Categories > Cartoons > G.I. Joe > Origins of a Hero
Chapter 06
0 reviewsMy take on where the world-famous G. I. Joe Top Sergeant got his start... in the meat-grinder of Vietnam. Follow rookie Duke's adventures as he meets future friends... and future enemies. You may b...
0Unrated
Chapter Six
Personal Vices
-xxx-
We made it out of the strike area unscathed and rallied at the summit of the terrain feature that we had occupied before the whole shooting match started. Headquarters ordered us to stick around until dark, and then creep back down to the site to make a body count.
Although all of us verbally denounced the idea to Candy as too risky, he explained that the survivors would've blended into the countryside or returned to their villages in an attempt to make it look like nothing was wrong with their daily lives. Since no VC or NVA troops had pursued the fleeing patrol, it was likely that anyone remotely effective as a fighter had become a crispy critter, or panicked and ran.
Candy also explained that Command probably wanted some hard intelligence other than our initial counts and observations. Perhaps one of the partially dismembered corpses was an NVA officer who was carrying war plans to the VC regional command cells in the South. Or, maybe there would be evidence of foreign intervention on the North's behalf, like brand-new Russian weapons, or Soviet Spetznaz advisors.
Whatever the brass hats were looking for, it wasn't up to us to question. The command hooch back in Pleiku made it abundantly clear that our patrol route was being terminated, and we were to search the remains of the campsite for anything we could bring back for the spooks to pore over.
At least Candy wasn't one of those pansy-ass "ticket puncher" officers in the Regular Army, who was simply looking for any form of combat experience to make their records jackets thicker and make themselves more promotable. Some of those weenies ended up getting lots of our men killed by the enemy through bad leadership and worse odds.
No, friends, Candy had the Infantryman's eye. He had the Infantryman's sixth sense for danger. And, he had the Infantryman's guts. Which meant that his sole purpose in war was to get out alive. The mission could hang out to dry if his team was in danger of dying horribly in the process. So he made sure that we had our survival chance when we took a look at the bombing site.
Thank God for people like Candy.
We didn't find much at the site, other than charred remains. The usual supplies were evident - foodstuffs, grain, ammunition, rice, livestock, bicycles, and Kalashnikovs. There was no magic paper with the enemy's most vital data on it. There were simply hundreds of dead gooks who only had a future as rotting bones in the sun to show for their hardships, and their life choices.
Roadrunner Nine returned to Pleiku after humping out of the bush for twelve hours, and being extracted from an LZ near the Xon River, but farther south, in the supposedly "pacified" sector. We spent extra time avoiding the route we entered Indian Country from, in case the enemy decided to clamp down the entire sector. We were lucky that word didn't get out all that quickly.
The debriefing from the raid took almost as long as the patrol itself. Each of the American team members spent around three days (but only a few hours a day) in the Intel hooch, answering questions from the spooks about what we saw, where we moved, and what we did up to the air strike. Truth be told, I was getting so bored of the process by the end, that I wanted to rattle off a list of things that I found in a pile of latrine shit, just to see if they were still listening.
Considering that the attack on the enemy column was pretty important, and successful since we guided the bomber in, MSGT Draper rewarded us by giving us three days of liberty to just poke around the camp. Then Doggie and I had to start our field training with some of the certified instructors in the camp, while Candy and Sparks prepared for the next assignment with our CIDG friends.
-xxx-
Pleiku Special Forces Camp
Roadrunner Team hooch complex
Staff Sergeants Hauser and Dobbs trudged into their assigned hooch, looking like they were already stone-cold veterans of the war. They herded their way past the other Special Forces men milling about, chatting and playing cards, until they found their bed racks. While they were on assignment, the Supply men in the camp had delivered their personal items and left their packed duffel bags on the racks, along with a stash of camp-issued items such as towels and bed sheets.
The two soldiers found their assigned racks easily; they were the only two in the hooch that had bare mattresses and clean surroundings. In personalizing their living spaces, the lot of Pleiku operators had acquired such a motley collection of goods and contraband, that a staff inspection of the place would make an officer think he was in the garbage facility... or "Lost and Found".
"Phew!" Duke said, unslinging his field ruck and dropping it on top of the footlocker at the foot of his bed. "It's gonna feel good to get these damn boots off for a while."
"Better straighten up your headgear, newbie," the operator one bed over - a Sergeant 1st Class Newman - whispered. "This place gets as dangerous as Indian Country, my man. We sleep with loaded weapons and our boots on."
