CHAPTER 19
Outside Fire Support Base T—bone, on a dirt road, five clicks South of a high risk, Vietcong Village, a vast forest staring at him, Sergeant Bill Carter grumbled. With the palms of his hands, he washed his face from his chin to his eyes with disgust, mussing the fine blonde hairs on his eyebrows that looked like cat’s whiskers.
“You’re not seein’ what I’m seein’,” he groaned. “They’re supposed to be a crack outfit? What a rag-tag bunch. For Chris’ sakes, they’re like the little Munchkins from the Wizard of Oz.”
Corporal Briggs mused. “I’m Peter Pan, and they’re the Lost Boys in Never-Never Land.”
A squad of fourteen members from the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, the ARVN, jumped out of a deuce ‘n’ a half truck. They scrambled onto the dirt road, and in attempting to form a straight, double line, were knocking into one another.
“What in hell’re they doing?” Sergeant Carter cried.
With child-like expressions on their faces, the ARVN carried the M-16s upside down, holding the end of the barrel muzzle, with the stock end flying in the air above their rucksacks.
“Didn’t we just teach these guys how to load and fire an M-16?”
“Yeah, we did sarge,” Corporal Briggs said.
“And didn’t we show them how to carry a damn weapon at the ready position?
“We did that too, sarge.”
“This is not a good sign,” moaned the sergeant. “They can’t carry those weapons upside down. In a pinch, they’ve got to get their fingers on the trigger.” He swung around to the truck driver and said in a gravelly voice, “Come get us early tomorrow, will you Pete?”
The driver inside the cab of the deuce ‘n’ a half leaned out the window.
“See you bright and early, sarge,” and the big truck shifted into gear and rumbled off in a cloud of dust, the driver laughing and roaring like a seal.
Sergeant Carter’s eyes flamed like balls of red glass from a furnace. “It’s supposed to be our job to train these goofballs in recon and tactical stuff? What in devil’s hell will they do with Sir Charles, huh? Can you tell me, before I shove an M-16 up every one of their ass holes?”
“Come to think of it, sarge, they seem to do a lot of things wrong,” Corporal Briggs mused.
“Onetime in Hue, I rubbed my eyes after seeing them on a fire truck conducting a fire drill. These guys had their fire hats on backwards. They let the peak of the hat stick out in front over their eyes like a baseball cap. No matter what we did, they kept putting the hats on wrong. I guess they liked the style with the peak sticking out front. Maybe they’ll correct this when enough of their hats blow off in a race to a real fire.”
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Book II - In The Calling Trilogy - Scarlet Melody
General FictionBook II - In The Calling Trilogy Titled: Scarlet Melody Dawson leaves Juliana for basic training where his odyssey to find his true calling continues. Yet, how does he, as a former seminarian in a monastery, learn to deal with the prospects of hav...
