Fields of Fire (16 page)

“Give the man a break. He said he would.”

“Kersey hates our guts. And he's probly in there kissing the Colonel's ass right now. He won't cross the Colonel.”

“You know him?”

“Know him? I know every freckle on his ass, Lieutenant. He was my Platoon Commander for two months. He's an asshole.”

“I noticed that.”

“Well, I guess I should tell you.” Snake glanced quickly to Hodges as they walked. “He had a habit of sneaking up on people on the lines at night. Yeah. No shit. He liked to sneak up on people and then write 'em up when he caught 'em having a smoke or listening to the radio, or asleep. It got him points with the Skipper. Well, Wild Man Number One used to get really spooked at night. You can't blame him, you know? And he always swore that anything that moved on him was a gook. We told him about Kersey but Wild Man, he didn't care. He'd had the malaria, too. He was tired, and really flaky. And Kersey tried to sneak up on him. The company had been in contact every night for a week. Nobody knows for sure what was in Wild Man's head. But when Kersey started creeping up on him, Wild Man turned around and shot the shit out of the bastard.” Snake's eyes brightened. “Pow. Twice. One in each leg.”

Snake glanced again at Hodges, searching for a reaction. Hodges continued to walk next to him, apparently unruffled. “Yup. We all felt like putting Wild Man up for a medal. Anyway. Kersey's a biggy with battalion now. Him and the Colonel are tight. Nobody knows Wild Man did him. Everybody thinks he's a big wounded hero, shot by a gook. He knows, though. And he hates our guts, 'cause we know. He dumps on us every time he sees us. But he ain't gonna get us down. We did him. Wild Man did it for all of us.” They walked a few more steps, silent. Snake shook his head. “But I never saw that man do anything except try to kiss a lifer's ass. As long as he's looking good to the Man, he couldn't give a rat's ass how many people are bleeding.” Snake peered at Hodges one more time. “You gonna blow the whistle on old Wild Man Number One?”

Hodges shrugged, contemplating Kersey. He had met a dozen Kerseys in the Marine Corps already. They held all ranks, although to him they seemed to be mostly Majors. The Marine Corps exuded a special attraction for charlatans, out of proportion to their numbers in society: sour-faced, humorless men who actually believed that mere rank made a person more intelligent, compensated for personal deficiencies.

Hodges allowed himself a small smile, picturing the hulking Kersey sneaking up on a fighting hole in the black of night inside some steamy jungle perimeter, hoping to catch a malaria-shaken, angry, frightened Marine asleep or screwing off so he could court-martial the man and gain favor with the company commander. He snorted. Hell. I'd have shot the bastard, too. You can check out the lines without playing cat and mouse.

“Are you?”

“Huh?”

“Gonna blow the whistle on Wild Man?”

The Major's admonition from his first day, as he left An Hoa for the bush, still addled his reasoning. They go crazy, Lieutenant. You will, too.

“No.” He grinned blandly to Snake. “I just wish the man had been a better shot.”

THE charred memory of the Old Bridge loomed above them, rising from the water on its blackened poles. Behind them, three hundred meters to the south, the Bridge compound sat on a red hill. A few hundred meters upriver the Seabees busily worked at the finishing touches for the new bridge.

The squad had just completed a reconnaissance patrol of the listening post site, and had stopped to cool off on the way back to the compound. They bathed and swam contentedly in the shallows of the river, combat gear and clothing in scattered heaps along the riverbank. Ottenburger sat on the sand bottom in two feet of water, holding a tiny mirror in front of his face, meticulously dragging a razor across an unlathered cheek. The others frolicked and washed in deeper currents.

Snake leaned against the water's force, feeling its mountain-cooled freshness massage him from feet to neck. He scrubbed his hair absently with a soap bar, and spoke to no one in particular. “Now that I seen it, it's even worse. It's no skin off Kersey's ass if somebody gets stuck out here.”

Phony chuckled ironically. “I bet the bastard planned it. Payback for Wild Man Number One. He did it on purpose.”

“Nah. Other units had it, too. That's what he told Hodges. It ain't because of us. It's because he's a dumb shit.”

“Well, he'd probly groove on us getting it out here.”

Snake rinsed his hair in the water. “So would Austin. He's really pissed at me for asking about it.” He grinned at Phony. “He don't like you, either.”

