Glossary

1st Sgt.—First sergeant. The senior noncommissioned officer of a company. Handles administration and personnel.

Agent Orange—A powerful chemical defoliant used by U.S. military forces in Operation Ranch Hand during the Vietnam War to destroy forest cover for enemy troops and the crops to feed them. It was named after the orange stripe on the 55-gallon drums. The dioxin in Agent Orange caused serious health problems (death, tumors, birth defects, rashes, psychological symptoms and cancer) in numerous U.S. troops and Vietnamese. Many legal battles arose from the use of Agent Orange.

AK-47—Soviet 7.62 mm caliber magazine-fed assault rifle firing a three-round burst or full-automatic. Standard NVA/VC rifle of the Vietnam War. Has the firepower of a submachine gun and the accuracy and range of a rifle. 10.5 lb loaded.
alpha—The letter "A"
APC—armored personnel carrier designed to carry troops to the battlefield known as The Green Dragon. The M113 was armored, tracked and had a .50 caliber M2 machine gun mounted on top.
ARVN—Army of the Republic of Vietnam aka the South Vietnamese Regular Army

B-40 (bazooka 40 mm) or B-50 (bazooka 50 mm)—North Vietnamese variants of the Russian RPG-2 hand-held antitank grenade rocket launcher.

B-52—Giant US Air Force bomber

battery—an artillery unit consisting of towed or self-propelled howitzers and big guns.

Bellona—Ancient Roman goddess of war, twin sister of Mars, the god of war. She loves to spill blood, especially the foreign kind. She carries a spear, a sword, a shield and a fiery torch while she shouts orders and war-cries over the roar of battle. She's said to bring good luck.
bandolier—a cloth belt slung over the chest with pockets for seven M-16 magazines, each containing 18 rounds of 5.56 mm ammo
BDA—bomb damage assessment
Bird Dog—small, single-engined prop airplane used by forward air controllers and for recon, radio relay and adjusting artillery. See FAC.
bitch box—intercom used to communicate between compartments of a ship or a bullhorn used to communicate to troops on a base.

C-rations—canned or pre-cooked rations

Charlie—U.S. for VC (Viet Cong) or NVA (North Vietnamese Army). Or simply the letter "C"

CIB—combat infantry badge. Award for being under enemy fire in combat. Worn in a designated place on the uniform. Much coveted.
CID—Criminal Investigation Division
click—one kilometer

Cowboys—Saigon's roving gangs of armed Vietnamese teenagers

Cobra—Bell AH-1 Cobra, two blades, single engine attack helicopter aka Huey Cobra

concertina wire—coils of barbed wire used as an obstacle

CP—Command Post or “hole”

CS gas—The main constituent of tear gas. The name is derived from the names of Corson and Stoughton, the scientists who discovered it in 1928. CS has limited effect on animals.

DEROS—date estimated return overseas

det cord—detonating cord, a thin plastic cord filled with PETN, used to connect individual charges and their igniting devices.

Đi đi mau—slang Vietnamese for "go quickly"

Deuce—ubiquitous M35 2 1/2 ton medium truck aka deuce and a half.
DJ—disk jockey
DOD—Department of Defense
Duck—O-2 Skymaster twin propeller reconnaissance plane, the military version of the Cessna 337

Duffel bag—large, cylindrical cloth bag with a drawstring closure at the top used for luggage. The name comes from Duffel, Belgium, where the bag's thick cloth was originally made.

Duster—M42 self-propelled twin 40 mm antiaircraft gun

E-5—the rank and pay grade of a buck sergeant

FAC—forward air controller; a person who coordinates air strikes so they don't injure friendly forces. See Bird Dog.

flechette—literally, "little arrow" or "dart." A steel nail with a vaned tail for stable flight. Delivered in bulk by artillery shells from 105 mm howitzers or tank-mounted 90 mm guns to halt human wave attacks or blast troops in the open.

FNG—Fucking New Guy

frag—fragmentation grenade; assassination of an officer by his own troops, usually by a grenade

grenade—as in pomegranate
gung ho—derived from an Asian word by soldiers in WWII. Overly enthusiastic. Can't wait to rush in and attack.

