Born on the Fourth of July

The Blood is still rolling off my flak jacket from the hole in my shoulder and there are bullets cracking into the sand all around me. I keep trying to move my legs, but I cannot feel them.

"Oh, get me out of here, get me out of here, please, someone help me! Oh, help me, please help me. Oh, God, oh, Jesus!"

I try to breathe, but it is difficult. I have to get out of this place, make it out of here somehow.

Someone shouts from my left now, screaming for me to get up. Again and again he screams, but I am trapped in the sand.

"Is there a corpsman?" I cry. "Can you get a corpsman?"

There is a loud crack and I hear him begin to sob. "They've shot my fucking finger off! Let's go, Sarge! Let's get outta here!"

"I can't move," I gasp. "I can't move my legs! I can't feel anything!"

I watch him go running back to the tree line.

"Sarge, are you all right?" Someone else is calling to me now and I try to turn around. Again there is the sudden crack of a bullet and a boy's voice crying.

"Oh, Jesus! Oh, Jesus Christ!" I hear his body fall in back of me.

I think he must be dead, but I feel nothing for him, I just want to live. I feel nothing.

And now I hear another man coming up from behind, trying to save me. "Get outta here!" I scream. "Get the fuck outta here!"

A tall black man with long skinny arms and enormous hands picks me up and throws me over his shoulder as bullets begin cracking over our heads like strings of firecrackers. Again and again they crack as the sky swirls around us like a cyclone. "Motherfuckers, motherfuckers!" he screams. And the rounds keep cracking and the sky and the sun on my face and my body all gone, all twisted up, gangling like a puppet's, diving again and again into the sand, up and down, rolling and cursing, gasping for breath. "Goddamn, goddamn motherfuckers!"

And finally I am dragged into a hole in the sand with the bottom of my body that can no longer feel twisted and bent underneath me. The black man runs from the hole without ever saying a thing. The only thing I can think of, the only thing that crosses my mind, is living.

The attack is lifted. They are carrying me out of the hole now--two, three, four men--quickly they are strapping me to a stretcher. My legs dangle off the sides until they realize I cannot control them. "I can't move them," I say, almost in a whisper. "I can't move them." I'm still carefully sucking the air, trying to calm myself, trying not to get excited, not to panic. I want to live. I keep telling myself, Take it slow now, as they strap my legs to the stretcher and carry my wounded body into an amtrac (amphibious tractor) packed with other wounded men. The steel trap door of the amtrac slowly closes as we begin to move to the northern bank and back across the river to the battalion area.

Men are screaming all around me. "Oh, God, get me out of here!" "Please help!" they scream. Oh, Jesus, like little children now, not like Marines, not like the posters, not like that day in the high school, this is for real.

"Mother!" screams a man without a face.

"Oh, I don't want to die!" screams a young boy cupping his intestines with his hands. "Oh, please, oh, no, oh, God, oh, help! Mother!" he screams again.

We are moving slowly through the water, the amtrac rocking back and forth. We cannot be brave anymore; there is no reason. It means nothing now. We hold on to ourselves, to things around us, to memories, to thoughts, to dreams. I breathe slowly, desperately trying to stay awake.

The steel trap door is opening. I see faces. Corpsmen, I think. Others, curious, looking in at us. Air, fresh, I feel, I smell. They are carrying me out now. Over wounded bodies, past wounded screams. I'm in a helicopter now, lofting above the battalion area. I'm leaving the war. I'm going to live, I am still breathing, I keep thinking over and over, I'm going to live and get out of here.

They are shoving needles and tubes into my arms. Now we are being packed into planes and as each hour passes, I begin to believe that I am going to live. I begin to realize more and more as I watch the other wounded packed around me on shelves that I am going to live.

I still fight desperately to stay awake. I am in an ambulance now, rushing to someplace. There is a man without any legs, screaming in pain, moaning like a little baby. He is bleeding terribly from the stumps that were once his legs, thrashing his arms wildly about his chest, in a semiconscious daze. It is almost too much for me to watch.

I cannot take much more of this, I think. I must be knocked out soon, before I lose my mind. I've seen too much today, I think, but I hold on, sucking the air. I shout, then curse for him to be quiet. "My wound is much worse than yours!" I scream. "You're lucky," I shout, staring him in the eyes. "I can feel nothing from my chest down. You at least still have part of your legs. Shut up!" I scream again. "Shut the fuck up, you goddamned baby!" He keeps thrashing his arms wildly above his head and kicking his bleeding stumps toward the roof of the ambulance.

The journey seems to take a very long time, but soon we are at the place where the wounded are sent. I feel a tremendous exhilaration inside me. I have made it this far. I have actually made it this far without giving up and now I am in a hospital where they will operate on me and find out why I cannot feel anything from my chest down. I know I am going to make it now. I am going to make it not because of any god or any religion but because I want to make it, I want to live. And I leave the screaming man without legs and am taken to a room that is very bright.

"What's your name?" the voice shouts.

"Wh-wh-what?" I say.

"What's your name?" the voice says again.

"K-K-Kovic," I say.

"No!" says the voice. "I want your name, rank and Service number. Your date of birth, the name of your father and mother."

"Kovic. Sergeant. Two-oh-three-oh-two-six-one, uh, when are you going to----"

"Date of birth!" the voice shouts.

"July fourth, nineteen forty-six. I was born on the Fourth of July. I can't feel----"

"What religion are you?"