Phony's face lit up. “Yeah. Well, Austin has got to go. Hey. Gimme some soap.” He grinned, catching the bar of soap that Snake tossed him. “Thanks.”

Cannonball approached them, going underwater for a second to cool his creamy face. “Don't be such a oneway dude, Phony. You cain’ do everybody, man. Colonel say he wants a LP out here, it don’ do no good to do the Sergeant. Like Austin says, man. We ain’ gotta love it. We jus’ gotta do it.”

Phony nodded his head judiciously. “Uh huh. Well, I just gotta do him.”

Bagger splashed in the water like a playful child. “Look. Why don't we just bag it, man? You know. Let's don't and say we did.”

Cat Man smiled shyly to Bagger, moved to speech after having listened carefully to the discussion. “You don't know Kersey, Bagger. You got here too late for Kersey. He'll walk us to the wire every night. Just wait.”

Bagger's turbulent face was a large squint. “So? We go down to the edge of the wire, find a nice ditch, maybe a bomb crater, and tune out.”

Speedy interrupted, supporting Cat Man. “And get blown away by some H & I, or somebody flaky on the lines. No way, Bagger. We got to do this.”

“If we could get Kersey to come out of that bunker after dark, I could do him.” Phony.

“Do Kersey. Do Austin. Do the Colonel. Do me if I piss you off. You cain’ do everbody in the world, Phony.”

Phony grinned mischievously. “Don't piss me off, Cannonball.”

“Do me. Do you. Dooby dooby do. That ain't the answer.” Snake had emerged from deep thought. “I say the only way to handle this is to be cool. All of us go together to the Colonel, and play him off Kersey. You know, set it up like Kersey is the dumb shit he is, and let the Colonel decide it's stupid. Sort of a group request mast. Dig?”

Speedy studied Snake, then called to Goodrich. “Senator. Hey. Come here. We need some of your school, man. Tell us what happens if we all go to the Colonel about this.”

Goodrich, who had been swimming at the fringes of the gathering, felt embarrassed to be relied on for an opinion. The reconnaissance patrol had left him with a shiver of panic when he turned around and measured the distant, wire-encircled compound from the LP site, but none of it made sense to him. Nothing had from the first day. This was merely more of the same.

He smiled self-consciously. “I don't really feel qualified to comment. I've never talked to a Colonel.”

“Come on. Don't be an ass. What do you think?”

“We all hang, as I see it.”

Speedy indulged him. “Why?”

“Well.” He felt trapped. “If I were a Colonel, I'd think it was a mutiny. A squad of snuffies trying to tell me how to run my perimeter. The Army may be getting away with stuff like that, but this isn't the Army. We'd hang by our balls, maybe get bad discharges, too.”

“Oh, bullshit.” Snake held his ground. “Senator don't know people. The Colonel would only do that if we put him on the spot. The angle is to put Kersey on the spot, and let the Colonel play Joe Cool and save us. Am I the kind of guy who looks for trouble? Hey.” Snake attacked Speedy. “What are you using Senator for, anyway? You're the one always saying how he don't know shit about the bush.”

“This ain't the bush. It's Colonels. And the man's got school.”

“I don't care, really I don't.” Goodrich was miserable at being the topic of debate. “None of this makes any sense to me. As far as I'm concerned, let's go to the Colonel and demand he send us home. If we're going to get into trouble, let's make it worth it.”

Snake waved a hand at Speedy, vindicated. “See? Did you ever hear such a bunch of horseshit in your life?”

Waterbull waded over, dwarfing them all. “What the hell's got into you people since I been gone? An LP on Liberty Bridge, skate capitol of the Twenty-Fifth Marines, when you just spent two months in the Arizona. You all gone dinky dau? If we argued about every stupid thing we'd be screaming all day, every day. I think you're all pissed off just because it's Kersey and Austin, that's all.”

Wild Man slapped Waterbull on the back, his thin frame skeletal in contrast to the huge redhead's. “Tell 'em, Bull. We'll take the LP every night.”

Cannonball concurred. “I say do it.”

Phony climbed out of the water and dried his smooth, unmarred body with his skivvy shirt. He started to put his trousers on. “O.K. Me too.” He noticed Snake's disappointed grimace, and grinned blandly to his wiry squad leader. “But Austin's going, man. Boom-boom.”