HE—high explosive

hog—M60

howitzer—a short cannon used to fire shells at medium velocity and relatively high angles.

Huey—Bell UH-1 Iroquois

humping—marching or hiking with a heavy backpack. In general, any heavy work.

IG—Inspector General

J. R.—Jerry R. Olson. We were drafted together and went to Charlie Company together.

Jackson, Bob—fellow squad member from New Jersey

KIA—killed in action
Killer—Sgt. Lyman F. Dunnuck, 3rd squad leader d. 24 Aug 1990
Kit Carson Scouts—program initially created by the Marines to use former combatants as intelligence scouts.
Kuehn, Sam—my fellow squad member

lifer—a term used to ridicule persons committed to a lifetime career in the army that the draftees disliked or disrespected.

LOH—light observation helicopter "Loach"
Log Bird—logistical (resupply) helicopter

Log Pad—logistical (resupply) helicopter landing pad

LRP—pronounced "lurp," Long Range Patrol

Lt.—Lieutenant 
LZ—landing zone. A small, secure clearing for helicopters. Some may become base camps.

M16—Colt 5.56 mm caliber magazine-fed assault rifle firing three-round bursts or full-automatic. Standard U.S. rifle of the Vietnam War. Has the firepower of a submachine gun and the range and accuracy of a rifle. Weighs 8.79 lb fully loaded.

M48A3—The "General Patton" medium tank, the main U.S. battle tank used in Vietnam. 600 were deployed in infantry-support roles, since only a few tank vs. tank battles occurred. Weighs 99,000 lbs. Crew of 4 (commander, gunner, loader, driver). Sports a 90 mm main gun. 750 hp diesel motor, speed 30 mph, range 287 miles.
M60—machine gun. United States Machine Gun, Caliber 7.62 mm based on the German WWII MG42.
M79—hand-held grenade launcher. Looks like a large bore rifle.
M134 Minigun—Gatling-style six-barreled machine gun, caliber 7.62 mm, electrically driven, pod mounted. It's rate of fire was a phenomenal 4000 rounds per minute without overheating.
mad minute—did not originate with the Vietnam War but with the British Army infantry skill-at-arms rapid fire test before WWI.
meat wagon—helicopter ambulance
meat factory—hospital
MEDEVAC—MEDical EVACuation. Removal and en route treatment of wounded, injured or ill persons from the battlefield to a Medical treatment facility. Hueys with Red Cross markings and a crew of two pilots, one crew chief and one medic were normally used. These air ambulances suffered 3.3 times more losses to hostile fire as all other helicopter missions in Vietnam.
MIA—missing in action
Montagnards—the mountain men of Vietnam. Yard was the term used by U.S. military personnel. The proper term is Người dân tộc thiếu số ("minority people"). They were antagonistic to the Vietnamese majority and heavily recruited by the U.S.
mortar—muzzle-loading cannon with a short tube that throws projectiles with low velocity at high angles.
MOS—military occupational specialty
MPC—military payment currency. What U.S. soldiers were paid with.

Mule—M274 Truck, Platform, Utility 1/2 Ton, 4X4. A 4-wheel utilitarian makeshift vehicle. A steering wheel, seat and motor on a flat bed.

muzzle cover—removable plastic cap that fit over the barrel of the M16 to keep out mud, dirt, and moisture and to prevent dew from condensing in the barrel at night.

Nam—Vietnam
Napalm-B—nasty jell of benzene, gasoline, and polystyrene, more difficult to ignite than the napalm used in WWII. Napalm-B kills in three ways: by burning, heat, or asphyxiation. Burns at 1,500°F to 2,200°F.
NDP—night defensive position

NLF—National Liberation Front aka. Viet Cong

NCO—noncommissioned officer e.g. sergeant. 
noncom—see NCO
NVA—North Vietnamese Army

OD—Olive Drab

Papa San—U.S. for any older Vietnamese man

Parris, Bobby—my fellow squad member from rural Georgia. He carried a shotgun instead of an M16.