"Catholic," I say.

"What outfit did you come from?"

"What's going on? When are you going to operate?" I say.

"The doctors will operate," he says. "Don't worry," he says confidently.

"They are very busy and there are many wounded, but they will take care of you soon."

He continues to stand almost at attention in front of me with a long clipboard in his hand, jotting down all the information he can. I cannot understand why they are taking so long to operate. There is something very wrong with me, I think, and they must operate as quickly as possible. The man with the clipboard walks out of the room. He will send the priest in soon.

I lie in the room alone, staring at the walls, still sucking the air, more than ever now determined to live.

The priest seems to appear suddenly above my head. With his fingers, he is gently touching my forehead, rubbing it slowly and softly. "How are you?" he asks.

"I'm fine, Father." His face is very tired, but it is not frightened. He is almost at ease, as if what he is doing he has done many times before.

"I have come to give you the last rites, my son."

"I'm ready, Father," I say.

And he prays, rubbing oils on my face and gently placing the crucifix to my lips. "I will pray for you," he says.

"When will they operate?" I say to the priest.

"I do not know," he says. "The doctors are very busy. There are many wounded. There is not much time for anything here but trying to live. So you must try to live, my son, and I will pray for you."

Soon after that, I am taken to a long room where there are many doctors and nurses. They move quickly around me. They are acting very competent. "You will be fine," says one nurse calmly.

"Breathe deeply into the mask," the doctor says.

"Are you going to operate?" I ask.

"Yes. Now breathe deeply into the mask." As the darkness of the mask slowly covers my face, I pray with all my being that I will live through this operation and see the light of day once again. I want to live so much. And even before I go to sleep, with the blackness still swirling around my head and the numbness of sleep, I begin to fight as I have never fought before in my life.

I awake to the screams of other men around me. I have made it. I think that maybe the wound is my punishment for killing the corporal and the children. That now everything is OK and the score is evened up. And now I am packed in this place with the others who have been wounded like myself, strapped onto a strange circular bed. I feel tubes going into my nose and hear the clanking, pumping sound of a machine. I still cannot feel any of my body, but I know I am alive. I feel a terrible pain in my chest. My body is so cold. It has never been this weak. It feels so tired and out of touch, so lost and in pain. I can still barely breathe. I look around me, at (continued on page 88)Born on the Fourth of July(continued from page 76) people moving in shadows of numbness.

There is the man who was in the ambulance with me, screaming louder than ever, kicking his bloody stumps in the air, crying for his mother, crying for his morphine.

Directly across from me there is a Korean who has not even been in the war at all. The nurse says he was going to buy a newspaper when he stepped on a booby trap and it blew off both his legs and an arm. And all that is left now is this slab of meat swinging one arm crazily in the air, moaning like an animal gasping for its last bit of life, knowing that death is rushing toward him. The Korean is screaming like a madman at the top of his lungs. I cannot wait for the shot of morphine. Oh, the morphine feels so good. It makes everything dark and quiet.

I'm sleeping now. The lights are flashing. A black pilot is next to me. He says nothing. He stares at the ceiling all day long. He does nothing but that. But something is happening now, something is going wrong over there. The nurse is shouting for the machine and the corpsman is crawling on the black man's chest; he has his knees on his chest and he's pounding it with his fists again and again.

"His heart has stopped!" screams the nurse.

Pounding, pounding, he's pounding his fist into his chest. "Get the machine!" screams the corpsman.

The nurse is pulling the machine across the hangar floor as quickly as she can now. They are trying to put curtains around the whole thing, but the curtains keep slipping and falling down. All the wounded who can still see and think now watch what is happening to the pilot right next to me. The doctor hands the corpsman a syringe; they are laughing as the corpsman drives the syringe into the pilot's chest like a knife. They are talking about the Green Bay Packers and the corpsman is driving his fist into the black man's chest again and again until the black pilot's body begins to bloat up, until it doesn't look like a body at all anymore. His face is all puffy like a balloon and saliva rolls slowly from the sides of his mouth. He keeps staring at the ceiling and saying nothing. "The machine! The machine!" screams the doctor, now climbing on top of the bed, taking the corpsman's place. "Turn on the machine!" screams the doctor.

He grabs a long suction cup that is attached to the machine and places it carefully against the black man's chest. The black man's body jumps up from the bed, almost arcing into the air from each bolt of electricity, jolting and arcing, bloating up more and more.

"I'll bet on the Packers," says the corpsman.

"Green Bay doesn't have a chance," the doctor says, laughing.

The nurse is smiling now, making fun of both the doctor and the corpsman. "I don't understand football," she says.

They are pulling the sheet over the head of the black man and strapping him onto the gurney. He is taken out of the ward.

The Korean civilian is still screaming and there is a baby now at the end of the ward. The nurse says it has been napalmed by our own jets. I cannot see the baby, but it screams all the time, like the Korean and the young man without any legs I met in the ambulance.

I can hear a radio. It is the Armed Forces radio. The corpsman is telling the baby to shut the hell up and there is a young kid with half his head blown away. They have brought him in and put him where the black pilot has just died, right next to me. He has thick bandages wrapped all around his head till I can hardly see his face at all. He is like a vegetable--a 19-year-old vegetable, thrashing his arms back and forth, babbling and pissing in his clean white sheets.