HODGES called into the tent and Snake ambled out, joining him on the road. They strode slowly toward the point of the compound, silent for several minutes, yet deeply comfortable with each other. Hodges lit his own cigarette, then Snake's.

“Thanks, Lieutenant.”

Hodges nodded. “How's the LP?”

“They don't mind it. Everybody's had it one night, and they're used to it. Anything new from the Colonel?”

“Yeah. He says do it.”

“Figures. Wonder if he's ever been out there. At night, I mean.”

“You flat know he ain't. But we never been to Amphibious Warfare School, either.”

“What do they teach at Amphibious Warfare School?”

“Korea.”

“Ha. That's what I thought.” Snake dragged silently on his cigarette.

Hodges snapped his fingers. “Damn. Almost forgot. You remember an operation about six or seven months ago, on Go Noi Island, where the company was working with some ARVN unit?”

“Oh, Christ. Don't tell me we got to do that again.”

Hodges chuckled. “No. At least not any time soon. But there's gonna be a TV crew in here tomorrow morning. You know, network news from back in the World. And some correspondents. They want to ask some questions about the ARVN from people who were on that operation.”

Snake grimaced darkly. “Fucking reporters. Goddamn leeches, sucking off of other people's blood. Sit like buzzards, watch us die for a fucking news story, then go back to Saigon and celebrate their story with a whore.”

“You sound like you're not the man I need.” Hodges grinned amusedly.

“What do you need?”

“Somebody from that op.”

“Well. Me and Phony are all that's left, I think.” Snake mulled it. “Baby Cakes and Ogre. But they ain't back yet.”

“Well, the word is, get some people who were on that op, and let them talk. And tell them if they say anything bad about the ARVNs they'll get their asses kicked all the way from here to Hanoi.”

“Ha.” They had reached the edge of the compound. “You're right, Lieutenant. I ain't the man you need. But I got just the man for the job.”

“Phony?”

“He'll groove on it.”

Hodges moaned. “Yeah, but network news will never be the same!”

The interviewer had a Saigon tennis-court suntan and long hair. His utility uniform fit him like someone else's suit. His boots were unscuffed. He looked unbelievingly as Phony traipsed over to the camera, his head bobbing nonchalantly, three pieces of gum in his mouth. A First Sergeant called angrily to Phony just before he reached the interviewer, and he waved good-naturedly back, in his glory, and held the chewing gum in a dirty hand.

The interviewer did a short lead-in. Phony was the third man to be interviewed. The other two had given stock answers about the growing abilities of the ARVN. The interviewer addressed the same question to Phony, who scratched his head casually, contemplating it.

“Well. What they say is, they're all right. So I guess they're all right.”

“What do you think, Corporal? You worked with them on Operation Minnesota Lake, which from all accounts was a great success.”

Phony looked around him, grinning. There were more than a dozen Staff NCOs and officers staring expectantly at him. He waved to Austin, then to Kersey. “Hey, Sarge. Well. Minnesota Lake. Yeah. Go Noi Island. That was a couple months ago, like the other side of my life, you know? I was a new dude. We pulled a sweep and block on this river, and the ARVNs, they come up on the other side and we waited, you know, right on the water for two weeks till they come, and we couldn't even go down and get a canteen of water or nothing, except just at first light, 'cause we were the block and we were s'posed to be hiding. But you look at Go Noi sometime, you'll see there ain't even a damn tree, so how can we be hiding? But that was the rules, so we just cooked up there in the sun, looking down at that river. Damn, it was hot. I guess it was about seven months ago, 'cause Lieutenant Kersey, he wasn't shot yet. Ask him. He remembers, I'll bet. So we all got the ringworm and the hookworm from not washing and drinking all that bombcrater water. It was a bust, you know? Then the ARVNs come sweeping up to the riverbank on the other side and just kept right on going till pretty soon the whole sweep was swimming in that river. I felt like opening up. Wild Man Number One, he had an accidental discharge from his machine gun and it come pretty close to one of them in the water. But it was like watching somebody screw your sister.”

“Well, thank you—”

“But that was the only time I seen 'em, so I could be wrong.”

On the way back to the troop tent, Phony was intercepted by Austin. “You're a dead man, Lance Corporal. You'll be a Private. You breathe wrong, you're going down. You understand?”

“Anything you say, Sarge.” Phony shrugged helplessly, his face a bland, innocent smile. “They didn't want to know, they shouldn't ask.”

