Vignette #1: "Day 3-3-7" Copyright 2001 by Ed Howdershelt http://www.abintrapress.com * * * * If you can't handle someone's memories of war, skip this article.    Noises ahead. I and what was left of our unit - two other men, one of whom had injured his leg as we'd slipped away from advancing patrols the night before - took separate routes up the embankment next to the trail and faded into the surrounding jungle. In seconds we were nearly indistinguishable from our surroundings and there was nothing more to do but wait and hope the bad guys didn't spot us, after all.    The steamy heat and the damned bugs made it hard to breathe. It was nearly high noon, but Cutter and Smythe - each only a few yards from my position - were barely visible in the gloomy half-light at the floor of the triple-canopy jungle.    Three days in the bush. I could smell myself so strongly that it seemed impossible to me that the enemy couldn't simply follow the odor to its source.    The stream by the trail had looked so cool and inviting... But I knew that what lived in the stream would consider me a bloodbank and that the villagers upstream used it as their personal sewage system. Sweat ran into my eyes, but it wasn't safe to move enough to do anything about it. Something moved by my foot, causing me to look down.    The biggest goddamned snake I'd ever seen - nearly a foot wide in its body - was staring back at me as if wondering what the hell I was doing in his jungle. At that moment I wondered the same thing.    I let him taste-sniff the muzzle of my '16 and watched rather tensely as he also checked out my knee and left arm, then he stretched himself up a bit to taste-sniff my face. I kept my rifle between his face and mine, closed my eyes to slits, held my breath, and sat through the examination as the snake's football-sized head hovered next to mine.    I guess he didn't appreciate the taste of camo greasepaint, bug juice, and sweat. After a few moments of investigation, the snake evidently decided that I wouldn't make a good lunch and moved on. I watched his tail disappear into the greenery a few feet away from me, heading down the embankment toward the stream.    You move slowly, by degrees, when you're trying to stay unnoticed in the jungle. I turned my head to face front again and noticed Smythe staring bug-eyed at me. He must have seen me nose-to-nose with the snake. I gave him a slight nod and focused my attention in the direction of the sounds that had sent us to cover.    The first three men were discussing something as they approached. One of them was an officer. That meant that there were probably at least eight guys to worry about. As noisily as they were proceeding, they nonetheless advanced cautiously on the trail just below us, alert to any sound or motion, so we gave them none.    I doubt that any of us so much as breathed for some moments, until the tail-end Charlie of their group - the guy who pretty much had to do most of his walking backward to keep an eye behind them - came into view with another guy. Make that nine of them.    I heard Smythe quietly allow a grenade handle to spring free and prepared to spray my end of the small column with rifle fire. Cutter would lace up the other end and Smythe would take up any slack with either his own rifle or another grenade. Smythe let the grenade cook for what seemed like an awfully long time.    I thought, 'Come on, Smythe! I'm not far enough away from you, you dumbshit! Get rid of it! Now!'    There was a flurry of motion below as one of the newcomers spotted the godzilla snake and leaped to one side of the trail, aiming his rifle at the snake. The officer and the other guy yammered at him sharply and he lowered his rifle as the snake regarded the little group.    Perfect. Most of them were looking at the snake when Smythe tossed the grenade and I discovered that I'd been right. He'd cooked it too long. It didn't even hit the ground before it went off, and I didn't duck in time. Shrapnel tore through the foliage and tree bark near me, but none of it found me. I opened up on the three guys still on their feet at my end of the column as Cutter fired at his end.    All of them went down, but a couple of them managed to put a few rounds in our general direction before we picked them off. For a long few moments, nothing down there moved, then the snake crossed the trail. Apparently unharmed, it quickly moved between the bodies and over one of them, not stopping to investigate them, then it found the stream and swam away.    "Jeeezus," said Cutter, rising to his feet. "Lookit the size'a that thing. I didn't know snakes came that big, man. That must be what spooked them."    Smythe glanced at me with a small grin as he said, "No damned doubt about it. Mighta spooked anyone a little. Ammo check. I've got two full mags and six rounds."    "About the same," I said. "Could be worse. We're pretty close to home by now."    