There is a general walking down the aisles now, going to each bed. He's marching down the aisles, marching and facing each wounded man in his bed. A skinny private with a Polaroid camera follows directly behind him. The general is dressed in an immaculate uniform with shiny shoes. "Good afternoon, Marine," the general says. "In the name of the President of the United States and the United States Marine Corps, I am proud to present you with the Purple Heart, and a picture," the general says. Just then, the skinny man with the Polaroid camera jumps up, flashing a picture of the wounded man. "And a picture to send home to your folks."

He comes up to my bed and says exactly the same thing he has said to all the rest. The skinny man jumps up, snapping a picture of the general handing the Purple Heart to me. "And here," says the general, "here is a picture to send home to your folks." The general makes a sharp left face. He is marching to the bed next to me, where the 19-year-old kid is still pissing in his pants, babbling like a little baby.

"In the name of the President of the United States," the general says. The kid is screaming now, almost tearing the bandages off his head, exposing the parts of his brains that are still left. "I present you with the Purple Heart. And here," the general says, handing the medal to the 19-year-old vegetable, the skinny guy jumping up and snapping a picture, "here is a picture," the general says, looking at the picture the skinny guy has just pulled out of the camera. The kid is still pissing in his white sheets. "And here is a picture to send home----" The general does not finish what he is saying. He stares at the 19-year-old for what seems a long time. He hands the picture back to his photographer and as sharply as before marches to the next bed.

•

All his life he'd wanted to be a winner. It was always so important to win, to be the very best. He thought back to high school and the wrestling team and to Lee Place and Hamilton Avenue, when he and the rest of the boys had played stickball or football. He thought back to that and remembered how hard he'd tried to win even in those simple games.

But now it all seemed different. All the hopes about being the best Marine, winning all those medals. They all seemed crushed now, they were gone forever. Like the man he had just killed with one shot, all these things had disappeared and he knew, he was certain, they would never come back again. It had been so simple when he was back on the block with Richie or running down to the deli to pick up a pack of Topps baseball cards; even working in the food store that summer before he went to the war now seemed like a real nice thing. It seemed like so much nicer a thing than what was happening around him now, all the faces, the torn green fatigues, and just below his foot was the guy with a gaping hole through his throat.

The amtrac was heading back to the thick barbed wire where the battalion lived and everyone around him was quiet. There was no question in his mind they all knew what had happened--that he had just pulled the little metal trigger and put a slug through the corporal's neck.

Inside he felt everything sort of squeezing in on him. His hands kept rubbing up and down his leg. He was very nervous and his finger, the one that had pulled the trigger, was sort of scratching his leg now.

Later, when they got back to the battalion area, he gave a quick report to a young lieutenant in the major's bunker. "They were attacking," he said, looking at the lieutenant's face, "and we moved backward."

"You retreated." the lieutenant said.

"Yes, we retreated and he got shot. He lived a little while, but then he died. He died there in the sand and we called for help. And then we put him in the amtrac. He must have run away when they started firing. It was dark and I couldn't tell."

"OK," said the young-looking lieutenant. "Come back again in the morning and we can go over it again. Too bad about ..." he said.

"Yeah," he said.

(continued on page 176)Born on the Fourth of July(continued from page 88)

He was almost crying now as he turned and walked out of the big command bunker. There was sand all over the place outside and a cold monsoon wind was blowing. He looked out into the darkness and heard the waves of the China Sea breaking softly far away.

There was a path made of wooden ammo casings that led back to his tent. He walked on it like a man on a tightrope, it was so dark and so very hard to see. A couple of times he stumbled on the wooden boxes. It was quiet as he opened the tent flap, as quiet and dark as it had been outside the major's bunker. He dragged in, carrying his rifle in one hand and the map case in the other. They were all asleep, all curled up on their cots, inside their mosquito nets. He walked up to his rack and sat down, his head sinking down to the floor. Panic was still rushing through him like a wild train, his heart still raced through his chest as he saw over and over again the kid from Georgia running toward him and the crack of his rifle killing him dead.

I killed him, he kept repeating over and over to himself.

He's dead, he thought.

Gripping his rifle, holding the trigger, he went through the whole thing again and again, tapping, touching the trigger lightly each time he saw the corporal from Georgia running toward him just as he had out there in the sand when everything seemed so crazy and frightening. Each time he felt his heart racing as the three cracks went off and the dark figure slumped to the sand in front of him.

"He's dead--go get him!" someone was yelling to his right. "Go get him, he's hit!" Someone was running now, running to the body, and they were pulling the guy in. They were bringing him back to the trench where they all lay scared and shivering.

"Doc--doc--where's the corpsman?" somebody was yelling.

"Hey, doc, hurry up!"

Then somebody said it. Somebody shouted real loud, "It's Corporal. They got Corporal...."

"He's dead," somebody said. "He's gone."

Slowly he turned the rifle around and pointed the barrel toward his head. Oh, Jesus God Almighty, he thought. Why? Why? Why? He began to cry, slowly at first. Why? I'm going to kill myself, he thought. I'm going to pull this trigger. He was going mad. One minute he wanted to pull the trigger and the next he was feeling the strange power of a man who had just killed someone.

He laid the weapon down by the side of his rack and crawled in with his clothing still on. I killed him, he kept thinking, and when I wake up tomorrow, it will still be the same. He wanted to run and hide. He felt as if he were in boot camp again and there was no escape, no way off the island. He would wake up with the rest of them the next day. He would get up and wash outside the tent in his tin dish, he would shave and go to chow. But everything would not be all right, he thought, nothing would be all right at all. It was starting to be very different now, very different from what he had ever thought possible.

