Read War Year for Free Online Page A

and saw three stripes. Buck-sergeant.
    â€œJust gettin’ a little shut-eye, Sarge. Training’s over for the day.”
    â€œTrainin’ might be over, but work ain’t over. Yer on my sandbag detail.”
    â€œI’m not even in your platoon, Sarge.”
    â€œWhat, you givin’ me lip, soljer? Wanna see the captain?”
    I knew when I was licked. I sat up and tried to shake the sleep out of my head. “Where’s your fuckin’ detail?”
    â€œThat’s more like it. Follow me.” We walked out of the billet into the blazing sun. Four men with their shirts off were sitting on a pile of sandbags.
    â€œAwright, goddammit, get to work. Nobody leaves ’til you fill ev’ry fuckin’ one of those bags.”
    I took off my own shirt and joined the group. The sergeant walked off, and a wiry little colored guy handed me a gray burlap sack. Seemed like every other guy in Vietnam was Negro.
    â€œHere, you hold for a while. I’ll dig.”
    â€œSuits.” I held the bag open and he dumped a shovelful of dirt into it. “How’d you get on this detail?”
    â€œSame as these other guys. We got some Cokes at the Class-Six store and came back to drink ’em—found a nice cool bunker, then that asshole of a buck-sergeant found us.”
    â€œYeah,” said another guy with an Alabama drawl. “This fuckin’ army—we gotta spend all day fillin’ sandbags we’ll never get t’use.”
    â€œI don’t know,” I said. “We might be behind ’em tonight.”
    â€œMight. Might not. How’d he get aholt of you?”
    â€œJust tryin’ to get some sleep.”
    The Alabama boy kicked his shovel in deep and leaned on it. “This goddamn fuckin’ army. Charlie keeps ya awake all night and the fuckin’ sergeants won’t let ya catch up in the day.”
    It went on like that for several hours. We wound up putting empty sandbags inside the ones we were filling—otherwise we never would’ve gotten through. Guess it was about four when we put the shovels back in a shed and went our separate ways. I was going to hide somewhere and catch a nap, but first I checked the billet. There were a dozen guys snoring away inside, so I said the hell with it and went to my bunk and flopped. I didn’t even wake up for chow.
    The next morning we went out to a rifle range and learned how to use an M-16. Some of the guys had them in Basic Training, but most of us hadn’t ever shot one before. The stock and grip are hollow fiberglass, so the gun’s really light, as light as my .22 at home. But it can really shoot ’em up—put the selector on AUTO and hold down the trigger, and eighteen bullets come out all at once. We learned how to zero them in so the bullets went about where you aimed, and spent the rest of the time murdering tin cans.
    In the afternoon we learned how to use explosives. That was kind of interesting, since, being a combat engineer, I’m supposed to know all about them. But I was on KP all the time we’d studied explosives in training, so it was all new.
    â€œThese are the things you’re gonna be using most often.” The guy teaching the class was a Spec/5 not much older than me.
    â€œTNT.” He held up a block about half the size of a brick, covered with green paper.
    â€œC-4 plastic explosive.” It looked like an overgrown piece of taffy, a white rubbery stick about a foot long.
    â€œDet cord, detonation cord.” Looked just like plastic clothesline.
    â€œTime fuse.” Looked like the det cord, but orange.
    â€œAnd, of course, blasting caps.” Skinny silver tube.
    â€œMostly you’re gonna use the C-4, because the TNT doesn’t work too well if it gets wet. And everything gets wet during the monsoon season.
    â€œNow here’s all you have to do, to make a big noise. First you take the crimpers”—he held up a