Doggie allowed a shiver to run up his spine. "Is there any place where a guy could feel safe in this whole country?" the rookie asked.
"Not unless you count the big bad bush between a mama-san's legs," the other soldier replied with a chuckle. Newman rolled up a green, leafy substance into a cigarette paper and lit it up, puffing on the joint and blowing smoke rings in the air.
"What is that stuff?" Doggie asked, pointing to the joint.
"It's Mary Jane," Newman replied, letting out a slight cough and shaking as the narcotic began to take effect. "Y'know. Weed. Marijuana. It helps take the edge off of being here in the shit."
Duke turned away to draw Doggie close for a whisper. "Dobbs... Henry..." he said. "Don't get involved in that stuff. We have to report the stash to Top Sergeant Draper."
"Draper looks the other way," Newman said, overhearing the whispered remark. "The guy who brings this stash in sees to it. Come on over here, new guys. Take a hit or two. You won't feel any pain after a while."
Another of the hooch's residents - Sergeant "Gooch" Goodland - walked up behind the two GI's, clapping each on the back before cracking open the metal cap that covered a glass bottle of local beer. "You two greenies look like you've seen a ghost," Goodland observed. "I can't believe that you've got The Stare after one patrol."
"We marched into a ville that the VC did a clean up job on," Dobbs said, his face turning green just at the memories of what he had seen for the very first time. "The whole ville... everyone... They killed them."
"War is hell, kid," the soldier with the marijuana joint said with a laugh. "Who knows? If the whole ville was full'a Commie gooks, then I say good riddance. I'd surely hate for some sympathizer ta sneak in the camp and slit my throat while you rookies are sleepin' off your guard duty."
"Jesus, Newman," Dobbs said, trying to keep his chow down. "That's cold."
"You need to be cold to survive the 'Nam," Goodland said, taking a drag on Newman's joint and smiling. "Or else, the 'Nam will eat your green ass alive. You have to get in tune with the way things are, my man."
Hauser shook his head and grabbed a shaving bag from his footlocker. "No way, guys," he said. "As far as I'm concerned, I'm going home in one piece. There's no way the system is gonna take control of me. I don't care how things are. I'm gonna make my own way." He left the hooch without waiting for Dobbs to follow.
Dobbs sat down on the edge of his bunk, while Newman and Goodland watched him bury his face into his hands.
"Your friend's wound up a little too tight, friend," Newman said. "He's too much of a goody-goody for this hooch."
"Duke's a good man," Dobbs said, pushing away a bottle of beer offered to him by Goodland.
"The Duke?" Newman said. "Ha! There ain't no way he's anything like John Wayne. Listen, kid. If you don't start learning how the game is played, you and your goody-goody friend are gonna end up dead, an' nobody's gonna give a rat's ass about it."
Newman leaned closer to Dobbs, and offered him the smoldering joint. "If you don't play the system, then the system will play you," he said. "Don't worry, you'll live."
With nervous, trembling fingers, Dobbs took the joint into his hand.
-xxx-
Duke collected himself after witnessing the events in the hooch and made his way to the command bunker to try to find MSGT Draper for himself.
Draper was at his usual indoor place, inside the commo room, and working from a makeshift desk across from the camp's radios, when Duke found him. The camp's senior NCO looked up from a tattered copy of Playboy magazine and acknowledged his arrival with a nod.
"What'cha want, new guy?" Draper asked.
"I need to talk to you," Duke replied. "There's a drug problem in our hooch."
"Shit," Draper swore softly, "Tell me a place in the whole fuckin' RVN where there isn't a drug problem."
"Well, two of the guys from Roadrunner Four - Newman and Goodland - are smokin' joints in the hooch. They tried to offer some to Dobbs and me."
"So long as they weren't smoking their shit while on guard duty, I don't give a rat's ass what they do in the hooch," Draper said, looking up at the idealistic young sergeant.
"But, Master Sergeant - they're breaking Army regulations!" Duke asserted.
"Listen up, kid," Draper continued, "and you listen good. Get this to sink into yer headgear. We're in a Special Forces camp. The rear echelon motherfuckers that make the rules are as far away from here as they can possibly be. We go through shit that would turn your average grunt crazy in less than a month. And we have to do it for a stretch of twelve at least. Some of the sick fucks that live here are on their second and third tours. Most of us are just trying to survive our DEROS date. The guys do what they do to stay sane. I let it happen to some degree, because I need all the sane troops I can get."
