With Fusner boosting me from behind I got out of the hole I’d taken refuge in. The Gunny’s words had bitten hard, and I wished he hadn’t said them in front of Fusner but there was nothing to be done for it. It was hard to leave the protection of the wet muddy redoubt, dug as a refuge against a deadly outside world. The hole was the only respite I’d had since arriving in country, except for the under-runway cave carved out by the river so many days and nights in the past. That under-the-runway place, with the brief period of time I had there was all that had passed for sleep since I could remember. It seemed as if it existed only in some half-forgotten dream. But the Gunny was right again. I watched him walk away, toward the Marines getting ready to follow the details of my latest plan. I would not be coming out of the A Shau, if I ever did, resembling the young nubile and dumb-as-an-ox young man I’d been when I entered. I moved toward the edge of the jungle, not far from the burned-out wreck of the truck Tex had brought with him to support the Ontos. The site of the low-slung little monster of multiple-barrel recoilless fire reminded me of how ticklish our current situation was. The machine could not be left unattended, so there would have been no moving the whole company down the valley to get Kilo across even if I hadn’t modified the plan.

The Gunny came to where Zippo, Nguyen, Fusner and I were huddled near the jungle’s edge getting ready to begin the operation.