Personal Narrative: My First Vietnam War

I am a “boot” adjusting to my new life in kilo company, and corporal has recently returned from a nasty deployment in iraq. He says that he is my father and that he knows what’s best. he kicks sand at me while i am timed to see how fast i can pick up all the yellow cigarette butts he dumped on the floor to “fix” my attention to detail and remind me of my ignorance, as he yells, “you are going to war soon, and I won’t be there to babysit you!” During the deployment workups in the states, we spent weeks patrolling, looking for something that we knew wasn’t real. Digging into defensive positions and waiting the night out for an enemy we knew would never come. Spending rainy nights in muddy holes, fearing what our leaders might do to us if we fell asleep. Firing machine guns, shooting rifles and launching grenades at little green targets…. All of it was just training ops.
Rifles click rounds into place up and down the patrol, minesweeper in hand, we exit the wire. It’s like a ritual that we have taken part in hundreds of times. Load a magazine into the well, tap it in, and pull the charging handle to the rear. Release the charging handle and the bolt leaves the buffer spring where it is guided over the magazine well. On its way to the chamber the bolt grabs a 5.56 Round and slams it home. It’s a moment of mechanical