11

The concertina gate cracked open, then latched quickly shut, locking them out. They walked lonely, naked in the moondark, through the narrow break the road made in the field of jagged wire. Artillery boomed behind them, six howitzers firing far into the Arizona. The rounds crunched distant like a futile, muffled anger. Flares hung over Dai Loc, far to the front, like streetlights scattered on a placid hill. Just below, the river glimmered from the flares, narrow streaks of white across it. They moved heavily, bent like old men under flak jackets and helmets and weapons and ammunition. Two LAAWs apiece, five grenades, three bandoleers of ammo.

Speedy humped an extra twenty-five pounds: the radio. He whispered into the handset. “Three Charlie, leaving the wire.”

They followed the outer wire, parallelling the finger that made the top part of the J. Back in the compound an 81-millimeter mortar mission fired. Tubes thunked and flashed behind them. Rounds landed like firing pistons far to the east, their front, in the Cu Bans.

They reached the point and broke away from the wire, seeking the streambed that would be their sanctuary for the night. It hid beneath waves of dry, scraping saw-grass that played their trouser legs like coarse violins as they fought it. The treeline grew in front of them, just visible below the blackening sky.

Finally the sawgrass dipped. Streambed. The treeline loomed now, a wall of puffy dark things, wide and impenetrable. Even from this distance, seventy meters, it emanated an ashy, dead odor of burnt-out hootches. They settled quickly into the streambed, knowing its contours: this was the third time Speedy's team had worked the listening post. Each man spread a poncho liner over the abrasive grass and lay inside the streambed.

Speedy whispered to the hissing handset: “Three Charlie, all set in.”

Goodrich stretched out on the poncho liner. He took his bug juice from his helmet band and soaked his face and arms. He felt the tingle of it and was almost nauseated by the airplane-glue aroma. Whew, he mused. Bugs are almost better. He took a canteen out of his low trouser pocket and drank thirstily to wash the fear out of his mouth. He couldn't quite get it all. It lingered like bile. The compound was a hulking, warted silhouette, fire-flashing, boom-emanating, an isolated, impenetrable world behind them. Theirs was a four-man other world, of zoo-kept animals turned loose in the wilderness.

All stood the first watch together, lying side by side like moonbathers. They watched the treeline through the darkling sky, studying its outer edges when the flares creaked and dropped behind it, muttering to each other about mounds and points and dips.

Finally Speedy leaned across the streambed. It was nine o'clock.

“We give Smitty first watch. I take second. Burgie third, Senator fourth.” Goodrich nodded, thankful: three straight hours to sleep. Number One.

Helmet off, beside him in the grass, he slept a fitful doze, face pushed against the poncho liner. Mortar flares creaked and whistled eerily over his head. Persistent mosquitoes orbited his ears, whining. Artillery and mortar missions left the distant compound with intermittent booms. Occasionally, he woke from the haunting silence of the dead village just beyond the trees. He smelled the ash that once was hootches and was chased by haunting visions through the reaches of his dozings: it was night and the villagers, mamasans and babysans and waterbulls and dogs, crept through the sawgrass toward the streambed, teeth bared, bent on revenge. But when he would awaken there was only silent blackness. Dead ash filled the air.

Finally, thankfully, he slept.

“… I don't know what it is, Flaky. Put the Actual on. Hurry up, man.” Speedy's dark eyes were fixed on the treeline. Goodrich rolled and immediately noticed the tautness that had strained the neck veins, squinched the eyes of the unflappable Speedy. He checked his watch. Eleven-fifteen.

“Roger, this is Three Charlie. We got noises out here.” Pause. Speedy's eyes had not moved. “Sounds like somebody digging in. Right at the edge of the treeline. That's most affirm. No. I can't see shit. I don't know what it is.”

Goodrich listened carefully, terrified. There were muffled whispers in the trees, clangs of metal in the brick-hard dirt. The metal worked a rhythm as the voices urged each other. Clang clang clang. Clang clang clang. Three entrenching tools, digging quickly just at the treeline's edge.

“About fifty, seventy-five meters. Roger. Right where we're s'posed to be. That's affirm.” Pause, then a hoarse, louder whisper. “Well, listen, man. If you're gonna put a fire mission on it you better let me adjust. Negative. We are too close for eighty-ones. Roger. Maybe fifty meters.” Another pause. “O.K. We'll just keep an eye on it.”