As we moved down the embankment to check the bodies, Cutter said, "Two full and prob'ly three rounds. How far we gotta go yet?"    Smythe thumbed toward the hill behind us. "Eight, maybe nine klicks, 'cept for that hill. We get to the main road about halfway around it and maybe we can hitch a ride."    Cutter shook his head. "You been sayin' that ever damn time we been out and we ain't never got a ride back yet, man."    "I'm feelin' lucky," said Smythe. "This is Friday. Water trucks."    Cutter grunted in reply and knelt to check a body. Smythe stopped by their officer to do the same. He collected belt buckles and hats, but this time he was out of luck. Shrapnel had ripped up the officer's cap and he wasn't wearing an issue-style belt.    I stood to one side and surveyed the carnage, looking for signs of life. You never knew if one of them was playing possum. As if to verify my thoughts, the officer that Smythe was checking feebly reached for his Makarov pistol. He had it almost out of the holster when my shot passed through his forearm and into his chest.    Smythe was on his feet and hopping away from the officer's body, swearing at me for having shot between his legs, before he turned to face me.    "I didn't," I said. He seemed not to hear me, so as I knelt to take the Makarov and holster off the body, I said again, louder, "I didn't."    Smythe stopped dancing around and said, "I know damned well you did."    I shook my head. "Nope. Didn't. Next to, but not between."    His gaze narrowed. "You sure?"    "You don't believe me, get back down there and I'll do it again. Cutter can be my witness. How about next time you see if he's dead before you haul up his shirt? The guy probably thought you were after something else."    Cutter laughed, then stifled it as Smythe glared at him. His glare then found me. After a moment or two, he walked back to the officer's body and nudged it with a boot.    "Well, he's dead enough now. Grab a couple of their rifles and some ammo and I'll rig the rest to blow."    We stood behind trees as Smythe tossed a branch at the pile of weapons. The grenade he'd rigged in the middle of the pile went off and we took a last look at the scene before continuing through the jungle alongside the trail.    "You gonna keep that Makarov?" asked Smythe.    "Well, damn, I guess so, Smythe. I kept him from using it on you and I grabbed it first. What do you think?"    "Give you twenty for it."    "Nope."    "Twenty-five."    "Nope."    "Ain't worth more'n twenty-five."    Cutter said, "It is to some brasshole who doesn't have a real, live combat souvenir to lie about yet." He laughed and added, "One a them that ain't never seen no combat and ain't likely to, like the sumbitch 'at sent us out here."    "Yup," I said. "Some never-got-his-boots-dirty major's gonna wet himself when he sees this. Fifty bucks or more, no sweat. Holster sold separately; another twenty. How's your ankle, Cutter?"    "Hurts like hell. I figure when I take off the boot, I'll never get it back on. That means I can go home, right? Gotta be able to wear boots, right?"    Smythe said, "Keep dreaming, Cutter. Maybe some kinda fairy godmother'll come down here and smack the shit out of you with her magic wand. That's the only thing that's gonna get you home quicker."    I shifted both rifles to my right hand so I could use my left hand to clumsily vault over a root the size of an oil drum. Smythe stretched his arms out for balance and plunked his butt on the root to swing his legs over it.    "Awright!" said Cutter, taking the easier route around a smaller - but still huge - tree. "I like 'em a little rough. I hope she's got great big ol'..."    The blast was deafening. The part of the tree that stood between Cutter and me took the frags that would otherwise have shredded me as they did him.    Smythe hadn't been so lucky. His right arm was missing, but he didn't seem aware of it yet. I glanced around as I rushed to keep him from falling and spotted another wire a few feet away. The wire wasn't a danger, but Smythe was beginning to flail and tilt sideways.    "Don't move!" I shouted. "Don't move, Smythe! Don't move!"    Smythe wasn't at all focused. He stared at me as if I were a stranger and fell off the root anyway, landing hard on his right side. I practically hopped over the root that had been such an obstacle before and landed near his legs. Smythe was lying completely still, staring at nothing with sightless eyes. A quick check found no pulse.    Stepping over the wire, I went to see what was left of Cutter. He was a ragged mess, also with no pulse. After looking carefully around for more wires, I walked the ten feet or so to retrieve his 16 and saw the AK not far away. Both rifles were damaged. I pulled the magazine out of the 16 and left it there to go back to Cutter to get his ammo and dogtags, then went back to Smythe for his.    