Stories, Thoughts and Snippets
I hated this country, not because of the heat, the humidity, the fucking food that smelled like shit to me, I hated this country because it wouldn't stand up and fight us. We could stay here forever, and always kill more of them than they killed of us and it wouldn't get anything done. There wasn't any fucking front. The front was the perimeter of your base, and if you had a gook in your base then the front was about as far as you could reach your arm, because you couldn't trust any of those fuckers. One that was your friend yesterday might be your enemy tomorrow. This wasn't a fucking war, this was some fucked up summer camp, where when you went on your nature hikes, sometimes people would pop out of the woods and shoot you, and sometimes when you went into town, the restaurant you were in would explode.
But they could never do enough damage to really hurt us. They would attack weak spots when they found them, but they couldn't maintain a sustained offensive, because as soon as they tried that we would be able to kill all of them. I was pissed off when I figured that out, but I didn't care, if that's the way it was going to be, then I would be happy to sneak around in their damn jungles and kill as many of them as I could before they got me or my time was up. But I wasn't even getting to do that. All I was doing was sweating.
I spent evenings taking apart my rifle, cleaning my rifle, putting my rifle back together. My gear was perpetually organized and stowed, at a drop of a hat I could go out on a mission. Or, if I got my way, I could be transferred to a different unit. I wrote letters home, but I never knew what to say. I couldn't tell my dad that I was sitting around and periodically clearing back a jungle line. He'd never respect that, I didn't respect that.