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“It don’t mean nothing, Sarge,” the kid said looking up at me. His eyes weren’t focused. I didn’t think he could see me. But his head was all right; the hole was in his chest. His fatigue jacket was stiff and matted from blood, which wasn’t running anymore. It was just soaked up into his uniform and jacket.
“No, it don’t mean nothing, Paschal,” I said, looking down at his head in my lap. The corpsman was fiddling around his wound, but he was just going through the motions. He couldn’t do anything. The kid was bleeding to death in my arms.
Private Matthew Benjamin Paschal, US Army, 18 years old, late of Dexter’s Landing, Louisiana, was never going to see Louisiana again. He was going to die thousands of miles from Louisiana in a dirty, humid jungle for a reason he did not understand. “It don’t mean nothing,” he said again, and I got the feeling he was checking to see if he could still talk. He’d been in my platoon only a month, barely time to learn the phrase, much less to understand its meaning. Most of us said, “It don’t mean nothing,” because it meant too damn much. It was a phrase that tied us together in the futility of our lives, reassuring one another that all the pain, the suffering, the stupidity, the dying didn’t mean anything.
Today’s mission had been a boondoggle, a walk in the park. We just went out to check around the perimeter, just to look for evidence that nobody was around, that nobody was checking us out. We didn’t expect to see anybody; and even if we did, we expected them to run like hell. We weren’t really looking for a fight, and we didn’t expect to find anyone willing to fight in the daylight.
We’d been out a couple of hours. My biggest problem had been to get these guys to take the mission seriously. They were kidding around, bullshitting, playing grabass. “Come on, you guys, pay attention to what you’re doing,” I said. “You know, I’ve got to have something to tell the colonel when he debriefs me this afternoon.”
I’d barely gotten those words out of my mouth when we all heard a single “pop” from somewhere above us. We all dropped to the ground and lay still listening. Nothing. “Anybody know where that came from?” I asked.
Nobody said anything. Then another “pop” came from just behind me. “I got him, Sarge!” shouted McCaskill, “I got him!”
“What?” I asked.
“I got him. It was a sniper, right up there. I saw him moving, I got him.”
“Okay,” I said. “Smitty, take Mac and a couple other guys and check it out.” Corporal Smith picked his detail and moved out.
“Everybody else okay?” I asked.
“I think the kid’s hit,” said PFC Jones, “he ain’t moving.”
I made my way back to the kid, knelt beside him, and took his face between my hands. “Hey, kid, can you hear me?” I asked.
He opened his eyes and sort of smiled, “Is that you, Sarge? I can’t see too well. I think I got something in my eye.”
I sat down on the ground and took his head into my lap. “Just be still,” I said, “I’m going to have the medic look at you.”
“It don’t mean nothing, Sarge,” he said.
Smitty and his detail found the sniper. He was dead. McCaskill had nailed him clean, a good shot.
The kid still looked up at me, blinking and trying to focus his eyes. “How long’s this going to take, Sarge?” he asked.
I wasn’t sure what he was really asking, but I said, “Not much longer. Take it easy. The war will wait for you.”
“You know, Sarge, when this thing is over, you ought to come down to Dexter’s Landing and see how real people live. You been in the Army too long. You probably forgot all that.”
“Yeah, you might be right, kid. I probably need a break from this one of these days.”
“You come on down to Dexter’s Landing. Meet my folks. I’ll show you around. Lots to do for a small town.”
“I’m sure it’s great. I might just take you up on that, kid. First though, we got to get this out of the way.”
“Nah, it don’t mean nothing,” he said. He still had that little smile on his face, but he didn’t seem to be trying to focus his eyes anymore. Slowly, they closed like he was dozing off, and he lay still.
I looked over at the medic, he shook his head slowly. I looked down at the kid, quiet, peaceful, like he was asleep. And I thought about the folks in Dexter’s Landing.
The colonel, Lieutenant Colonel Bradley J. Edgerton, our battalion commander, prided himself on being a soldier’s soldier, on relating to the men. While the normal protocol was for the platoon sergeants to brief mission results to their company commanders and the company commanders to brief the battalion commander, Lt Col Edgerton insisted upon being briefed personally by the platoon sergeants. Oftentimes, he also called in squad leaders or even ordinary grunts to tell him about missions. Even though this caused a little confusion in the ranks and made him a bit of a joke with the men, it made him feel good.
Dutifully, I reported for the afternoon battalion commander’s debriefing on the day of the recon patrol that got the kid killed. When it was my turn, I told the colonel about the area we covered. He nodded his head. I told him we found no real evidence of significant enemy activity in the area. He continued nodding. And then I told him we lost one man to a sniper and my men had killed the sniper. He nodded more vigorously, like this was a positive result. “So you got the sniper, huh, Sergeant. Good! You know, if you lost only one man, you had a good day.” When he said those words, I cracked. I punched him full in the face, and he crumpled to the floor.
They tell me I’m lucky I’m not in Leavenworth right now, and I guess they’re right. Of course my 18-year Army career was shot, but that was okay. I couldn’t do that anymore anyway. Fact is, since that day in the jungle, I don‘t know what I can do. I’m on my way now to Dexter’s Landing hoping I can find out, hoping I can do somebody there some good. The kid told me I needed to see how real people live. I think he may have been right.
©2004 StoriesByEmail.com
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