead through this thing.’
We sat on the lip of a foxhole, using the starlight scope.
‘Really,’ Bates said softly, ‘you aren’t supposed to see the night. It’s unnatural. I don’t trust this thing.’ He gave it to me.
‘Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight. I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight.’ Chip went to sleep.
I looked out at the green, dancing night.
‘I wish for peace,’ Bates said.
‘Me, too.’
‘What do you see?’
‘A green fire. The countryside is on fire at night.’
‘Anything moving?’
‘Nope.’ I pointed the scope at a thicket outside our perimeter. The bushes sparkled in strange, luminous colour. I pointed it at the stars. ‘I can see the clouds,’ I said. ‘They’re moving, you can see them moving, bright as day.’
‘Well, for God’s sake, you’re not supposed to stare at the damn stars with that thing,’ Bates said. ‘You’re supposed to look for Charlie.’
Mad Mark came over. ‘Hey, shut the hell up, you two.’ He left.
‘Here, I’ll take the first watch,’ Bates said. I gave him the starlight scope, but he put it aside and cradled his rifle in his arms and peered out at the dark. ‘Night,’ he said.
To understand what happens to the GI among the mine fields of My Lai, you must know something about what happens in America. You must understand Fort Lewis, Washington. You must understand a thing called basic training. A college graduate in May 1968, I was at Fort Lewis in mid-August. One hundred of us came. We watched one another’s hair fall, we learned the word ‘sir’, we learned to react to ‘To duh rear, HARCH!’ Above us the sixty-mile-distant mountain stood to the sky, white and shivering cold. The mountain was named Rainier, and it stood for freedom.
I made a friend, Erik, and together he and I stumbled like galley slaves through the first months of army life.
I was not looking for friendship at Fort Lewis. The place was too much the apotheosis of all nightmares about army life; the people were boors, a whole horde of boors – trainees and drill sergeants and officers, no difference in kind. In that jungle of robots there could be no hope of finding friendship; no one could understand the brutality of the place. I did not want a friend, that was how it stood in the end. If the savages had captured me, they would not drag me into compatibility with their kind. Laughing and talking of hometowns and drag races and twin-cammed racing engines – all this was for the others. I did not like them, and there was no reason to like them. For the other trainees, it came too easy. They did more than adjust well; they thrived on basic training, thinking they were becoming men, joking at the bullyism, getting the drill sergeants to joke along with them. I held my own, not a whisper more. I hated my fellows, my bunk mates and