Martin E Silenus [Silenus - The Horror

THE HORROR

Book Three

The Vietnam Trilogy

By

Martin E. Silenus

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Martin E. Silenus

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Chapter 1: Firebase Foxtrot

C lunk...pop...hiss , Clunk...pop...hiss.

WHAM, WHAM, WHAM, WHAM, WHAM ...

Ya muthafuckas...

WHAM, WHAM, WHAM, WHAM, WHAM ...

Take that ya muthafuckas... die you cocksucking bastards!

2:43 am, bathed in sweat, partially stoned, partially drunk, partially awake, the parameter sentries firing flares, the heavy slapping concussion of a .50 caliber machine gun killing shadows...or not.

Distortion...yes...no, social distortion...no, no, reality distortion...yes, reality distortion...so violently, horribly distorted!

Hendrickss guitar howls from Roselers hooch, scuse me while I kiss the sky, sounds, and notes bent, stretched and distorted. Thats what it is ... some form of unrecognized reality hell with the devil himself leaning on the whammy bar, distorting, stretching, bending, howling!!

The Devil screaming and laughing...blood red Fender guitar...howling!

What do you cling to when reality is so distorted you cannot recognize it anymore? What and where are your pillars of sanity which hold up your world? Death, destruction, carnage, mayhem, and insanity in all directions striking at any time. Explosions, fire, shattered bodies, body parts littering the camp. The stench of blood, shit, piss, and fear gagging! How do you rationalize and cope with this fucking horror? Where is there any form of sanity I can please, please christ, please cling to?

Hang on Hud my love, please hang on, believe in us, I hear Darias voice in my mind. I feel her calming presence...!

Firebase Foxtrot, Vietnam, fifty clicks from Pleiku, on the edge of the La Drang Valley, real close to Cambodia. Less than two acres on top of a high hill stripped of vegetation, all red dirt, with a collection of dirty bunkers and ratty sandbags surrounded by coiled razor wire and minefields. The epiphany of hells asshole!

Our happy little home, with rats in the bunkers scurrying around in the shadows and the dark corners. Still it does offer some degree of protection with the sandbags and the proximity of fellow grunts. And the choppers coming and going gave us a false sense of being connected into the rest of the world. Not like being out in the jungle just you and your spotter for days trying to stay alive against the insects, reptiles, predators, to get one damn shot and then fade away like smoke.

My name is Gunnery Staff Sergeant Hudson (Hud) Reynolds, 24 years old, Marine sniper, ho-yah, 35 confirmed gook kills. We snipe in teams of two, a spotter and a shooter. I shoot a tick better, so P-man spots. Corporal Phoenix (P-man) Wall is a good lad, solid as the day is long, good man to have at your back, a Canadian volunteer. Were short timers, less than two weeks left in our rotation.

It is very hard for me to talk about this, or P-man either for that matter. We suppress the whole fucking horror show and work hard to push it into the back corners of our minds and desperately strive to lock it up so it cannot get free to torment us. We are only partially successful.

I suppose in retrospect we all feared this type of tragedy might happen. What the hell options did the villagers have really? The Cong came and went at will and hid supplies and weapons in the villages. If the villagers did not like it they were shot. So what choice did they have? Then we would come along and find the weapons stash and demand to know who of the villagers were Cong, when in fact none of them were. And we were not exactly gentle in our interrogation techniques. If the interrogations went bad and we did not get answers we liked, the villager would be shot. What the fuck could they do, the poor buggers were caught in the middle and shot either way.

So statistically you just knew it was only a matter of time until the devil got his way and a village was massacred. You just fucking knew it was a combination of the right tension and stress level and some little trigger to set the whole horror show off. But we had no idea we were going to be right in the middle of it.

Chapter 2: Bien Ho

B ien Ho was a Vietnamese village about a click away from our firebase. Bien Ho was what it was named as best we could tell, although it seemed to have other names as well depending on which of the villagers you were attempting to talk to. Our interpreter explained it was not unusual for a village to have several names as the generations of villagers lived and died there. It was a lovely little place, close to a stream deep in the jungle, so nice and green and cool under the jungle canopy, a great spot to go in the shade and rest. We became quite close to the villagers. Although the elders, while they smiled and nodded, were not quite as convinced of our good intentions as the younger villagers were. The children were beautiful wide eyed innocents hopping around and we would give them gum under the disapproving eyes of the parents. Of course the parents really enjoyed our cigarettes. We would sit and smoke together and watch the children play. The happy kids remind us of our lives before this fucked up war. Their innocence and enthusiasm make us feel calm and energized. Perhaps this is why we fight this war, for the kids. The war seemed very far away. We had never found anything of any military interest in Bien Ho.

One of the guys had managed to get hold of a soccer ball when he was in Saigon on R & R and he brought it to the village children. Fuck, what a wonderful commotion of excitement it caused. We set up some sticks for goal posts and played soccer with the kids all afternoon. They had never seen a soccer ball before and were in great awe of how they could kick it without hurting their feet. It was a wondrous object to them. Some of our lads had played a little soccer so they showed the boys some moves for handling the soccer ball. By the time we left they had a basic idea of the game and how to control the ball. Kids of all ages from toddlers up to 10 or 11 years old laughing, giggling hysterically and running after the ball. No teenagers though, sadly I suppose they were off fighting us in some other corner of the jungle.

The elders did not seem to approve at first and were pretty stiff about the whole thing. But the glee of the children won the women over first and soon the men were watching and laughing along with everyone else. Happiness is very contagious and at times like this we could forget for a while the horror of the war and why we were there.