8/16/2023 0 Comments More love tim obrien tab![]() ![]() Eddie Keating, the Times photographer whose pictures accompany this text, tucks his portion between cheek and gum, where it She executes a polite wiping motion and it's over for her. Kate has the good fortune to find a Kleenex. Do not forget: our hosts are among the maimed and widowed and orphaned, the bombed and rebombed, the recipients of white phosphorus, the tenders of graves. The elders bow and execute chewing motions. I have eaten herring I have enjoyed herring. Promises, and nudges Kate, and smiles a heartbreaking betel-nut smile. "Number one chop-chop," an old woman says, a wrinkled, gorgeous, protective, scarred, welcoming old woman. The elders shoo them away, but the shooing doesn't do much. The village elders invite us to a feast, a picnic of sorts, where we take seats before a low lacquered table at an outdoor shrine. Z GATOR, FEBRUARY 1994 - By chance, Kate and I have arrived in Nuoc Man on a day of annual commemoration, a day when the graves of the local warĭead are blessed and repaired and decorated and wept over. For me, with one eye on these smooth yellow pills, the world must be written about as it is or not written about at all. But who knows? Maybe a little blunt human truth will send you off to church, or to confession, or inside yourself. InĪny case, these thoughts are probably too intimate, too awkward and embarrassing for public discussion. My own fault, Kate would say, and she would be mostly right. She's with another man, seven blocks away. I returned to Vietnam with a woman whose name is Kate, whom I adored and have since lost. I sit in my underwear at this unblinking fool of a computer and try to wrap words around a few horrid truths. We should've bombed these people with love.ĪMBRIDGE, MASS., JUNE 1994 - Last night suicide was on my mind. nicknamesĪn elderly woman, perhaps in her late 70's, tugs at my shirt and says, "My name Mama-san."ĭear God. Another says, "Flower." Wendy and Flower: G.I. In a strange way, the occasion has the feel of a reunion - happy faces, much bowing. Le Hoai Phuong, I'm told that I am the first American soldier to return to this place in the 24 years Maybe 200 people trail along, gawking and chattering, the children reaching out to touch our skin. T the foot of Gator, along Highway 1, the little hamlet of Nuoc Man is going bonkers over our arrival here. You'd think there would be something left, some faint imprint, but LZ (Landing Zone) Gator has been utterly and foreverĮrased from the earth. Now I stand in this patch of weeds, looking down on what used to be the old Alpha barracks. Spooky, evil places where the land itself could kill you. The time we filled a nasty lieutenant's canteen with mosquito repellent the sounds of choppers and artillery fire the slow dread that began building as word spread that in a day or two we'd be heading back to the bush. Miniskirts and high leather boots - then afterward we'd troop back to the Alpha barracks for some letter writing or boozing or just a good night's sleep. In the evenings, there were outdoor movies and sometimes live floor shows - pretty Korean girls breaking our hearts in their spangled By day, we'd fill sandbags or pull bunker guard. The real war, it seemed, was in another solar system. We could feel our fists uncurl, the pressures approaching normal. In flat-out celebration, purely alive, taking pleasure in our own biology, kidneys and livers and lungs and legs, all in their proper alignments. With a little weed and a lot of beer, we would spend the days of stand-down Glossy pinup girls, big, black Sony tape decks booming "We gotta get out of this place" at decibels for the deaf. There were hot showers and hot meals, ice chests packed with beer, ![]() Maybe once a month, for three or four days at a time, Alpha Company would return to Gator for stand-down, where we took our comforts behind a perimeter of bunkers and concertina wire. No paddies bubbling with machine-gun fire. Not safe, exactly, but far preferable to the bush. I remember a tar helipad, a mess hall, a medical station, mortar and artillery emplacements, two volleyball courts, numerous barracks and offices and supplyĭepots and machine shops and entertainment clubs. Infantry Brigade, LZ Gator was home to 700 or 800 American soldiers, mostly grunts. ![]() A forward firebase for the Fifth Battalion of the 46th Infantry, 198th Back then, the place seemed huge and imposing and permanent. on this lonely little hill in Quang Ngai Province. In February 1969, 25 years ago, I arrived as a young, terrified pfc. Maybe that's what happened - the wind sucked it all away. On Gator, we used to say, the wind doesn't blow, it sucks. Not a sandbag, not a nail or a scrap of wire. Z GATOR, VIETNAM, FEBRUARY 1994 - I'm home, but the house is gone. ![]()
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