I realize I have been slacking off in my writing, but its mainly because I have come up with numerous ideas for stories and they have drained my attention towards other stories. This is My First Serious War Story. It will follow Private Thomas Santillan during his several tours through the Vietnam Conflict. It will follow historical lines but have fictional locations and squads, as well as persons, all of which are based upon actual people and places of the conflict.
I promise to return to Clad in Embers, Neverwere and Call of Cthulhu after I have developed this story sufficiently.
The World was on fire. Words and bullets were flying, entire countries were aflame either in armed conflict or political instability and civil disobedience. The United States was involved in one of the most controversial and horrific conflicts in its history, and I was right in the middle of it. My parents were solid Kennedy followers; After his Assassination I was made to wear black for at least 4 months, hell, his own kids diddnt even wear mourning colors that long. So when the war escalated more and more and protesters were less than 4 blocks away at the Army Recruiting station, my parents urged me to join, constantly quoting that "Bear any Burden" flaming bag of dog doo that Dear 'ol Kennedy had said when he was still around. It was round the end of '67 that I joined up, to get my parents to stop sending letters and wires to my college dorm about still enlisting. It was probably better I joined anyways, I was running out of cash and my parents constantly brought up the G.I. Bill, and after about four months of living off of the cheap Chinese take out from "beggar's alley" down the street from my College, I was ready for something new. I joined up with an old friend, Oscar Magana who quit his job as a gas station mechanic the second he found out I was enlisting, said he had enough of the "wedos" who called him freeloading trash and wanted to prove he was an American. Training was difficult, but I made it through, even gained some marks in marksmanship. Oscar used his burliness and fascination with all things mechanical to land the designation of a Machine gunner, and when we shipped out for Vietnam, I remember him fawning over his M-60 like a prized pet. After a hasty squad designation, me and Oscar managed to be assigned to the same squad, we made our way to our detail, a small town just 8 miles south of an active combat zone. "Johnson's Spittune." thats what all the vets called it, said it was within spitting distance of the communists and that it was the point of no return supply wise, seeing as all territory beyond it was NVA controlled. "Kid, just dont wander off, okay?" The first words from my squad leader, some tired looking Negro (I cant put the accent into it, but Negro is the Spanish word for black, and is used in common spoken language in the Hispanic community, not Derogatory) named Malik who always scratched the side of his nose when he said the word "Charlie". My first Night in the town was pretty quiet, with the exception of the rifle fire and explosions to the North, and all the Civi's seemed pretty friendly. There were kids everywhere always shouting, "GI, GI!" or "You have Dollar GI?" Oscar was a sucker for children, and so he always sat with 'em or talked for a bit, even when they whispered things in Vietnamese, most likely not flattering. Our first Hostile was an old man armed with a Tokarev; he had been designated unfriendly but harmless, until he started firing off rounds on the east side of the town, scaring the civi's. The older guys sent me, Oscar and some Wedito named Ray to go check it out, we were given the order to end it peacefully if possible, but some redneck vet laughed when he heard it. We approached slowly with our weapons raised and saw some other civi's just standing around while this old Vejito just waved a busted pistol in the air. All three of us were green, we weren't drilled in dealing with a crazed old man. Ray walked ahead of us and kept his rifle leveled at the man, pushing his thick glasses up his nose and motioning with his hand for us to hold or relax, I couldn't tell which. He continued forward and kept his rifle up, but used the had he had been using to grip the front end of his M-16 to make the universal sign for "I wont hurt you if you wont hurt me." The old man lowered the pistol and let it hang limply in his hand while he started shouting up a storm towards Ray, turning around, spitting, pointing at and addressing us and the other locals. Ray continually said some phrase in broken Vietnamese that was supposed to mean, "Please come peacefully" but apparently he got a few syllables out of place and the old man flared up even more. It was about this time that I walked forward and started shouting at the man in Spanish, Hell I diddnt know if it would get a reaction but I had to do something. The man stopped and glared at me and Ray with a look that screamed death. The man shouted some long word and raised the pistol, the only word I heard Ray say before he fired his rifle was, "DONT!" I diddnt know what pushed me to fire my own weapon, but in an instant me and Ray had emptied half of our clips into this frail old man who now lay broken on the floor in front of us. Ray kept his rifle aimed at the man and gasped loudly as he breathed, I walked forward and swept the rifle at the civi's who were wailing at us, making them recoil, and checked the man's pistol; It was Empty. Oscar cursed softly behind the whole scene and swept his own weapon at the Civi's, saying over and over in a loop, "Dios me perdona para lo que he hecho, Dios me perdona para lo que he hecho." Ray slung his rifle and ran over to the man, stumbling and crawling over to him and then checked his pulse and even prodding his neck for any reaction. I stood with my rifle slung over my shoulder and shook my head, "Wedo...why...why did we shoot him?" Ray had his head pressed into the man's chest, "I...I g...g...got scared....If I'd Known...I...." A loud whistle came from the road we had just come from, "You Cherries done moanin over that dead VC yet?" It was Malik, His face overtaken by a wide smile, he was followed by the Redneck who jeeringly shouted, "Whooo boys, congrats, barely your first day in 'Nam and you already bagged a VC." Ray jumped to his feet and shakily held his rifle, "Ah S..sir I...didn't mean to." Malik waked up and kicked the man's foot, " 'salright kid, happens all the time, just bag 'em and take 'em to the meat locker." The Meat locker was a small building that was used for the storing of dead civi's so that families could claim the bodies, reminded me of the old body identification rooms back home. The Rest of the night was a slow trudge as we bagged the body and carried it through quiet streets with the occasional onlooker giving us the evil eye. Our accommodation afterwards was a burned out shack near the Northern end of the town, a guard duty/resting spot. Ray seemed to have gotten over his run in with death and was sitting against a slightly less charred wall near the rear entrance, reading some book with a title i couldn't pronounce. "Hey, Wedo." "Names Ray, man, Ray Lighton." "yeah, sorry, Hey Ray, where you from?" "California, Oakland." "No way, I'm from Cali too!" Ray put his book down, "where from?" "Palm Dessert, Near Coachella." "I have family there, its pretty nice." "HAH, you probably stayed on the white side of town huh?" "what you mean?" "Theres NOTHING to do in Palm Dessert man, at least where I lived." "Right, hah." Oscar sat on an empty rations crate tipped on its side and kept the M-60 aimed at the treeline, "you guy's mind....this position is bad enough to defend, let alone guard." "Sorry Oscar." Ray looked at the cover of his book and sighed, tucking it away in his pack, "I'm out man, See you tomorrow." I waved to him from my place across the room and leaned back against the wall, "Night, may you dream in peace bro."
Topic: Where the world Burned. (Read 1621 times)