"Then let me talk to the Captain," Duke insisted. "Let's see what he'll do about this."
"You can try," Draper responded. "But I doubt you'll get anywhere. The Cap'n is just marking his time too. He wants to go home to a cushy job in some Stateside base, makin' a fast promotion to staff grade because of his /combat experience/. He doesn't make any bones about it. If you ask me, he'd let this whole camp get overrun and all of us grunts killed, if he wasn't smack dab in the middle of it waiting to be relieved."
Duke shook his head in disbelief at what he was hearing. "So, we've become our own worst enemy? Drugs? Apathy? Is this why we joined the Army?"
"Your ideals are commendable, kid," Draper said. "But that doesn't stop the killing. It's hell here, and we're just trying to make it. That's the system, my friend." The top kick motioned for Duke to lean closer. "Let me give you a very important piece of advice. Don't try taking this into your own hands. Let it ride. It's been here before you and it'll be here after you rotate back to the world. Worry about yourself. The last guy who tried to shake up the system was in the latrine when a 'random VC mortar ranging round' hit it square on. Killed the poor fucker while he dropped trou and was takin' a crap. Watch your own back. Make your own choices. And then, barring the VC, you'll make it home. Clear?"
"Crystal," Duke replied. He took his leave of MSGT Draper and left to find Candy, to find out what was first on his training agenda. As the young sergeant left the command bunker, Draper shook his head.
He's a goner, the top kick predicted to himself. The kid's smart, but he doesn't get it. He's bound to get fragged for messin' with the wrong grunts.
-xxx-
This was a hard time for me. It really shook my idea of the values of the Army in general. Nobody liked the war in Vietnam by the time I began my stretch there. And those of us that were there didn't even care about our own camp-mates.
Now, a pair of drug-junkie scumbags was getting MY FRIEND hooked on some bad stuff. I couldn't trust my chain of command. I couldn't make a stink, or else I'd be watching my own ass 24-7.
But where I come from, when a guy makes a promise to a friend, he keeps it. It doesn't matter whether we're in the RVN, or some stinking jungle, or the middle of Beirut. An honorable man keeps his word, and keeps the faith that right will prevail over wrongdoing.
Somehow, I'll have to keep Doggie on the straight and narrow. I just don't know how yet.
-xxx-
Personal Vices
-xxx-
We made it out of the strike area unscathed and rallied at the summit of the terrain feature that we had occupied before the whole shooting match started. Headquarters ordered us to stick around until dark, and then creep back down to the site to make a body count.
Although all of us verbally denounced the idea to Candy as too risky, he explained that the survivors would've blended into the countryside or returned to their villages in an attempt to make it look like nothing was wrong with their daily lives. Since no VC or NVA troops had pursued the fleeing patrol, it was likely that anyone remotely effective as a fighter had become a crispy critter, or panicked and ran.
Candy also explained that Command probably wanted some hard intelligence other than our initial counts and observations. Perhaps one of the partially dismembered corpses was an NVA officer who was carrying war plans to the VC regional command cells in the South. Or, maybe there would be evidence of foreign intervention on the North's behalf, like brand-new Russian weapons, or Soviet Spetznaz advisors.
Whatever the brass hats were looking for, it wasn't up to us to question. The command hooch back in Pleiku made it abundantly clear that our patrol route was being terminated, and we were to search the remains of the campsite for anything we could bring back for the spooks to pore over.
At least Candy wasn't one of those pansy-ass "ticket puncher" officers in the Regular Army, who was simply looking for any form of combat experience to make their records jackets thicker and make themselves more promotable. Some of those weenies ended up getting lots of our men killed by the enemy through bad leadership and worse odds.
No, friends, Candy had the Infantryman's eye. He had the Infantryman's sixth sense for danger. And, he had the Infantryman's guts. Which meant that his sole purpose in war was to get out alive. The mission could hang out to dry if his team was in danger of dying horribly in the process. So he made sure that we had our survival chance when we took a look at the bombing site.
Thank God for people like Candy.
We didn't find much at the site, other than charred remains. The usual supplies were evident - foodstuffs, grain, ammunition, rice, livestock, bicycles, and Kalashnikovs. There was no magic paper with the enemy's most vital data on it. There were simply hundreds of dead gooks who only had a future as rotting bones in the sun to show for their hardships, and their life choices.