He opened his eyes slowly as the light came into the tent like a bright triangle. They were all starting to stir, the other men, starting to get up. And then he remembered again what had happened. He hadn't killed any Communist, he thought, he hadn't killed any Communist. Panic swept through his body. In some wild and crazy moment the night before, he had pulled the trigger and killed one of his own people.

He tried to slow everything down. He had to think of it as an accident. A lot of guys were firing their guns, there was so much noise and confusion. And maybe, he tried real hard to think, maybe he didn't kill the corporal at all, maybe it was someone else. Didn't everyone else start firing after his first three shots? Didn't they all start screaming and shooting after that? Yes, he thought, that's exactly what happened. They were all firing, too, he thought. I wasn't the only one. It could have been any of them. Any of them could have put the slug through the corporal's neck. Maybe it was the Communists who killed him. Maybe. But that was awfully hard to believe, that was even harder now to believe than the other men shooting the corporal. Something had gone wrong; something crazy had happened out there and he didn't want to think about it.

He went back to the big sandbagged bunker to see the major.

"That was a pretty rough night, Sergeant," the major said, looking up from the green-plastic maps on his desk.

"Yes, sir," he said. "It was pretty bad."

"Ran into a lot of them, didn't you?" the major said, almost smiling.

"Yes, we sure did. I mean, they just sort of popped up on us and started firing."

The major looked down at the maps again and frowned slightly. "What happened?" he said. "What happened out there?"

"Well, Major, like I said, we were moving toward the village and we had just set up a perimeter on top of the hill. We set it up so we could watch all around us and see if anyone was coming out of the village."

"What time was that?" said the major.

"Well"--he looked carefully at his watch--"I think it was about four. It was starting to get dark and I told all the men to eat their rations. Then it became very dark and there were a few small lights in the village and then the shooting started to the left. It was maybe a hundred meters from the big sand dune. The men started running toward the ocean, away from the dune. Some of them were very frightened. I kept yelling for them to stay, but everyone sort of scattered. Then they all seemed to be running in a line toward a long trench near the ocean. Most of them got back."

"Most of them?" said the major.

"Yeah," he said, "they all got back in the trench except one."

"Who was that?"

"That was Corporal, he was the last to come back. And that was when it happened," he said.

"What happened?" said the major.

"That was when the corporal was killed."

The bald sergeant who worked for the major walked in then. He walked in just as he told the major the thing that had been rolling around in his head all night.

"What happened?" said the major.

The bald sergeant was putting some papers on the major's desk. He did that and walked out.

"There were a bunch of shots," he said carefully. "Everybody was shooting; it was a bad fire fight." He paused. "It was pretty bad and then Corporal was shot. He was shot and he fell down in front of us and a couple of the men ran out to get him. They pulled him back in. I think the others were still firing. The corpsman tried to help ... the corporal was shot in the neck ... the corpsman tried to help...."

It was becoming very difficult for him to talk now. "Major," he said, "I think I might have ... I think I might have killed the corporal."

"I don't think so," said the major quickly.

"It was very confusing. It was hard to tell what was happening."

"Yes, I know," said the major. "Sometimes it gets very hard out there. I was out a couple of weeks ago and sometimes it's very hard to tell what's happening."

He stared down at the floor of the bunker until he could make himself say it again. He wasn't quite sure the major had heard him the first time.

"But I just want you to know, Major, I think I was the one who killed him. I think it might have been me."

There, he had said it. And now he was walking away.

For some reason, he was feeling a lot better. He had told the major everything and the major hadn't believed it. It was like going to confession when he was a kid and the priest saying everything was OK. He walked by the men outside the radio shack. They turned their faces away as he passed. Let them talk, he thought. He was only human; he had made a mistake. The corporal was dead now and no one could bring him back.

The chaplain held a memorial service that afternoon for the man he had killed and he sat in the tent with the rest of the men. There was a wife and a kid, someone said. He tried to listen to the words the chaplain was saying, the name he kept repeating over and over again. Who was this man he'd just killed? Who had he been? He wanted to scream right there in the church tent, right there during the ceremony. He kept hearing the name too many times, the name of the dead man, the man with the friends, the man with the wife, the one he didn't know or care to know, the kid from Georgia who was now being carefully wrapped up in some plastic bag and sent back in a cheap wooden box to be buried in the earth at 19.

He went back to his tent after the ceremony was over and sat down. There was some mail, but he couldn't get interested in it. Someone had sent him a Sergeant Rock comic book. But it wasn't funny anymore. The good guys weren't supposed to kill the good guys.

The next few weeks passed much slower than any time in his whole life. Each day dragged by until the night, the soft, soothing night, when he could close himself off from the pain, when he could forget the terrible thing for a few hours. The war was going a little worse than before; artillery and rockets were hitting the camp almost every day, sending the men into the little bunkers they had built. The major was still sitting behind his desk in the big sandbagged battalion tent, and whenever he walked past him, the major would return his sharp salute with a very confident smile on his face. He thought of the major as his friend. He had understood the whole terrible thing. He had said that maybe it didn't happen, things got confusing out there, and the major said he knew, that he had been out there himself under heavy fire and he knew.

He knew the major understood everything, like the men who whispered softly on the chow line and the men who stood talking by their tents. No one wants to say, he thought, no one wants to talk about it. Who wanted to approach him and ask if he had done it, if he had killed the corporal that night? No one. No one would ever do it, he thought.

