Going After Cacciato by Tim O’Brien Read Free Book Online Page B

played against the screened windows. Outside, far up the hill, stood a tall tower, and, behind it, the sandbagged tactical operations center. Down the hill ran a gravel road along which thevarious company areas sprawled, six in all—Headquarters, Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, and Echo. The 5th Battalion, 46th Infantry. Farther down the hill was the wired perimeter, bunkers, a steel-mesh gate draped with a hand-printed sign reading THE PROFESSIONALS. Beyond the gate was flat paddy. Beyond the paddies were mountains.
    Yes, at peace, warm and wet inside, and he watched the flies and the clean sky and a black man raking trash and two officers moving slowly up the road.
    At peace, he read what was written on the shitter’s walls.
So short
, it was written,
I just fell through the fucking hole
. Below that,
Better off where you at
. Others, he read—On
Gator, the wind don’t blow, it sucks
, and in a different hand,
So does PFC Prawn, when he gets the urge
. Another,
Where am I?
And beneath it,
If you don’t know, better climb out before I drown your ass
. Names, dates, residue.
Hapstein’s queer … No, man, Hapstein’s just good fun … I’m so short, I’m gone—this is my answering service … Cacciato … Brilliant, ain’t he?
    Paul Berlin took out a pencil.
    Very carefully, he wrote:
I’m so short, I can’t see the forest for the trees
.
       When PFC Paul Berlin joined the First Platoon of Alpha Company on June 11, 1968, he found three squads manned by twelve, ten, and eight soldiers.
    The squads were led by two PFCs and a buck sergeant, Oscar Johnson.
    There were no fireteams, no SOPs for tactical maneuvers or covering fire. There was no FO. There was no platoon sergeant. Doc Peret was the only medic, and his training was at best eccentric.
    The platoon leader, Lieutenant Sidney Martin, was almost as new to the war as Paul Berlin. His intelligence and training were clearly above average, but his wisdom was in doubt from the very beginning. He died in Lake Country—World’s Greatest LakeCountry, Doc Peret kept calling it—and after him came a much older lieutenant, Corson, who though only average in intelligence and training and wisdom, was a platoon leader the men could finally love. He took no chances, he wasted no lives. The war, for which he was much too old, scared him.
       They were organized around personalities, specialties of knowledge, and tradition. They were also organized around superstition.
    It was not rank so much as superstition, for example, that made Oscar Johnson leader of the Third Squad. He was a sergeant, true. But he held that rank because he’d survived nearly nine months in the bush. Nine was a lucky number. And the coincidence of it, Paul Berlin learned, was the peculiar fact that Oscar Johnson knew very little about surviving. They were organized around luck.
    Stink Harris walked point because he prided himself on his scouting abilities. Eddie Lazzutti carried the radio because he prided himself on his voice. They were organized around pride.
    They were organized also around principles of trust. Ben Nystrom, who later left the war and wrote no letters, carried the radio until he could not be trusted with it, at which point Eddie was given the trust. Jim Pederson, in many ways the most trusted of all, was given the responsibility for triggering ambushes, and so the ambush formations were always organized around Jim Pederson.
    Disobedience was sometimes organized and sometimes not.
    When First Lieutenant Sidney Martin persisted in making them search tunnels before blowing them, and after Frenchie Tucker and Bernie Lynn died in tunnels, the disobedience became fully organized.
       They were often organized around Standard Operating Procedures. The SOPs were of two sorts, formal and informal.
    Formally, it was SOP to search tunnels before blowing them.Informally, it was SOP to blow the tunnels and move on, without a search, without risking life. Lieutenant Sidney Martin,