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• G.I. Joe January 1, 2006 11:46 am

  

  A Pointman and a Dog
  Walking point is a mothafucker, but point-flank is really out-there. I was on point- left-flank from the platoon column in the hot afternoon, humping in triple canopy. I looked up at a 30-foot tree and saw a big monkey looking down at me with a deadpan stare.
  I could still see the pointman and his backup, some-15 meters to the right of me. If I lost sight of them, I was the one in trouble, because I had no commo except to shout away my position. The tangle of clinging vines and thorny underbrush made the going slow.
  “Crack, crack, crack,” came the sound of AK-fire.
  I hit the ground, rolled and squirmed out of the grasp of the shoulder straps of my pack, and peered over for the pointman, pointing my M-16 at the direction of the enemy discharge.
  I couldn’t see Sanders or his backup, Hamilton; but I could see a black-haired head moving quickly through the jungle foliage toward me. My concentration was on that head coming at me as I stayed stooped-low and silent, waiting with my helmet off.
  I could actually smell the gook as he got closer, that god-awful odor of boiled Vietnamese vegetables. He was right on me, just feet away, when we saw each other. I could see his slanted eyes slightly bulge in surprise; just before I shot him.
  “Pop,” he went down, falling backwards. I got up as he fell, “pop, pop…pop.” Two of my shots went into his head.
  I quickly knelt back down; I could see more brush movement coming in my direction. It was the company’s German Shepherd guide-dog. His handler had released him.
  I gave away my position and yelled to the column, “Call him off, you got a G.I. out here.” But the dog was too close and on the gook’s scent, moving too fast. The hundred-pound shepherd lunged, its jaws ready to latch onto me.
  I wasn’t about to get bit, “pop, pop, pop.” The dog got a mouthful of lead, whimpered, and crashed into me, bowling me over.
  His handler was right behind him, “you mothafucker!” He screamed at me.
  My “16” was still on semi and pointed at him as I lay on my back. “Shut the fuck up,” I growled. “You knew I was out here.”
  The dog-handler just checked his dead dog and didn’t answer.
  I got up, went back to my pack, put it on, and headed back to the column. I went under that 30-foot tree where that same monkey was looking down at me. I looked up and said, “Easy for you, mothafucker.”
  Back at a clearing where the platoon had fallen back to join the company to form a Medevac landing zone to dust-off the wounded Sanders, Lt. Burns confronted me as I was pulling security. “Ya just had ta grease the dog didn’t ya?” He said.
  “That handler should’ve held him tight,” I replied. “I got the gook, didn’t I?”
  “The dog was more important than you or the gook,” said the L-T.
  “Well, tell the captain the gook shot the dog, and give the dog a bronze star,” I said with a straight face. I walked away from the L-T to look at Sanders who was bandaged with an abdominal wound, morphined-up, and lying on his back with Doc. Murphy sitting with him, waiting on an incoming bird.
  “Yeah, you got a good sham,” I said to Sanders, who looked at me and smiled. “You’re goin’ back to the world with this one.”
  We could hear the Huey coming, but we couldn’t see it, yet.
  “This is your ticket out, mothafucker,” I added.
  Just then Sanders’ belly and chest turned purple, his eyes rolled back into his head, and he went into convulsions. I fell on him and held him tight, trying to comfort him, as his whole body shook violently.
  It felt like minutes, but was probably only seconds; until I felt that intimate moment when Sanders’ spirit left his body and he went quiet and limp.
  “The femoral,” said Doc. “When that bursts…there’s nuthin’ to do.”
  The Medevac bird was in sight now and smoke was popped for it to touchdown.
  “Shit,” I said. “If he coulda lasted a few more minutes he had a ride out…now we have to hump him.”
  The Medevac wouldn’t take any dead ones. We put Sanders on a poncho with the dead pooch and two G.I.s carried the corpses for the rest of the day. The two KIAs caught a ride out of the bush on a log bird the next afternoon.

• Gordon from Bora Bora January 1, 2006 11:40 am

  

  GLEN-DA–far be it for me to get caught in between in lovers’ quarrels–life has a way of dictating more pressing priorities
  Not Just Candy
  A powerful, awesome force
  that sustains through difficult times,
  motivates to lofty deeds,
  remaining when all else is gone,
  the essence of our spiritual needs,
  In a baby’s cry, innocent,
  demanding,
  in a whispered response,
  knowing, fulfilling,
  in a silent glance,
  saying for a second what words cannot,
  in passionate embrace
  between partners in faith,
  building doubtlessly
  toward sublime reality,
  letting light permeate
  every corner of their being,
  In a dying breath,
  segueing to the next level,
  passage to peace,
  everlastingly tranquil.

• Dr. Freud December 27, 2005 7:16 pm

  

  Dave– it is really not my thinking in question–it is your sanity, or the lack of it, that has most bloggers here questioning you and your professed idiosyncracies
  The more you talk the more you seemingly put your foot down your throat (is that an insult or a caution flag?)
  My issue against your projection against Imp was, I thought, quite non-personal and specific–and yet, you can’t speak to that–wasn’t it nuts and bolts right-on to your style and indigenous to faults in your way of thought that you don’t care to recognize?
  (Note how I incorporate the words you misspelled in your post with the correct spelling–this is just one subliminal way I am trying to help you)
  Also acting against your better wishes is no way to be–doubting yourself will only extrapolate your confusion–listen to your better self–and self-correction is on the way–whether you want to admit it publicly or not

• Dave G. December 27, 2005 6:29 pm

  

  Well Gorden;
  Against my better wishes I have come to hold your thinking in very low regard. Personal insults in response to issue posts can tend to do that over a period of time. Perhaps there are those who can appreciate your stile but not myself.

• Observe your face in a mirror and watch it disappear December 27, 2005 11:01 am

  

  But Dave–don’t you see the projectionism of your last statement in generalizing about fundamentalists–when Imp’s statement–is just Imp’s statement?
  That’s the type of lazy, distorted association that is characteristic of your posts–from neo-cons to personally-assigned hackers–everyone you deem confronted by–falls into a category of your imagination that seems to be inordinately blunted by the light of day
  If you are indeed a retired mental clinician–perhaps you are the poster boy for the premise that mental disease is communicable.