Read Going After Cacciato for Free Online Page B

my vote. I say we turn back now.”
    “Tonight?” Eddie said.
    “Now.”
    Oscar ignored him. He held up a hand for quiet. “On the other hand,” he said slowly, “we got certain responsibilities to consider. Catching Cacciato … We got to consider that. The mission is—”
    Harold Murphy made a high mocking sound.
    “Speech, Murph?”
    “No speech. Screw mission, that’s all. I vote we bag it up. It’s nuts. Chasing after the dumb slob, it’s crazy as hell. There’s a word for it.”
    “A word?”
    “Desertion,” Murphy said. “That’s the word. Running off like this, it’s plain desertion. I say we get our butts back to the war before things get worse.”
    Stink Harris cheered. “Murph’s my man! Elect Murphy, by God, and happy days is here again. Let’s—”
    “Cut it.”
    “Vote Irish. Stick a pope in the White House.”
    “Cut it out,” Oscar said. “I don’t need this crap.”
    Harold Murphy studied his hands. “Look,” he said, glancing up at Paul Berlin. “I’m just saying how nutty it is. Running away, that’s what it comes down to. No mission crap. You can’t … you can’t
do
this. Know what I mean? You can’t.”
    The others were quiet.
    “You just can’t. It’s not right.” Murphy shrugged. “So there’s my vote.”
    “More speeches?”
    No one moved.
    “Okay, then,” Oscar said. “Time to cast ballots.”
    It went quickly. Harold Murphy and Eddie voted to turn back. Oscar and Stink and Doc voted to continue.
    “Berlin?”
    “Okay.”
    “Okay what?”
    Paul Berlin looked at Murphy, then looked at the fire. The possibilities were endless.
    “Keep going,” he said. “See what happens.”
    “That’s your vote?”
    “Yes,” Paul Berlin said. “I vote to move on.”
    In the morning, Harold Murphy and his big gun were gone. They continued west without him.

Four
How They Were Organized
    E ven before arriving at Chu Lai’s Combat Center on June 3, 1968, Private First Class Paul Berlin had been assigned by MACV Computer Services, Cam Ranh Bay, to the single largest unit in Vietnam, the Americal Division, whose area of operations, I Corps, constituted the largest and most diverse sector in the war zone. He was lost. He had never heard of I Corps, or the Americal, or Chu Lai. He did not know what a Combat Center was.
    It was there by the sea.
    A staging area, he decided. A place to get acquainted. Rows of tin huts stood neatly in the sand, connected by metal walkways, surrounded on three sides by wire, guarded at the rear by the sea.
    A Vietnamese barber cut his hair.
    A bored master sergeant delivered a re-up speech.
    A staff sergeant led him to a giant field tent for chow, then another staff sergeant led him to a hootch containing eighty bunks and eighty lockers. The bunks and lockers were numbered.
    “Don’t leave here,” said the staff sergeant, “unless it’s to use the piss-tube.”
    Paul Berlin nodded, fearful to ask what a piss-tube was.
       In the morning the fifty new men were marched to a wooden set of bleachers facing the sea. A small, sad-faced corporal in a black cadre helmet waited until they settled down, looking at the recruits as if searching for a lost friend in a crowd. Then the corporal sat down in the sand. He turned away and gazed out to sea. He did not speak. Time passed slowly, ten minutes, twenty, but still the sad-faced corporal did not turn or nod or speak. He simply gazed out at the blue sea. Everything was clean. The sea was clean, and the sand and the wind.
    They sat in the bleachers for a full hour.
    Then at last the corporal sighed and stood up. He checked his wristwatch. Again he searched the rows of new faces.
    “All right,” he said softly. “That completes your first lecture on how to survive this shit. I hope you paid attention.”
       During the days they simulated search-and-destroy missions in a friendly little village just outside the Combat Center. The villagers played along. Always smiling, always