It was his friend the major who gave him his second chance. He called him into the command bunker one day and told him he wanted him to become the leader of his new scout team. The major who understood him told him he liked the way he operated and said he knew the sergeant could do a good job.

Here was his chance, he thought, to make everything good again. This young, strong Marine was getting a second crack at becoming a hero. He knew, he understood the thing the major was doing for him, and he left the bunker feeling stronger and better than he'd felt for a long time. Here was his chance, he thought over and over again.

He walked down the twisting ammobox sidewalk and saluted one of the officers as smartly as ever, much too smartly for anyone who had been over there as long as he had. The thoughts of the night he'd killed the corporal were already becoming faded as he began to think more and more about the scout team, how he would train the men and the things they would do to make up for all the things that had gone before.

He wrote in his diary that night how proud he was to have been made the leader of the scouts, to be serving America in this, its most critical hour, just like President Kennedy had talked about. He might get killed, he wrote, but so had a lot of Americans who had fought for democracy. It was very important to be there putting his life on the line, to be going out on patrol and lying in the rain for Sparky the barber and God and the rest. He was proud. He was real proud of what he was doing. This, he thought, is what serving your country is supposed to be about.

He went out on patrol with the others the night of the ambush at exactly eight o'clock, loading a round into the chamber of his weapon before he walked out of the tent and into the dark and rain. As usual, he had made all the men put on camouflage from head to toe, made sure they had all blackened their faces and attached twigs and branches to their arms and legs with rubber bands.

One by one the scouts moved slowly past the thick barbed wire and began to walk along the bank of the river, heading toward the graveyard where the ambush would be set up. They were moving north exactly as planned, a line of shadows tightly bunched in the rain. Sometimes it would stop raining and they would spread out somewhat more, but mostly they continued to bunch up, as if they were afraid of losing their way.

There was a rice paddy on the edge of the graveyard. No one said a word as they walked through it and he thought he could hear voices from the village. He could smell the familiar smoke from the fires in the huts and he knew that the people who went out fishing each day must have come home. He remembered how difficult it had been when he had first come to the war to tell the villagers from the enemy and sometimes it had seemed easier to hate all of them, but he had always tried very hard not to. He wished he could be sure they understood that he and the men were there because they were trying to help all of them save their country from the Communists.

They were on the rice dike that bordered the graveyard. The voices from the huts nearby seemed quite loud. He looked up ahead to where the lieutenant who had come along with them that night was standing. The lieutenant had sent one of the men, Molina, on across the rice dikes, almost to the edge of the village. The cold rain was coming down very hard and the men behind him were standing like a line of statues waiting for the next command.

But now something was wrong up ahead. He could see Molina waving his arms excitedly, trying to tell the lieutenant something. Stumbling over the dikes, almost crawling, Molina came back toward the lieutenant. He saw him whisper something in his ear. And now the lieutenant turned and looked at him. "Sergeant," he said, "Molina and I are going to get a look up ahead. Stay here with the team."

Balancing on the dike, he turned around slowly after the lieutenant had gone, motioning with his rifle for all of the men in back of him to get down. They waited for what seemed a long time and then the lieutenant and Molina appeared suddenly through the darkness. He could tell from their faces that they had seen something. They had seen something up ahead, he was sure, and they were going to tell him what it was. He stood up, too excited to stay kneeling down on the dike.

"What is it?" he cried.

"Be quiet," whispered the lieutenant sharply, grabbing his arm, almost throwing him into the paddy. He began talking very quickly and much louder than he should have. "I think we found them. I think we found them," he repeated, almost shouting.

He didn't know what the lieutenant meant. "What?" he said.

"The sappers, the sappers! Let's go!" The lieutenant was taking over now. He seemed very sure of himself; he was acting very confident. "Let's go, goddamn it!"

He clicked his rifle off safety and got his men up quickly, urging them forward, following the lieutenant and Molina toward the edge of the village. They ran through the paddy, splashing like a family of ducks. This time he hoped and prayed it would be the real enemy. He would be ready for them this time. Here was another chance, he thought. He was so excited he ran straight into the lieutenant, bouncing clumsily off his chest.

"I'm sorry, sir." he said.

"Quiet! They're out there," the lieutenant whispered to him, motioning to the rest of the men to get down on their hands and knees. They crawled to the tree line, then along the back of the rice paddy through almost a foot of water, until the whole team lay in a long line pressed up against the dike, facing the village.

He saw a light, a fire, he thought, flickering in the distance, off to the right of the village, with little dark figures that seemed to be moving behind it. He could not tell how far away they were from there. It was very hard to tell distance in the dark.

The lieutenant moved next to him. "You see?" he whispered. "Look," he said, very keyed up now. "They've got rifles. Can you see the rifles? Can you see them?" the lieutenant asked him.

He looked very hard through the rain.

"Can you see them?"

"Yes, I see them. I see them," he said. He was very sure.

The lieutenant put his arm around him and whispered in his ear. "Tell them down at the end to give me an illumination. I want this whole place lit up like a fucking Christmas tree."

Turning quickly to the man on his right, he told him what the lieutenant had said. He told him to pass the instructions all the way to the end of the line, where a flare would be fired just above the small fire near the village.

