The center of the village was suddenly gone. Hundreds of square meters of ground were being thrown into the air, tumbling over, twisting, in a conflagration of noise and fire. Far away he could see tiny figures running out of what was left of the village.
“69/51 mixed shell H and E and WP. Air burst—20 meters.”
White hot steel and phosphorous slammed down into the ground, taking everything and everyone with it.
When it was over, Macabe’s RTO patted him on the back. He put away his grids. This was not his kind of war; he would rather have been on his own, close up without all this noise and confusion. With the illumination round fading in front of him into a soft yellow green, he picked up his M-16 from the top of the track, climbed down from his APC, and began walking around the lager, checking the perimeter defenses.
He walked slowly past the great hulking thirty- and forty-ton shapes. Walking up alongside a tank he stopped, put his hand on it, and looked out at the razor wire. The steel, grimy from the mud, was still warm from the day’s sun. Drawing his hand thoughtfully along the armor, he walked on past the tracks and stood quietly near the driver’s hatch, the cannon reaching out silently above his head. Slinging his weapon, he took his hand off the armor and wiped it clean. He was still surprised—even after two weeks—at having been assigned as a forward observer to a mechanized unit. Even with a primary MOS of an artillery officer, he hadn’t expected it. He had gone into artillery during ROTC because he wanted to be part of a combat arm, and artillery was the only one the school offered. He thought he’d left artillery behind him at Fort Sill. He had complained, but no one at the 90th Replacement would listen. “We don’t need Rangers,” they said. “We need forward observers.”
It was not an uncommon occurrence in Nam; Rangers are dispersed through the Army. There are no Ranger units as such. The Army doesn’t like elite troops; they’ve always felt them to be more trouble than they were worth. The training, though, is good, so the Pentagon offers it, but then disperses the men in different units, officially to act as leavening for the rest of the Army, though unofficially to keep these highly trained elite men from getting together and feeling special.
Macabe was disappointed. He would have liked to use what he had learned. It was not just a romantic notion; Florida had killed the last of his fantasies. What advanced infantry training, Fort Sill, jump school, and Fort Benning hadn’t done, the swamps had.
The day after graduation from college, Macabe was out of ROTC and on active duty, on his way to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where the Army was sending him to learn more about artillery. He felt he was going as an interested observer rather than as a second lieutenant. At first he kept a little notebook, but after a while he gave it up, consoling himself that what he couldn’t remember later wouldn’t be worth writing down now.
At Fort Sill his first impression—one that never quite left him—was how big it was: not only Fort Sill but the Army itself. Sill was a country within a country. But it was more than the sheer physical size that affected him; it was the way the Army sat there, reaching out across the whole country, grabbing everyone and pulling people into it without the slightest concern for what they were, what they wanted to be, or what they did. Those first few days, watching it function, unique and insular, saluting and being saluted, he marveled at how something that big and complex, something affecting so many people’s lives, could have been there all along, without his even knowing it. It was difficult to get used to, and if the cadre hadn’t been so serious about it all, the regimentation and the foolishly exacting concerns would have been laughable. But it was business, serious business, and they got right to it, quickly, with little humor.
“OK,” the instructor
“69/51 mixed shell H and E and WP. Air burst—20 meters.”
White hot steel and phosphorous slammed down into the ground, taking everything and everyone with it.
When it was over, Macabe’s RTO patted him on the back. He put away his grids. This was not his kind of war; he would rather have been on his own, close up without all this noise and confusion. With the illumination round fading in front of him into a soft yellow green, he picked up his M-16 from the top of the track, climbed down from his APC, and began walking around the lager, checking the perimeter defenses.
He walked slowly past the great hulking thirty- and forty-ton shapes. Walking up alongside a tank he stopped, put his hand on it, and looked out at the razor wire. The steel, grimy from the mud, was still warm from the day’s sun. Drawing his hand thoughtfully along the armor, he walked on past the tracks and stood quietly near the driver’s hatch, the cannon reaching out silently above his head. Slinging his weapon, he took his hand off the armor and wiped it clean. He was still surprised—even after two weeks—at having been assigned as a forward observer to a mechanized unit. Even with a primary MOS of an artillery officer, he hadn’t expected it. He had gone into artillery during ROTC because he wanted to be part of a combat arm, and artillery was the only one the school offered. He thought he’d left artillery behind him at Fort Sill. He had complained, but no one at the 90th Replacement would listen. “We don’t need Rangers,” they said. “We need forward observers.”
It was not an uncommon occurrence in Nam; Rangers are dispersed through the Army. There are no Ranger units as such. The Army doesn’t like elite troops; they’ve always felt them to be more trouble than they were worth. The training, though, is good, so the Pentagon offers it, but then disperses the men in different units, officially to act as leavening for the rest of the Army, though unofficially to keep these highly trained elite men from getting together and feeling special.
Macabe was disappointed. He would have liked to use what he had learned. It was not just a romantic notion; Florida had killed the last of his fantasies. What advanced infantry training, Fort Sill, jump school, and Fort Benning hadn’t done, the swamps had.
The day after graduation from college, Macabe was out of ROTC and on active duty, on his way to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where the Army was sending him to learn more about artillery. He felt he was going as an interested observer rather than as a second lieutenant. At first he kept a little notebook, but after a while he gave it up, consoling himself that what he couldn’t remember later wouldn’t be worth writing down now.
At Fort Sill his first impression—one that never quite left him—was how big it was: not only Fort Sill but the Army itself. Sill was a country within a country. But it was more than the sheer physical size that affected him; it was the way the Army sat there, reaching out across the whole country, grabbing everyone and pulling people into it without the slightest concern for what they were, what they wanted to be, or what they did. Those first few days, watching it function, unique and insular, saluting and being saluted, he marveled at how something that big and complex, something affecting so many people’s lives, could have been there all along, without his even knowing it. It was difficult to get used to, and if the cadre hadn’t been so serious about it all, the regimentation and the foolishly exacting concerns would have been laughable. But it was business, serious business, and they got right to it, quickly, with little humor.
“OK,” the instructor
Similar Books