PAVN—People's Army of Vietnam aka. North Vietnamese Army

PDQ—pretty damn quick

PETN—fast burning explosive, abbreviation of pentaerythritol tetranitrate, a highly explosive organic compound belonging to the same chemical family as nitroglycerin and nitrocellulose. PETN has the chemical formula C5H8N4O12.
pig—M60

pillbox—concrete emplacement with loopholes for firing weapons like a machine gun or antitank gun. Named after their similarity to medical pill boxes.

pineapples—grenades

PIO—Public Information Officer for public relations

PT—physical training

PTT—Push To Talk button

PX—Post exchange. A store on an army base selling consumer goods and services to active duty personnel only.

R and R—rest and recreation

Re-up—to reenlist

Revetment—Structures to secure an area from artillery, bombing or stored explosives. Built around barracks to protect against incoming rockets, or mortars. Airstrips had revetments twelve to fifteen feet high along flight lines on to protect fixed wing airplanes from incoming rounds.

RPG—rocket-propelled grenade.

RTO—radio telephone operator

SKS—Samozariadnyia Karabina Simonova, Russian military carbine
slicks—crude sandals made from tires. Called Ho Chi Minh Racing Slicks by the G.I.s

SNAFU—situation normal, all fucked up

SP4—Specialist Fourth Class

Squelch—as in "breaking squelch." Static sound made when the the transmit bar on the radio handset is pressed, breaking the squelch circuit. The squelch circuit suppresses the constant static on the channel.

Stars and Stripes—U.S. military's so-called independent newspaper.

TAC—tactical air strikes

Tet—Tet Nguyen Dan or Feast of the First Morning of the First Day
TO—tactical officer

TOC—tactical operations center

VC—Viet Cong

White Mice—South Vietnamese policemen unaggressive in enforcing peace on the streets.
WIA—wounded in action

Yard—see Montagnard

zippo—boat or vehicle with a flame thrower

Bunker

What am I doin' here?
Please Mr. Custer, I don't want to go.
—Larry Verne, Mr. Custer (1960)

Early February, 1970. 

For hours, we hacked our way through thick bamboo over our heads. The higher-ups had us investigating some funny business that The Duck had spotted in the stomping grounds of the 9th NVA (North Vietnamese Army) Division. 

All well and good, but the appalling 1968 Tet Offensive was on our mind. Back in the world, Jean Dixon, the gossip prophet, foresaw that our regiment (the 7th Calvary) would be wiped out again like at the Little Bighorn. This gal could knock 'em dead. She had predicted the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, the launch of Sputnik and the sinking of the Thresher.

Late in the afternoon, I almost crashed into Bob after the point man had stopped chopping. Something piqued his interest—a fresh path. Normally, we didn't touch a path, follow it, or cross it. Better to break bush than mix with heavy traffic and ignorant crowds. 

Other leaders tossed lives around to make a name for themselves, but not Capt. Jackson, our CO. He felt the weight of each man on his shoulders, took no unnecessary chances and preached no sermons. It rubbed off. I never heard company members bitch at each other or their boss. We cared deeply for each other. No slackers or trolls—instead, results and boatloads of R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

After a pow-wow with his platoon leaders, Jackson picked a squad to reconnoiter. We held our breath and slipped safeties. The news came in. The path led straight to the front entrance of Hernando’s Hideaway—a bunker complex hidden behind a dense bamboo screen, odd as a load of furniture left in the jungle, and no booby traps! 

The bunkers were not mere curiosities. Some were open trenches. Others were dug into the ground and domed like igloos, with slits for visibility and firing. Weaponized termite mounds, two feet high, hidden from eyes in the sky, scattered about and connected with tunnels. The ground around the bunkers had been freshly disturbed, but the ground atop the tunnels looked ordinary and harmless. 

Fucking clever.

Bob and others inspected one of the larger bunkers, 10 x 10 and 5 feet deep. He pulled out three discarded film cartridges, likely for training or propaganda. Ho! We didn't expect Hollywood. The next bunker was twenty feet deep, but most were smaller hidey-holes, 7 x 7 or 8 x 8. Bob thought an entire regiment, five hundred men, had used it recently. The tunnels of Củ Chi? Too remote. Training or food and weapons depot? Not likely. Favorite haunt or deserted fortification? No way to tell, nothing incriminating had been left.