Lying there in the mud behind the dike, he stared at the fire that still flickered in the rain. He could still see the little figures moving back and forth against it like small shadows on a screen. He felt the whole line tense, then heard the woooorshh of the flare cracking overhead in a tremendous ball of sputtering light, turning night into day, arching over their heads toward the small fire that he now saw was burning inside an open hut.

Suddenly, someone was firing from the end of the line, and now all the men in the line opened up, roaring their weapons like thunder, pulling their triggers again and again without even thinking, emptying everything they had into the hut in a tremendous stream of bright-orange tracers that crisscrossed each other in the night.

The flare arched its last sputtering bits into the village and it became dark, and all he could see were the bright-orange embers from the fire that had gone out.

And he could hear them.

There were voices screaming.

"What happened? Goddamn it, what happened?" yelled the lieutenant.

The voices were screaming from inside the hut.

"Who gave the order to fire? I wanna know who gave the order to fire."

The lieutenant was standing up now, looking up and down the line of men still lying in the rain.

He found that he was shaking. It had all happened so quickly.

"We better get a killer team out there," he heard Molina say.

"All right, all right. Sergeant," the lieutenant said to him, "get out there with Molina and tell me how many we got."

He got to his feet and quickly got five of the men together, leading them over the dike and through the water to the hut from where the screams were still coming. It was much closer than he had first thought. Now he could see very clearly the smoldering embers of the fire that had been blown out by the terrific blast of their rifles.

Molina turned the beam of his flashlight into the hut. "Oh, God," he said. "Oh, Jesus Christ." He started to cry. "We just shot up a bunch of kids!"

The floor of the small hut was covered with them, screaming and thrashing their arms back and forth, lying in pools of blood, crying wildly, screaming again and again. They were shot in the face, in the chest, in the legs, moaning and crying.

"Oh, Jesus!" he cried.

He could hear the lieutenant shouting at them, wanting to know how many they had killed.

There was an old man in the corner with his head blown off from his eyes up, his brains hanging out of his head like jelly. The sergeant kept looking at the strange sight; he had never seen anything like it before. A small boy next to the old man was still alive, although he had been shot many times. He was crying softly, lying in a large pool of blood. His small foot had been shot almost completely off and seemed to be hanging by a thread.

"What's happening? What's going on up there?" The lieutenant was getting very impatient now.

Molina shouted for the lieutenant to come quickly. "You better get up here. There's a lot of wounded people up here."

He heard a small girl moaning now. She was shot through the stomach and bleeding from the rear end. All he could see now was blood everywhere and he heard their screams with his heart racing like it had never raced before. He felt crazy and weak as he stood there staring at them with the rest of the men, staring down onto the floor as if it were a nightmare, as if it were some kind of dream and it really wasn't happening.

And then he could no longer stand watching. They were people, he thought, children and old men, people like himself, and he had to do something, he had to move, he had to help, do something. He jerked the green medical bag off his back, ripping it open and grabbing for bandages, yelling at Molina to please come and help him. He knelt down in the midst of the screaming bodies and began bandaging them, trying to cover the holes where the blood was still spurting out. "It's gonna be OK. It's gonna be OK," he tried to say, but he was crying now, crying and still trying to bandage them all up. He moved from body to body, searching in the dark with his fingers for the holes the bullets had made, bandaging each one as quickly as he could, his shaking hands wet with the blood. It was raining into the hut and a cold wind swept his face as he moved in the dark.

The lieutenant had just come up with the others.

"Help me!" he screamed. "Somebody help!"

"Well, goddamn it, Sergeant! What's the matter? How many did we kill?"

"They're children!" he screamed at the lieutenant.

"Children and old men!" cried Molina.

"Where are their rifles?" the lieutenant asked.

"There aren't any rifles," he said.

"Well, help him, then!" screamed the lieutenant to the rest of the men. The men stood in the entrance to the hut, but they would not move. "Help him, help him. I'm ordering you to help him!"

The men were not moving and some of them were crying now, dropping their rifles and sitting down on the wet ground. They were weeping now, with their hands against their faces. "Oh, Jesus, oh, God, forgive us."

"Forgive us for what we've done!" he heard Molina cry.

"Get up!" screamed the lieutenant. "What do you think this is? I'm ordering you all to get up."

Some of the men began slowly crawling over the bodies, grabbing for the bandages that were still left.

By now some of the villagers had gathered outside the hut. He could hear them shouting angrily. He knew they must be cursing them.

"You better get a fucking chopper in here," someone was yelling.

"Where's the radioman? Get the radioman!"

"Hello, Cactus Red. This is Red Light Two. Ahhh, this is Red Light Two. We need an emergency evac. We got a lot of wounded ... ahhh ... friendly wounded. A lot of friendly wounded out here." He could hear the lieutenant on the radio, trying to tell the helicopters where to come.

The men in the hut were just sitting there crying. They could not move and they did not listen to the lieutenant's orders. They just sat with the rain pouring down on them through the roof, crying and not moving.

"You men! You men have got to start listening to me. You gotta stop crying like babies and start acting like Marines!" The lieutenant, who was off the radio now, was shoving the men, pleading with them to move. "You're men, not babies. It's all a mistake. It wasn't your fault. They got in the way. Don't you people understand?--they got in the goddamn way!"

When the medevac chopper came, he picked up the little boy who was lying next to the old man. His foot came off and he grabbed it up quickly and bandaged it against the stump of the boy's leg. He held him looking into his frightened eyes and carried him up to the open door of the helicopter. The boy was still crying softly when he handed him to the gunner.

