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Chapter One
Vietnam
1967
I am Jason Snowblood. This is my journal.
1967 April 21. Vietnam–day one. Cu Chi.
We are the only two assigned to this tent. It is about thirty feet by twenty feet and filled with cots, but Benny and I are alone. The others both enlisted and draftees have been sent elsewhere. Benny is sitting on the next cot. He is still, head down, face in his hands.
Outside the mud is four inches deep. It is thick and sucks hard when you try to walk. The rain keeps coming. We’ve been in this tent for twenty-three hours and it has not let up for a second. It is hot. It might be a mirage, but I see steam rising off my arms and Benny’s neck. The mud stinks. It gives off the odor of something freshly dead and quietly rotting. The rain and the air smell old and dying.
We thought we were going to Bien Hoa to be assigned to the 173rd Airborne Division, but were told to board the bus to Cu Chi, home of the 25th Infantry Division. The lieutenant who directed this was frustrated and tentative. He kept checking his clipboard and walking over to a sergeant for quick conferences. The sergeant was busy with two groups. He rolled his eyes at one of the lieutenant’s questions, and caught my stare with a smile and a wink.
Body bags were being staged next to the plane that delivered us to the Tan Son Nhut complex outside Saigon. He pointed at us and said “Soldiers to Vietnam,” then to the bags and added, “Soldiers going home.” We had been separated into enlisted and draftee squads. Enlisted soldiers have the letters RA for regular army in their numbers. Benny and I volunteered for the draft, it is not the same as enlisting. We carried US.
The lieutenant pointed to a battered Isuzu bus and said, “All draftees are going to replace wiped out platoons.” It took us less than two hours to get here. It started raining before we left. I hoped the rain would wash the stink from the air, but it has not. The smell of jet fuel faded quickly but was replaced by this rotting mud and the continual roar of 175mm howitzers. Benny is shaking. He is crying. I have never seen him cry. This is going to be a bad year.
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