Jersey and Stretch lay out there, still and quiet. No more one on one basketball for these two back at China Beach, the cursing and name calling rising above the sounds of the Animals or Stones making that tinny booming sound when the volume of a small transistor sitting on a ledge of sand bags was overridden. No more complaining about who was getting stuck on guard duty the most. Stretch always got the better of Jersey, his tall frame strung along the tent wall, a big grin lighting his black face as he watched the redheaded kid's face turn angrier and angrier.

"No fuckin' way should I be going out on night patrol again this week. Sheet man, you ain't been out for...how many? Six, seven nights now? What is it with you and Gunney, you playing drop the soap with him in the shower or somepin?" Jersey would yell while getting his shit together for the night patrol.

"Somepin, that's right. You got it good buddy. Four fuckin' Oh on that Intel my man, right on the money. Me and the Gunney's tight, like real asshole buddies. Ain't you figured that out by now." The white-toothed grin would split the black face in half as he drove it in a little deeper to the redhead.

No more basketball in the evening before chow. No more bickering or cards or listening to heavy metal or Motown music while smoking a doobie. The two body bags were silent, resting in the red dust of the advancing helicopters, the whumping blades swirling red clouds in patterns of tiny whirlwinds, anyone in the vicinity ducking to avoid the stifling clouds. Lieutenant Jim Graceland watched the Army door gunner hop out with the crew chief and help the Navy medic sling the body bags inside. No Marine grunt choppers on this Ops, had to use the ground pounders to ferry in the troops and get the wounded and dead out. Not a fitting end to two brave jarheads, he thought spitting a wad of chewing tobacco onto the red dust.

The operating had been SNAFU from the get go. Military Intel, an oxymoron if he'd ever heard one, had sent his unit into this valley in an attempt to intersect an advancing column of hard core NVA's making a hard left from Cambodia into the central highlands of 'Nam. What the friggin' Intel boys failed to find out was there were several cadre's of VC and NVA already entrenched in the valley waiting for the rest of the bunch to form up and head further southeast into central South Vietnam.

Jim spat another wad of Redman into the dust watching a trail of jungle ants inspect his chaw and decide it was juicy and sweet enough to drag home. They started loading up the wet mess of tobacco, sliding big chunks into their pinchers and heading back through the dust towards their anthill. Goddamn spooks had let the local military boys in on it too. Couldn't wait to drag Colonel Ho into the fracas and let him bring in four choppers full of his South Vietnamese Special Forces.

Special Forces my ass, Jim thought. Once those assholes got wind of the upcoming operation they couldn't wait to run to the closest local hooch and tell Blow-Job Annie where the jarheads were going including LZ times with map grid positions and coordinates. Miss Blow-Job, heavily connected with the local VC through Cousin Wang, would rattle off the scoop as fast her Gook fucking mouth could tattle and by the next morning the entire VC/NVA in the valley was up to snuff on Uncle Sam's II Corp latest top-secret operation. Intelligence. What a fucked up word in this God forsaken fucked up land, Jim thought.

Intelligence had killed Stretch and Jersey sure as shit. It didn't take no genius to see those bastards had staked out the entire LZ a day before the grunts had shown up, the mortars all positioned to knock the shit out of the jarheads as they jumped off them grunt choppers. Out in West Texas where Jim was raised his grand-daddy was fond of saying, "Sumtimes it don't take no prairie dog shit on your boot to make yourself unwelcome at the dinner table but it sure don't help the matter any either."

......(cont)