And when it was all over and all the wounded had been loaded aboard, he helped the lieutenant move the men back on patrol. They walked away from the but in the rain. And now he felt his body go numb and heavy, feeling awful and sick inside, like the night the corporal had died, as they moved along in the dark and the rain behind the lieutenant toward the graveyard.

•

It was getting very cold and it was raining almost every day now. Some guy was sent back home because a booby trap had blown up on him. And it was about then I started looking for booby traps to step on, taking all sorts of crazy chances, trying to forget about the rain and the cold and the dead children and the corporal. I would go off alone sometimes on patrol looking for the traps, hoping I'd get blown up enough to be sent home but not enough to get killed. It was a rough kind of game to play. I remember walking along, knowing goddamn well exactly what I was doing, just waiting for those metal splinters to go bursting up into my testicles, sending me home a wounded hero. That was the only way I was getting out of that place. I took more chances than ever before, daydreaming as I strolled through the mine fields, thinking of the time I saw a guy named Johnny Temple play in Ebbets Field or the time Duke Snider struck out and tossed that old bat of his up into the air when the umpire threw him out of the game.

One morning the battalion was blown almost completely apart by an artillery attack. We had been out on patrol most of the night lying in the rain. We weren't even awake when the first couple of rounds began to pound in all around us. There was a whistle, then a cracking explosion. They had us right on target. We all ran for our lives, trying to make it to the bunker we had dug for ourselves. I was still half-asleep and not quite conscious of what was happening to me. All I remember is that I had to get to the bunker. Finally, after what seemed a long time, we all crawled down into the sandbags. We huddled together like children and I heard myself saying, .. Oh, God, please, God, I want to live."

When the barrage finally lifted, we all looked at one another, feeling a little embarrassed for acting so frightened and praying behind the sandbags. Outside the bunker there was a sharp smell of gunpowder and people were beginning to move. We had been hit by almost 150 rounds in only a few minutes. Everyone was walking around in a daze.

There were scores of wounded. Sergeant Peters had been hit in the eye and Corporal Swanson was lying in the command tent with a large piece of metal still stuck in his head. I went up to him and held his hand, telling him everything was going to be all right. He told me to send a letter right away to his wife in California and tell her what had happened. I promised him I'd do it that night, but I never did and I never heard from him again.

•

We stopped going out on patrols in the beginning of the new year. We began to take showers every morning and even eat three meals a day again. It seemed like the perfect time to fix up the tent. Michaelson brought in a can of dark oil that we swept all over the wood floor. Even more work was put in on the bunker.

There was news one morning of a big fight a little north. A lieutenant from the battalion had been killed there. I knelt over him with the chaplain when they brought his body in. He was covered with a raincoat. There was a small bullet hole in his forehead and the whole back of his head had been shot out. He was dead like all the rest, and for some reason, right then I felt something big was about to happen.

The major called me over and told me to get the men ready to move out. We were going north across the river.

When I got back to the tent, Michaelson told me he would see me in heaven after today. He was to die that afternoon. Every one of us seemed to have a funny feeling. I kept thinking over and over that I was going to get hit--that nothing would be quite the same after that day.

We went to get some chow and I remember the major yelled at me for not putting helmets on the men. We'd never used them in the past and I couldn't understand why on that day the major wanted us to wear helmets and flak jackets. We had to walk all the way back to our tent and put the stuff on. We felt like supermen in the cumbersome jackets as we got into the truck that took us to the southern bank of the river. We all got out and waited for a while, and then a small boat took us to the other side, where everybody else was getting ready to sweep up north to where the lieutenant's squad had been wiped out.

I remember later moving along the beach beside the ocean. There were sand dunes that reminded me of home and lots of scrub-pine trees. The men were in a very sloppy formation. It seemed everyone was carrying far too much equipment. The sky was clear and the Vietnamese were walking and fishing. Except for the noise of the tanks and amtracs that were moving slowly along with us, it seemed like a Sunday stroll with everyone dressed up in costumes. It was hard to remember that at any moment the whole thing might bust wide open and you might get killed like all the other dead losers. There was that salt air that smelled so familiar.

Then the whole procession suddenly came to a stop and we were told to go back. There was something happening in the village on the north bank of the river. A big fight was going on and the Popular Forces were pinned down and in lots of trouble. I ran up to the captain who had given the order and asked him was he sure we weren't supposed to continue going north? The men didn't want to go back, I said. Was it the major who had given the order? I asked. The captain said he'd try to get confirmation. I waited with the amtrac engines roaring in my ears while he radioed the rear. When he got off the radio, he told me the major had changed his mind. The scouts would now lead the attack into the village.

I climbed on one of the amtracs to talk to the men. They seemed very quiet. They had the same feeling I did that it was all about to come down, that this walk in the sand might be the last one for all of us.

There was going to be some kind of crazy tactical maneuver where we were going to march west along the bank of the river and make a direct assault on the village after crossing the razorback, which was the biggest sand dune in the area. A group of us would dismount from one of the amtracs and lead the primary assault and the two other amtracs would sweep from north to south through the graveyard and attack from another flank. It all sounded so crazy and simple. I kept trying to get my thoughts together, trying to think how much I wanted to prove to myself that I was a brave man, a good Marine. No matter what happened out there, I thought to myself, I could never retreat. I had to be courageous. Here was my chance to win a medal: here was my chance to fight against the real enemy, to make up for everything that had happened.