Speedy woke Ottenburger, holding his head down on the poncho liner when he began to raise it. Burgie looked quizzically up at Speedy's face, then comprehended. Speedy then woke Smitty, on the other side of him, holding him down as well. He whispered as he put his meaty hand on Smitty's head. “Gooks. Shhh.”

Burgie listened attentively to the spadings and grimaced, deeply upset. “Ohhh. They got something big out there, or they wouldn't be digging it in.” He nudged Speedy. “Did you ask for a mission?”

“No sixties on the hill. We're too close for art'y or eighty-ones.”

Burgie scrunched back into the grassy streambed and peered behind them, at the compound. It was an unreachable island, floating in a sea of concertina. Marooned. “You're right. We are fucked, man.”

Twenty minutes. Thirty. Muffled laughings from the treeline, growing bolder. The insistent rhythm of the clanging spades. The team hulked silently in the streambed, afraid to leave or even move for fear of becoming instant targets. They no longer dared even to whisper to one another.

Every fifteen minutes there was a barely audible chatter from the handset, which was now turned down to a whisper-silent volume. “Three Charlie Three Charlie Three Charlie, Three Three Three. If you are all secure key your handset twice, if not key it once.”

One deliberate, angry squeeze.

Suddenly there were loud explosions across the river. The northern compound literally erupted. Recoilless rifles flashed and boomed, again and again, their explosions raising clouds of dirt inside the compound. Machine guns and small arms hammered at the Marines. The two-platoon perimeter fought back. Red and green tracers interlaced, careening into the black air, making weaving patterns in the night.

The artillery battery on the Bridge compound reacted. It turned its guns north and lobbed dozens of projectiles across the river, seeking to silence the attack. New bright flashes, hazes of dust, grouped around the northern compound.

Then a moment of anticipatory lull. Goodrich knew what was going to happen. He wished he could tell them in the Bridge compound. He wished he could dig a hole in the dirt and come back out in California. Watch out, he groaned inwardly, too afraid to cry. Oh, shit. Here it comes. Right now.

An avalanche of mortar rounds, timed from a dozen tubes to land together on the southern compound. Then just above the stranded team the deep pops of a heavy machine gun. Goodrich listened to himself whimper. He could not stifle it. It seemed to him a scream that would give them all away. But finally he realized that it was no more than a scratchy, whispering whine.

The Bridge compound's defenders were caught unaware, having begun to feel like spectators to the northern compound's furious defense. Bodies went flat inside bunkers, seeking cover from the mortar barrage. As they did, streams of sappers poured through the outer wire, sliding pipes of bangalore torpedoes to clear pathways through the concertina. For a moment, they were unnoticed, the explosions they created blending with the mortars. They broke through both sides of the J shaped hill, just at its hook, tossing satchel charges of explosives into the nearest bunkers. Half of the bunkers on the artillery side, unmanned as their defenders had helped with the firing missions on the northern compound, were quickly taken by the NVA. The rest of the perimeter swarmed with creeping, dashing sappers.

Two bunkers were lost just down from third platoon's last position. The sappers manned the bunkers after killing the occupants with satchel charges, and provided a beachhead on the lines. A stream of shadows poured into the compound between the bunkers. The first cell of NVA that raced past the bunkers burned an entrance with a whooshing flamethrower. It ignited the corner of a nearby tent, and drew bright-red answers from a host of rifles fired from nearby bunkers. There was no second whoosh. Its trigger man and his mate lay dead beside low smoulders from the torchlit tent.

Another sapper team crept quickly to the center of the compound and encountered two almost identical bunkers. In its haste it demolished the chapel, leaving the command center bunker unscathed. After the chapel exploded, in a detonation that raised a bright flash and leveled the bunker in a smoking heap, another fierce mortar barrage shook the hill. The North Vietnamese would attempt to take out more bunkers, consolidate, then retreat through the breaks they had made in the wire.

SPEEDY’S team cringed in the streambed, unspeaking, wincing as the gun cut loose again. Its explosions seemed so close that one could reach a hand up and lose it to a bullet. Each man knew that if he made an untoward move, revealing himself in any way, the whole team would not last five minutes. Nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide.