Roadrunner Nine returned to Pleiku after humping out of the bush for twelve hours, and being extracted from an LZ near the Xon River, but farther south, in the supposedly "pacified" sector. We spent extra time avoiding the route we entered Indian Country from, in case the enemy decided to clamp down the entire sector. We were lucky that word didn't get out all that quickly.
The debriefing from the raid took almost as long as the patrol itself. Each of the American team members spent around three days (but only a few hours a day) in the Intel hooch, answering questions from the spooks about what we saw, where we moved, and what we did up to the air strike. Truth be told, I was getting so bored of the process by the end, that I wanted to rattle off a list of things that I found in a pile of latrine shit, just to see if they were still listening.
Considering that the attack on the enemy column was pretty important, and successful since we guided the bomber in, MSGT Draper rewarded us by giving us three days of liberty to just poke around the camp. Then Doggie and I had to start our field training with some of the certified instructors in the camp, while Candy and Sparks prepared for the next assignment with our CIDG friends.
-xxx-
Pleiku Special Forces Camp
Roadrunner Team hooch complex
Staff Sergeants Hauser and Dobbs trudged into their assigned hooch, looking like they were already stone-cold veterans of the war. They herded their way past the other Special Forces men milling about, chatting and playing cards, until they found their bed racks. While they were on assignment, the Supply men in the camp had delivered their personal items and left their packed duffel bags on the racks, along with a stash of camp-issued items such as towels and bed sheets.
The two soldiers found their assigned racks easily; they were the only two in the hooch that had bare mattresses and clean surroundings. In personalizing their living spaces, the lot of Pleiku operators had acquired such a motley collection of goods and contraband, that a staff inspection of the place would make an officer think he was in the garbage facility... or "Lost and Found".
"Phew!" Duke said, unslinging his field ruck and dropping it on top of the footlocker at the foot of his bed. "It's gonna feel good to get these damn boots off for a while."
"Better straighten up your headgear, newbie," the operator one bed over - a Sergeant 1st Class Newman - whispered. "This place gets as dangerous as Indian Country, my man. We sleep with loaded weapons and our boots on."
Doggie allowed a shiver to run up his spine. "Is there any place where a guy could feel safe in this whole country?" the rookie asked.
"Not unless you count the big bad bush between a mama-san's legs," the other soldier replied with a chuckle. Newman rolled up a green, leafy substance into a cigarette paper and lit it up, puffing on the joint and blowing smoke rings in the air.
"What is that stuff?" Doggie asked, pointing to the joint.
"It's Mary Jane," Newman replied, letting out a slight cough and shaking as the narcotic began to take effect. "Y'know. Weed. Marijuana. It helps take the edge off of being here in the shit."
Duke turned away to draw Doggie close for a whisper. "Dobbs... Henry..." he said. "Don't get involved in that stuff. We have to report the stash to Top Sergeant Draper."
"Draper looks the other way," Newman said, overhearing the whispered remark. "The guy who brings this stash in sees to it. Come on over here, new guys. Take a hit or two. You won't feel any pain after a while."
Another of the hooch's residents - Sergeant "Gooch" Goodland - walked up behind the two GI's, clapping each on the back before cracking open the metal cap that covered a glass bottle of local beer. "You two greenies look like you've seen a ghost," Goodland observed. "I can't believe that you've got The Stare after one patrol."
"We marched into a ville that the VC did a clean up job on," Dobbs said, his face turning green just at the memories of what he had seen for the very first time. "The whole ville... everyone... They killed them."
"War is hell, kid," the soldier with the marijuana joint said with a laugh. "Who knows? If the whole ville was full'a Commie gooks, then I say good riddance. I'd surely hate for some sympathizer ta sneak in the camp and slit my throat while you rookies are sleepin' off your guard duty."
"Jesus, Newman," Dobbs said, trying to keep his chow down. "That's cold."
"You need to be cold to survive the 'Nam," Goodland said, taking a drag on Newman's joint and smiling. "Or else, the 'Nam will eat your green ass alive. You have to get in tune with the way things are, my man."
Hauser shook his head and grabbed a shaving bag from his footlocker. "No way, guys," he said. "As far as I'm concerned, I'm going home in one piece. There's no way the system is gonna take control of me. I don't care how things are. I'm gonna make my own way." He left the hooch without waiting for Dobbs to follow.
Dobbs sat down on the edge of his bunk, while Newman and Goodland watched him bury his face into his hands.
