Michael Malone - Weebly

today. Heat? He thought about standing off beside the
roadway near Da Nang while somebody tried to fix an
M-48 tank the VC had mined; a soldier near him had
gone crazy with sunstroke. His flushed, dry skin having
reached 109 degrees, he had collapsed into a coma and
had died before the medics could land their helicopter,
much less try to get his temperature down. They had
said it was just as well; his brains had already burst.
In the end the tank had to be abandoned anyhow.
Like the rest. All that shining metal superfluity of
affluence that by our willingness to spend it should have
subdued any enemy, littered in the bright, hot, orange
and green landscape; machinery lost, thrown away,
used up as fast as Connecticut, among other builders,
could make it—as if shooting up useless flares in manic
frustration, or firing clip after clip at dead Viet Cong out
of the sullen boredom of despair, would rid everyone of
the war and so of guilt that much sooner. Henry had not
known how many thousands of dollars it cost to
support and supply him each day in Vietnam, nor would
he have cared. It was all to him bullshit, a total waste.
He still wore the boots. They had lasted.