Chapter 13
The platoon reforms and gets set to move inland again.
The trail has become full of haphazard twists and turns,
with holes bulging with rain and unexpected rises and declines
and mud that tries to suck the bottoms from shoes.
It has narrowed perceptibly and grown more lush and untidy
as though wearied of the constant chore of keeping house
against the encroachments of a careless and unruly jungle family.
You doubt if there will be danger from snipers now,
because an overhead maze of leafage shuts out the light
and visibility is reduced to the scrubby gorse under foot
and to the slim bamboo shoots striking at your face.
Your hearing is dimmed, for the dense vegetation absorbs sound,
but you are aware of the smells of rotting plants,
the odor of game and the musky aroma of earth.
This is the home of the wallaby, phalanger and echidna
and other fauna you have never even heard of before.
There is a bird that sounds like a demented man
banging two blocks of wood together in a moronic cacophony,
and there is another that cries like a dog barking.
Here's where fruit-bats and reptiles of all shapes and sizes
establish a free government for themselves and
for their posterity. . .
And did you know that a cassowary resembles an emu?
A man five yards ahead halts and raises his arm.
The soldier in front of you performs a similar gesture
and you carry the signal back in the same way.
You turn to Ivey and ask him what's going on
and he says that he is a stranger here himself.
The men stand in a single column, at close intervals,
patiently, as though they had all the time there is.
Close your eyes and you might be in line anywhere.
It might be a chow formation or a supply line
or a payroll line or a line for cholera inoculations
or a line waiting for a bus out of camp
or any of those interminable lines you experienced during training.
The Army taught you to wait in line like this
and developed the techniques to a fine art, a science.
You have been conditioned through months of waiting to believe
that nothing can happen to you while standing in line.
That's all it ever is — waiting, waiting, waiting — either at
the front or at base areas and doing odd jobs
and wondering why you are doing them, and thinking of
the utter ridiculousness of the whole situation and thinking of
home and of people you know and want to be
with again and people you don't know yet but can't
get away from. It's all people, people, people. There are
people you love and people you fight with and people
you stand in line behind. And yet it's people you
intend to kill or who will kill you if the
opportunity comes. Why in hell can't people just be people?
The column winds forward again and you wonder what's up.
Quickly the good news flits backward from man to man.
The command post just ahead. . .Assembly positions
mmmhave been reached. . .
Defenses established. . .The first and second echelons
mmmalready digging in. . .
No, don't think of it in terms of mission accomplished.
It's just a break, a respite, a chance to relax. . .
And your feelings lift in a rising barometer of relief.
The trail flows reluctantly into a sabana, ringed with trees
And miraculously free of banyan and broom and thorny creepers
And it's full of a thousand carbon copies of yourself.
"A good soldier doesn't have to rest. He can simulate."
