Gustav Hasford - The Phantom Blooper

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to the three million veterans of the Viet Nam War, three million loyal men and women who were betrayed by their country.

Last week members of a marine reconnaissance patrol told of a skirmish fought with an enemy unit near the town of Phu Bai. Among the Viet Cong killed was the apparent leader of the guerrilla band a slender young Caucasian with long brown hair.

The young white man was wearing a shabby green uniform with a red sash tied across his chest. In his hands was an AK-47, the Soviet -designed automatic weapon used by North Vietnamese regulars.

The Marines are convinced that the guerrilla leader was an American, a Marine enlisted man who has been carried as missing in action since 1965.

In the past few months, they add, they have received a number of reports of Americans operating with Viet Cong units in the Phu Bai area.

NEWSWEEK, August 12, 1968

The loss of reason in war seems to me honorable, like the death of a sentry at his post.

Leonid Andreyev, The Red Laugh

I think that history will record that this may have been one of Americas finest hours.

Richard Milhous Nixon

President of the United States

July 30, 1969

Saigon, South Vietnam

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Somewhere out behind a black wall of monsoon rain and beyond our wire, the Phantom Blooper laughs.

I laugh too.

Naked except for a pearl-gray Stetson bearing a black-and-white peace button, I rise up from my bed of wet clay in the bottom of a slit trench. I climb, scuttling like a crab, to the top of a sandbagged bunker. Mud-soaked and shivering, I hunker down. I listen. Holding my breath, I listen and I wait, afraid to breathe.

I grunt. I stand up, ramrod straight. I tuck my chin into my Adams apple and I strut to the edge of the bunker top, fists-on-hips like a Parris Island Drill Instructor.

I say, LISTEN UP, MAGGOT! I do an about-face. March back, about-face again. Looking sharp, standing tall, lean and mean. DO YOU WANT TO LIVE FOREVER?

Im a stone-cold comedian yelling punch lines into No Mans Land. It's a midnight comedy show in the last days of Khe Sanh. I am show business for the shadow-things that crawl and slither out in the darkness beyond our wire. At any moment forty thousand heavily-armed, opium-crazed Communist individuals can come in screaming from out of the swirling fog.

I say, DAMN THE TORPEDOES, FULL SPEED AHEAD! I HAVE NOT YET BEGUN TO FIGHT! GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH! DON'T TREAD ON ME! SEND MORE CONG! SEND MORE CONG!

I wait for a reply. I listen. But nothing happens.

I pick up a broken broom handle. On one end of the broom handle is nailed a ragged pair of red silk pantiesMaggies Drawers. I lift the broom handle and I wave the red silk panties back and forth like a battle flag.

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The only sounds from beyond the wire are creaking frogs and the drumming of the monsoon rain.

I throw down Maggies Drawers. Then, with both hands, I give the Phantom Blooper the finger.

Midnight. The hawk is out. Ghosts are out.

The winter monsoon is blowing so hard that it is raining sideways. Meanwhile, the silence beyond the rumble of the rain is growing larger.

I sit down in an old aluminum lawn chair on top of an abandoned perimeter bunker at Khe Sanh. Cold bullets of monsoon rain wash mud from my body. With my battered pearl-gray Stetson shielding my face, I lean back and get comfortable. My right hand is touching the wet metal of a field radio under my chair.

Between my bare feet is an M-60 machine gun set up on its bipod legs. I pick up my long black killing tool. It makes me feel less naked when I hold it.

A smooth feed might save my life, so I adjust the heavy belt of clean golden bullets. Every fifth round is a red-tipped tracer. When I am one hundred percent satisfied that there are no kinks in the belt, I slam the feed cover down hard and jack a round in the chamber. Happiness is a belt-fed weapon.

The Phantom Bloopers laughs, a cold black laugh.

Maybe if I ignore the Phantom Bloopers he'll go away. If you try to debate philosophical issues with the Phantom Blooper, and lose the debate, well, he just comes right up and kills your ass. The Phantom Blooper has never talked to me and I am very disappointed. I could use the distraction of stimulating conversation. Life at Khe Sanh has always been tired but wired. Now that the siege has been lifted we need something to keep our mind occupied because boredom makes us think too much.

Meanwhile, the Phantom Blooper comes every night and the suspense is killing me.

At Khe Sanh Combat Base in Quang Tri Province in the Republic of Viet Nam, the United States Marine Corps has sometimes lacked grace under pressure, but we have stuck it out, just the same. We have burrowed into this dead hill like

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maggots. We have clung to the burned edge of reality and we have not let go.

This is it, the big game. The championship. The Super Bowl. This is the biggest game of your life and you're playing it for keeps. You're playing with the black ball. A sudden move at the wrong time could be your last. A slow move at the wrong time could be your last. And not moving at all could be fatal.

The grunts of Khe Sanh hate the Phantom Blooper but we need him very much. In Viet Nam you've got to hate something or you will lose your mind.

There are a lot of stories about the Phantom Blooper.

Below Phu Bai the Phantom Blooper is a black Marine Lieutenant who inspects defensive positions at bridge security compounds. The next night, they get hit.

North of Hue City the Phantom Blooper is a salt and pepper team of snuffy grunts who guide the Marine patrols into L-shaped ambushes set by the Viet Cong.

Force Recon claims a probable kill for shooting the Phantom Blooper in the Ashau Valley. The Phantom Blooper was a round-eye, tall and white, with blond hair, wearing black pajamas and a red headband, and armed with a folding-stock AK-47 assault rifle. Recon swears thatand this is no shitthe round-eyed Victor Charlie was the honcho, the leader, of the gook patrol.

The Phantom Blooper started visiting Khe Sanh the night after the siege was lifted by Operation Pegasus. But only one Marine at Khe Sanh has ever seen the Phantom Blooper's face.

There was no moon that night, but one of our scout snipers had the Phantom Blooper targeted in a starlight scope. As he sighted in, the scout sniper described the Phantom Blooper's face to his spotter. In midsentence the scout sniper went plain fucking crazy.

When they medevaced the scout sniper at dawn the next morning, he still had not said another word.

The Phantom Blooper has many names. The White Cong. Super-Charlie. The American VC. Moon Cusser. The Round

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Eyed Victor Charlie. White Charlie. Americong. Yankee Avenger.

But whatever name we use, we all know in our hearts the true identity of the Phantom Blooper. He is the dark spirit of our collective bad consciences made real and dangerous. He once was one of us, a Marine. He knows what we think. He knows how we operate. He knows how Marines fight and what Marines fear.

The Phantom Blooper is a Marine defector who deals in payback. Slack is one word the Phantom Blooper does not understand.

Like his Viet Cong comrades, the Phantom Blooper is a hard-core night fighter. When the day turns black and the sun goes down, everything beyond our wire is overrun by the Viet Cong, one more time. Every time the sun goes down, we lose the war.

Every night, the Phantom Blooper is on deck, armed with a blooperan M-79 grenade launcher. The Phantom Blooper attacks without warning from out of the darkness, the one incorruptible bearer of the one unendurable truth.