This was it, I thought, everything I had been praying for, the whole thing up for grabs.

•

There were ten of them walking toward the village, and he felt the rosary beads in his top pocket and knew that the little black Bible they had given them all on the planes coming in was in his other pocket, too. The other men were getting off the 'tracs in the graveyard. He could see the heat still coming up from the big engines and the men looked real small in the distance, like little toy soldiers jumping off tanks. He looked to the left and they were all there: it was a perfect line. He had trained the scouts well and everything looked good. There was a big pagoda up ahead and a long trench full of Popular Forces. There wasn't any firing going on and he asked the commander of the Viet unit to help him in the assault that was about to take place. The Viet officer said they were staying put and none of them was even going to think about attacking the village. He was angry as he moved the scouts over the top of the long trench line. They're a bunch of fucking cowards, he thought. "Look at them!" he shouted to the scouts. "They're sitting out the war in that trench like a bunch of babies."

"Let's go!" he said. And then they began to move into a wide and open area. They were ten men armed to the teeth, walking in a sweeping line toward the village. It was beautiful, just like the movies.

The firing started in the graveyard. There were loud cracks, and then the whole thing sounded like someone had set off a whole string of firecrackers. He could hear the mortars popping out, crashing like cymbals when they landed on top of the 'tracs. The whole graveyard was being raked by mortars and heavy machine-gun fire coming out of the village.

I remember we all sort of stopped and watched for a moment. Then all of a sudden, the cracks were blasting all (concluded on page 186)Born on the Fourth of July(continued from page 182) around our heads and everybody was running all over the place. We started firing back with full automatics. I emptied a whole clip into the pagoda and the village. I was yelling to the men. I kept telling them to hold their ground and keep firing, though no one knew what we were firing at. I looked to my left flank and all the men were gone. They had all run away to the trees near the river, and I yelled and cursed at them to come back, but nobody came. I kept emptying everything I had into the village, blasting holes through the pagoda and ripping bullets into the tree line. There was someone to my right lying on the ground still firing.

I had started walking toward the village when the first bullet hit me. There was a sound like firecrackers going off all around my feet. Then a real loud crack and my leg went numb below the knee. I looked down at my foot and there was blood at the back of it. The bullet had gone through the front and blown out nearly the whole of my heel.

I had been shot. The war had finally caught up with my body. I felt good inside. Finally, the war was with me and I had been shot by the enemy. I was getting out of the war and I was going to be a hero. For a moment I felt like running back to the rear with my new million-dollar wound, but I decided to keep fighting out in the open. I kept firing my rifle into the tree line and boldly, with my new wound, moved closer to the village, daring them to hit me again. A great surge of strength went through me as I yelled for the other men to come out from the trees and join me. I was limping now and the foot was beginning to hurt so much, I finally lay down in almost a kneeling position, still firing into the village, still unable to see anyone. I seemed to be the only one left firing a rifle. Someone came up from behind me, took off my boot and began to bandage my foot. The whole thing was incredibly stupid, we were sitting ducks, but he bandaged my foot and then he took off back into the tree line.

For a few seconds it was silent. I lay down prone and waited for the next bullet to hit me. It was only a matter of time, I thought. I wasn't retreating, I wasn't going back, I was lying right there and blasting everything I had into the pagoda. The rifle was full of sand and it was jamming. I had to pull the bolt back now each time, trying to get a round into the chamber. It was impossible and I started to get up and a loud crack went off next to my right ear as a .30-caliber slug tore through my right shoulder, blasted through my lung and smashed my spinal cord to pieces.

I felt that everything from my chest down was completely gone. I waited to die. I threw my hand back and felt my legs still there. There was no feeling in them, but they were still there. I was still alive. And, for some reason, I started believing I might not die, I might make it out of there and live and feel and go back home again. I could hardly breathe and was taking short little sucks with the one lung I had left. The blood was rolling off my flak jacket from the hole in my shoulder and I couldn't feel the pain in my foot anymore, I couldn't even feel my body. I was frightened to death. I didn't think about praying, all I could feel was cheated.

All I could feel was the worthlessness of dying right there in that place at that moment for nothing.

•

The back yard, that was the place to be, it was where all the plans for the future, the trips to Africa, the romances with young high school girls, it was where all those wonderful things took place. Remember the Hula Hoop?--everyone, including my mother, doing it--and my sister--yes, my sister--teaching me the twist in the basement. Then out on the basketball court, with all the young fine-looking girls watching. Then back on the fence for a walk around the whole back yard. Up there! Can you see me balancing like Houdini? Can you see me hiding in a box, in a submarine, on a jet? Can you see me flying a kite, making a model, breaching a stream?

It was all sort of easy, it had all come and gone--the snowstorms, the street lamps telling us there was no school at midnight, the couch, the heater with all of us rolled up beside it in the thick blankets, the dogs--it was lovely. Getting nailed at home plate, studying the cub-scout handbook, tying knots, playing ping-pong, reading National Geographic. Mickey Mantle was my hero and Joan Marfe was the girl I liked best. It all ended with a bang and it was lovely.

There was a song called Runaway by a guy named Del Shannon playing one Saturday at the baseball field. I remember it was a beautiful spring day and we were young back then and really alive and the air smelled fresh. This song was playing and I really got into it and was hitting baseballs and feeling like I could live forever.

It was all sort of easy.

It had all come and gone.