Making a stack of the rifles, I shoved two grenades under the pile and pulled the pins most of the way out. After attaching some of the tripwire that Cutter had inadvertently found, I then backed away to the other side of the big root and gave the wire a yank. I heard the spoons fly off the grenades and got down with my hands over my ears. After the blast, I stood up and took a last look at Cutter and Smythe, then turned to go. A sound from above made me freeze and look up.    One of the rifles had been blasted pretty much straight up into the trees. It clatteringly fell from branch to branch until it hit the last branch, about twenty feet up, then spun downward end over end on a course that would make it impact the jungle floor a few yards to my left, but well in front of me.    Something about that area suddenly didn't look right to me. I got flat fast, hitting the ground about the same time as the rifle. Another ear-splitting blast rocked the jungle and the rifle seemed to disappear along with a sizeable amount of greenery.    There had seemed to me to be the faint impression of a straight line, superimposed on the area where the rifle had landed. Whether the impression had come from something I'd actually seen or it had simply been my imagination didn't seem to matter much at that moment.    I didn't bother getting up right away. I wasn't hurt; I was just damned tired of that particular day and it felt good not to be on my feet. I figured things could just damned well go on without me for a little while. Sure, someone might be coming to investigate the explosions, but the chances were slight. I gave myself fifteen minutes of being sprawled out flat before I got up and got moving again.    As I neared the north/south road, the trail widened somewhat. Smythe had been wrong. If there'd been a truck or any other kind of vehicle on the road, I'd have heard it for a mile in either direction. Instead, I heard voices ahead and approached the road with caution.    Three women were standing to one side of the dirt road as two other women knelt in the road and dug holes with rice knives. They were chatting among each other like a bunch of nannys in a city park. One of the standing women walked over to hand something to one of the kneeling women. It was a disk-shaped land mine.    The kneeling woman placed the mine in the hole she'd dug, then lifted it out and began to dig some more. From behind a tree, I took careful aim and skipped a round dead center off the top of the mine. Half a second later, I peeked around the tree to find all the women flat on the ground. Moving among them, I found one still barely alive. She spat at me.    By the side of the road lay two more mines that had been awaiting placement. You shouldn't just leave land mines lying around. The enemy might find 'em, y'know. I propped them up as targets and walked a good distance away, then fired at them.    Another mile or so up the road, I heard a helicopter coming and walked out to the middle of the road, hoping they'd be curious enough to stop and check out a guy waving at them. They weren't. The dumb sunsabitches waved back as they flew over. Didn't it occur to them that one was an unusual number of troops to be meandering along a road in a war zone? Guess not. Whups. Wait one. They're turning around and coming back. Maybe they're brighter than I thought?    The slick set down on the road and I walked up to it relishing the breeze from the blades, even though it was a tad dusty.    "You see anything on the way here?" asked one of the guys. "We found some women on the road. Looked like one of them found a mine."    "Nope," I lied.    Standard Procedure: If you say anything, you'll wind up explaining it, then writing it down or telling someone else who writes stuff down, and they don't care if they're keeping you from a hot shower or chow.    "Heard a couple of explosions, though. Musta been them. Can you give me a ride up the hill?"    "What are you doing out here by yourself? Where's everybody else?"    Gee. Not so dumb, after all. "Dead. How about that ride?"    The guy looked around as if he didn't believe me. I sighed and sat down on the edge of the deck with my feet on the skids.    "Dead, damn it," I repeated. "I'm all there is, and I figure I ought to check in and tell somebody what happened, so how about that ride?"    The door gunner seemed skeptical, but the other guy reached for my pack.    "Yeah," he said, giving me a hard look. "Yeah. Okay. Get yourself inside."    He said something into his throat mike and the blades began to spin faster. Five minutes later we were landing inside the wire and the company clerk, Cooper, was coming toward us at a trot. I tossed out my pack and hopped to the ground, then pulled out Smythe's and Cutter's dogtags and my map and made some marks on it.    "They got us here, here, and here, Cooper," I said, showing the clerk the map as I handed it to him with the dogtags. "They kicked the shit out of us. Smythe and Cutter were killed when Cutter tripped a wire. I'm the last one left. That's my report. I'll be in to sign it after I wash up and get something to eat."    Cooper bristled and said, "You'll report now, Sergeant. Come on."    He turned and marched away. I looked at the door gunner. He shrugged. The clerk had realized that I wasn't at his heels and stopped to look back.    "I said let's go, Sergeant. Move it."    "Move it? Move it? Who the fuck are you to tell me anything?"    "You know I work directly for Captain..."    "You can work directly for Jesus, dickhead. Won't mean shit to me. I've had a real bad day, a day like you've never seen, and you seem to be trying real hard to become part of it."    "Look, I realize you've had a hard time, but..."    "But what? What's the emergency? You got all there is right there. Do I have to tell you to get fucked, you pissant office pogue? Can't you take a hint? That's my report. All of it. File it, or whatthehell ever you want to do with it, and I'll be over to check your spelling in a little while."    "The Captain's not going to like this."    "Then don't tell him. No, wait. Tell him. Let him get pissed at me so I can get real pissed at you. Do you want me to get real pissed at you, Cooper? I can type, too, you know. You've only been here two months and you weasled your way from a foot problem to a desk job. Maybe you need some time in the bush? Maybe I ought to tack off a note to brigade to see if they can find you a spot with first or second platoons?"    Cooper bristled again and stood stiffly as he said, "Just drop by as soon as possible. Today. All right, Sergeant?"    That got to me. His emphasis on my rank was a veiled threat. I stepped close enough to him that he backed up a pace, then I closed the gap and jammed my rifle's muzzle under his chin while I kept a grip on his shirt to hold him there.    "Don't try to give me the idea that you might mess with my records or do something that would pull my stripes, Cooper. I'll believe you rather than take a chance that you're just full of shit. I'll hurt you so bad they'll send you home, and you know how bad that has to be."    Cooper's voice was unsteady as he said, "You, uh, you can't do anything to me..."    "Think about it, Cooper. Things happen to people all the time over here. Five guys will say I was playing poker with 'em, and you won't be in any condition to tell anyone a damned thing, if it goes that far. Why don't we stop right here? You go do your thing with your papershuffling and I'll be along in a bit. Good enough?"    He glared at me. Absolute hatred. Oh, well. C'est la, and all that. I decided to take his job for my last month and find him a slot in first or second, after all. That would knock the bureaucratic shit out of him quickly enough.    Voices again, this time... Female?    In a sharp tone, one of the women said, "Don't touch him. Stay by the door and call him until he wakes up, but don't go near the bed."    "But I..."    "Doc, if you get killed, I don't want to hear a word about it, okay? Look at that damned bedrail."    "It's a little bent, Sandy. That could have happened..."    "Oh, for God's sake shut up and listen to someone who's been there. He did it with his knee. He's flashing on other times and he may come up grabbing for your throat before he knows it's you. Lots of vets do that when they first come back, but the responses usually fade with time unless something happens to bring it all back up."    The voices began to make real sense. I tried to open my eyes, but the room was blindingly bright. I closed them to slits and managed to say, "I'm awake."    The brunette by the door said, "Prove it. Where are you?"    With a sigh, I said, "I'm in Carrington, North Dakota. Why are the damned lights so bright?"    "They aren't," said Sandy. "That's probably a side effect. Do you remember what happened to you?"    I grunted and squinted some more, trying to see her through the curtain of brightness. "Yeah. Someone ran a red light and shoved my car all the way across a four lane highway. He's dead. I'm not, but my car's totaled. Got any coffee?"    "Right now, I think it would just come back up," said the blonde woman by the door. "You're taking all this pretty well, I'd say. Sit up and talk to me for a few minutes, then we'll see about coffee."    Doc Adams, so called because she liked being called 'Doc', came to stand by the bed and did some doctorly things while giving me sharp glances.    "I'm fine," I said. "Other than my knee, anyway. It's cold, but it isn't hurting."    "Yet," said Doc Adams, holding up two fingers. "It will, but it isn't broken. How many fingers?"    "Two. Can I have that coffee now?"    "No," she said, flashing a tiny light in my eyes. "Sit still."    "If I said 'four', would I get some sympathy, at least?"    "No. Sit still."    "Well?" asked Sandy. "You think he'll live?"    "Yeah," I said. "Damned good question, Sandy. How about it, Doc?"    Adams made a face of general sufferance, put the tiny flashlight in her pocket, and turned to face Sandy, specifically ignoring me. I briefly considered pinching her butt.    "Probably," said Adams. "He has a slight concussion. Between that and the anaesthetic, he gets no food or drink for about an hour, or we'll have to call for a bucket and mop."    "That's it?"    "Yeah," I said. "That's it? That sucks. I want a coffee."    Doc Adams continued to ignore me as she told Sandy, "That's it. We'll look in on him again in an hour."    Adams turned around as Sandy also came to stand by the bed. She pointed at the bedrail and asked, "What were you dreaming about, Ed?"    It was Sandy asking. If it had been someone else, I might have given them some fluffy answer to get them past the question.    "Day three-three-seven, Sandy. I pissed off a Major who sent me out with an LRRP unit. Things kinda went to hell on us that day."    Doc Adams asked, "LRRP? I've heard that term before. You were in a war?"    I gave her a wry look and nodded. "Hell, yes, it was a war, Doc. That's a 'Long Range Recon Patrol'. Who does LRRP's when there isn't a war on? 'Over hill, over dale, we will hit the jungle trails.' Could have been worse, though. I made it back. We were on a four-day hike to locate the enemy because all the usual sources couldn't or wouldn't verify reports. We found them. Well, no, actually, they found us. We ran into half a dozen patrols near evening of the second day out. They shot the shit out of us and we got split up. I was with two other guys, but they didn't make it."    "You were the only one who made it back?"    "No, two others from another group made it, too. Three out of twenty-four guys pulled from four units."    In a quiet tone, Adams asked, "Just three..?"    I've always wondered why civilians ask these questions. They never know how to handle the answers. Doc Adams was no different. She masked her startlement by switching the subject slightly.    Clearing her throat, she asked, "What does the three-three-seven mean?"    I laughed shortly. "Only that I wasn't supposed to be out there. Day 337 of 365. I had less than a month to go and I wasn't supposed to be putzing around in the woods, but the new Major had a mean temper and thought he was God's baby brother or something. He wasn't very popular around the base. As I understand it, one of the guys who made it back rolled a grenade into his office. That's unofficial, of course. The only thing on record is that the Major blew up one night real soon after that recon and somebody was handing out his stash of booze before they hauled him out of his office."    Adams recoiled slightly, putting her hand to her throat. "You didn't...?"    I grinned. "No, but I'd say that anyway, wouldn't I?"    Sandy reached to poke me in the chest with her finger. "Let her up, Ed. She just fixed your leg."    I pulled the cover back and saw a cold pack draped over my knee, which appeared to be swollen to almost twice normal size and one big bruise.    Doc Adams said, "It'll be two weeks or so before you can trust it. Take it easy with it. Very easy. If you get out of bed while you're here, hop wherever you're going." She gazed at me for a moment and added with a smile, "And just because you're you, I guess I should tell you to do your hopping on the other leg. This one."    Her hand lightly slapped my other knee. Sandy snickered.    I gave Adams a sickly smile and said, "Ha. Ha. That's all you get. Stick to your day job, Doc. You aren't ready for comedy clubs yet."    Sandy said, "Give it up, Ed. She got you. Now we're going to leave you here to suffer in solitary silence while we talk about you in her office."    I shrugged. "Okay. If I think you've told her too much, though, I'll tell her what I know about you, so be nice."    Adams said, "Your backpack is in the night table and your book is in it. If you get a headache, that will be your concussion talking to you, so stop reading and take a nap."    "Got it. Headache. Stop reading. Nap. But I think I'll wait 'till you're gone before I write those instructions down, ma'am."    As the ladies left the room, I let myself lie back carefully and noted minor agonies in other spots from the motion. I didn't want to think about how I'd feel when the general anaesthetic wore off completely, so I reached for my bag and fished out my book, "I, Claudius", and continued from the paperclipped page.    Doc Adams had been right. Half a dozen pages later, I had a headache and my left eye didn't want to focus on the letters. Placing the book face down to hold the page, I let myself drift into sleep. Indexes to my other articles and ebooks may be found on my websites: Abintra Press! and