"Your friend's wound up a little too tight, friend," Newman said. "He's too much of a goody-goody for this hooch."
"Duke's a good man," Dobbs said, pushing away a bottle of beer offered to him by Goodland.
"The Duke?" Newman said. "Ha! There ain't no way he's anything like John Wayne. Listen, kid. If you don't start learning how the game is played, you and your goody-goody friend are gonna end up dead, an' nobody's gonna give a rat's ass about it."
Newman leaned closer to Dobbs, and offered him the smoldering joint. "If you don't play the system, then the system will play you," he said. "Don't worry, you'll live."
With nervous, trembling fingers, Dobbs took the joint into his hand.
-xxx-
Duke collected himself after witnessing the events in the hooch and made his way to the command bunker to try to find MSGT Draper for himself.
Draper was at his usual indoor place, inside the commo room, and working from a makeshift desk across from the camp's radios, when Duke found him. The camp's senior NCO looked up from a tattered copy of Playboy magazine and acknowledged his arrival with a nod.
"What'cha want, new guy?" Draper asked.
"I need to talk to you," Duke replied. "There's a drug problem in our hooch."
"Shit," Draper swore softly, "Tell me a place in the whole fuckin' RVN where there isn't a drug problem."
"Well, two of the guys from Roadrunner Four - Newman and Goodland - are smokin' joints in the hooch. They tried to offer some to Dobbs and me."
"So long as they weren't smoking their shit while on guard duty, I don't give a rat's ass what they do in the hooch," Draper said, looking up at the idealistic young sergeant.
"But, Master Sergeant - they're breaking Army regulations!" Duke asserted.
"Listen up, kid," Draper continued, "and you listen good. Get this to sink into yer headgear. We're in a Special Forces camp. The rear echelon motherfuckers that make the rules are as far away from here as they can possibly be. We go through shit that would turn your average grunt crazy in less than a month. And we have to do it for a stretch of twelve at least. Some of the sick fucks that live here are on their second and third tours. Most of us are just trying to survive our DEROS date. The guys do what they do to stay sane. I let it happen to some degree, because I need all the sane troops I can get."
"Then let me talk to the Captain," Duke insisted. "Let's see what he'll do about this."
"You can try," Draper responded. "But I doubt you'll get anywhere. The Cap'n is just marking his time too. He wants to go home to a cushy job in some Stateside base, makin' a fast promotion to staff grade because of his /combat experience/. He doesn't make any bones about it. If you ask me, he'd let this whole camp get overrun and all of us grunts killed, if he wasn't smack dab in the middle of it waiting to be relieved."
Duke shook his head in disbelief at what he was hearing. "So, we've become our own worst enemy? Drugs? Apathy? Is this why we joined the Army?"
"Your ideals are commendable, kid," Draper said. "But that doesn't stop the killing. It's hell here, and we're just trying to make it. That's the system, my friend." The top kick motioned for Duke to lean closer. "Let me give you a very important piece of advice. Don't try taking this into your own hands. Let it ride. It's been here before you and it'll be here after you rotate back to the world. Worry about yourself. The last guy who tried to shake up the system was in the latrine when a 'random VC mortar ranging round' hit it square on. Killed the poor fucker while he dropped trou and was takin' a crap. Watch your own back. Make your own choices. And then, barring the VC, you'll make it home. Clear?"
"Crystal," Duke replied. He took his leave of MSGT Draper and left to find Candy, to find out what was first on his training agenda. As the young sergeant left the command bunker, Draper shook his head.
He's a goner, the top kick predicted to himself. The kid's smart, but he doesn't get it. He's bound to get fragged for messin' with the wrong grunts.
-xxx-
This was a hard time for me. It really shook my idea of the values of the Army in general. Nobody liked the war in Vietnam by the time I began my stretch there. And those of us that were there didn't even care about our own camp-mates.
Now, a pair of drug-junkie scumbags was getting MY FRIEND hooked on some bad stuff. I couldn't trust my chain of command. I couldn't make a stink, or else I'd be watching my own ass 24-7.
But where I come from, when a guy makes a promise to a friend, he keeps it. It doesn't matter whether we're in the RVN, or some stinking jungle, or the middle of Beirut. An honorable man keeps his word, and keeps the faith that right will prevail over wrongdoing.
Somehow, I'll have to keep Doggie on the straight and narrow. I just don't know how yet.
-xxx-
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