It's a twelve-seven, mused Goodrich. I've heard the stories. They can cut down trees. He hugged the ground closer, conscious of the mere inches of dirt that separated him from the cacophony above him. It seemed almost logical to him that he was going to die. The worst part was not knowing when. Maybe I should get it over with, he pondered. Stand up and let them shoot me. Maybe I should charge the gun and try to take it out. Snake would.

He looked at the others. Nobody moved. He needed to scratch a mosquito bite. He tried to go to sleep.

SAPPERS danced and dived, quick shadows under phosphorescent flares and smoldering tents. Anything that moved was suspect. Steady rifle fire poured into the two overrun bunkers, having suppressed the NVA riflemen there. Other sappers were in the wire and inside tents and in ditches. They hid and crept throughout the perimeter, creating chaos.

Staff Sergeant Austin dashed across the perimeter. He zigzagged. He crawled. He finally made it to the bunkers, jumping into a sandbagged position near the NVA breakthrough. He knelt for a moment on the floor of the bunker, catching his breath. Jesus. He took his helmet off and wiped his forehead. He looked up then, and found Phony, Cat Man, Cannonball, and newly arrived Big Mac casually leaning against the bunker walls. Big Mac was watching tracers pour into the NVA-held bunkers as if it were on television. The others peered down at Austin.

Phony grinned, nodding to him. “Whooee, Sarge.” He gestured toward where Austin had come from. “John Wayne woulda been proud of ya. No shit.”

Austin stood. “How are you people holding up?”

Phony shrugged. “A-OK, know what I mean? The gooks in them bunkers been waxed.” He pointed toward the command bunker, two hundred meters down the road. “Rest of 'em went thataway.” He smiled unconcernedly. “We get rounds every now and then. But we're skating.”

Austin nodded importantly, almost melodramatically, his swarthy face flushed. “Keep your eyes open. They're everywhere.”

Phony bounced his head, nodding. “Sure, Sarge.”

An explosion echoed on the road, just behind the bunker. Austin crouched, then jerked his thumb toward it. “See?”

“That was a mortar round, Sarge.”

Austin's jowls split in a wincing frown. No respect. He looked both ways, watching creeping, distant shadows. Finally he jumped out of the bunker, toward the next position. He took five steps and dove to the earth, searching his front again.

Phony held a grenade in his hand. He pulled the pin, then casually let the spoon fly, never losing his bland grin. He tossed it expertly, five meters on the other side of Austin. Austin started to rise. Boom. He fell on his face, motionless.

Phony yelled loudly. “Corpsman up!”

Big Mac stared unbelievingly. “Jesus Christ! What did you do?”

Phony shrugged absently, watching Austin writhe. “Nothing.” He allowed himself another innocent, bland smile. “What you mean, man? That was a mortar.”

THE officers inside the command bunker had assumed control of all tactical nets, directing the defense of the compound from their underground haven. Kersey, washed in the bunker's fluorescent brightness, worked from a large composite map of the compound and its surroundings. He communicated to the listening posts, and to radios positioned in various bunkers along the perimeter, attempting to determine enemy gatherings and strong points through such reports. With that information, he would advise the battalion commander as to possible artillery missions and air strikes.

Hodges, out on the perimeter, was reduced, in effect, to a radioman. He relayed reports to the command bunker concerning the status of his platoon's sector of the huge perimeter. At other times, he worked his way from bunker to bunker, as Austin had been doing, to check on casualties and ammunition consumption. Behind him dawdled a murmuring, cursing Flaky, with the platoon radio.

When Austin went down, Hodges was in the next bunker, thirty meters away. With him in the bunker were Snake, Waterbull, Wild Man, and Bagger. Austin fell between the two bunkers and immediately began to groan madly. Hodges, having been unaware of Phony's designs on Austin, did not read the knowing looks that passed among the bunker's occupants.

Snake glanced quickly to Hodges, catching his reaction, then smiled sardonically. “Ain't anybody gonna help Austin?”

Austin had tightened into a ball. A burst of AK-47 fire passed just over the bunker. Behind him the twelve-seven tore angry rents in the still night air. Thirty meters up the road three more mortar rounds impacted. Wild Man snorted. “Let him bleed a little first.”

Hodges crawled alone to Austin. The grenade had gone off to the Sergeant's front and left, peppering him along his whole left side, except where his flak jacket blocked the shrapnel. He bled from his forehead. Several pieces had entered his chest and stomach where his flak jacket hung open. He clutched his stomach, still curled into a tight ball.