Now listen up, you bunch of shit-flinging monkeys. I am tired of hearing caterwauling about how slowly I back out of my space at the Post Exchange. I’m not about to claim that it isn’t true. What I am saying is this: I earned the right to back out in the manner and speed of my choosing, and to do so without hearing a bunch of unblooded virgins mewl about it.

You’re, what, in your twenties? You know what I was doing when I was your age? I was sucking muddy ice off the lip of my foxhole on Hill 264 because I’d run out of water the morning before, and had already drank all my dead buddies’ canteens dry. My commander and platoon leader were both dead, my platoon sergeant had been put on an ambulance with half his leg and ass blown off, and they had made my buddy Joe the acting company commander.

The Topkick was nowhere to be seen, and two days later, after the Big Red One relieved us, we found his body with fourteen slugs and a bayonet in him, his .45 fired dry, surrounded by about a dozen dead slants. We got our first hot meal in two weeks that night (Shit On A Shingle), and I only found a few grubs in it, which was nice. Got some hot coffee too, only on its second brew, and even got to smoke a couple of tailor-mades. A couple of days later we even snuck into the brigade HQ showers and got our first hot water since we’d left Uijeongbu.

That was my life. Over and over for months. Take that hill, hold it, watch your friends die, and then scrounge their food and water and bullets. We had no “Rip-It,” no bootleg Vincent Diesel movies we bought from ragheads, and the closest you got to smelling a white woman’s quim was getting your arm blown off and going to meet the hospital nurses.