Captain always gave us plenty of time to set up for the night in a safe area, but with daylight slipping away, we circled our wagons in a place certain to be hot. We cleared only the necessary, filling sandbags the best we could, marking our territory with less than Roman-like thoroughness. Some bunkers were incorporated into our defensive perimeter, others stretched too far away. Captain adopted one behind us for his CP (command post). Our squad deployed smack dab on the three-foot wide approach, directly ahead of the CP, to face any unwelcome guests head on. Killer's rifle squad was on our right. I don't recall who was on our left.

Well I don't know why I came here tonight.
I got the feeling that something ain't right.
Clowns to the left of me.
Jokers to the right.
Here I am—Stuck in the middle with you.

Capt. Jackson had never put us at greater risk, but we were armed, dangerous and prepared to inflict pain:

M60 machine guns
A hundred ammo belts for the M60s
Grenade launchers
A hundred M16s
Two hundred M16 ammo bandoliers
A Winchester Model 12 trench gun (shotgun)
A Thompson submachine gun, carried Chicago-style by a vet on temporary duty
Claymores
Frags
Smoke grenades

At four hundred rounds per man, we pulled twice as much ammo, mano a mano, than the NVA.

As the gorgeous blood-red sun disappeared behind the bamboo, Walt's twenty-three-pound M60 machine gun sat perched on its bipod, worth its weight in gold, parked at the front door, aimed squarely down the path—the same weapon Rambo used to blow down a town in First Blood. 

We rested our black rifles against sandbags, barrels pointed outwards, and settled into our guest house like rabbits in a pea patch. 

The guards better stay awake. 

Shortly after midnight, our guard saw flashes of light darting to and fro in the darkness behind the clumps of heavy bamboo. The interlopers were taking our measure, searching for tripwires, deciphering our layout. We didn't know what they were but they didn't know what we were, either. Two or two thousand? The fog of war.

The tide turns quickly in Vietnam.

Fear can strip you to your naked self. To counter the butterflies in my gut, I popped in earplugs, listened to the Rolling Stones on the American Forces Vietnam Network, and held on for Judgment Day.

The Romans used “Hour of the Wolf” to refer to morning twilight—a half-lit world where magic held sway, dreams came true and most people were born and died. So it was in this peculiar light of the predawn sun that one of our visitors made a fatal mistake to reach out and touch someone; he tripped a flare in the perimeter belonging to our squad. A scream rang out across the jungle. Sam squeezed the M57 clacker, blowing our Claymores, killing the guy and any of his buddies nearby.

This was no time to brush my teeth. We were already in fighting position, hugging the ground in shallow bunkers behind our massive firepower. 

All hell broke loose from the heavy metal pouring in and our resounding roar. Enemy bullets busted above my head. When you hear the whistle, you know they’re close. 

Despite the chaos, I could tell the guns apart; ours were faster, louder, more violent; our bullets were smaller and lighter. They say you can hear a popping sound when a bullet hits a body; well, I never heard it then or ever.

Whole bamboo trees toppled like dominoes, pulverized by the incredible fire. By some strange miracle, the incoming flew above our heads and no friendly fire came from the squads at our back; they were hugging the ground in their bunkers, clueless. The only outgoing came from us and the two squads flanking us, especially the blazing fury from Killer's men, who lacked a machine gun.

We had the same thought as our enemies,

Kill the bastards.

Walt lay on the ground without protection, directly behind his M60, ripping fire down the path. Bobby Parris fed him 100-shot ammo belts hooked together into an endless lead salad. Belts were plentiful, since each man in the company carried one. Bobby blasted away with his 12-gauge when he could. They were alone together; who wants a shower of red-hot shell casings? 

Walt's hell-gun fired sustained barrages up to 600 rounds per minute, low ricocheting bullets all over the path, a huge morale booster and perhaps why the incoming fire was aimed over our heads.

In my bunker, a few steps to the right of Walt, I laid Thumper aside, my single-shot M79 grenade launcher. The smallish, 40 mm grenades could ricochet off overhanging trees and be back on top of us before we knew it. Behind thick bamboo, we had zero visibility; anything other than bullets was a bad idea (we rolled regular frags down the path). Hey—legend has it that a soldier fired his M79 point-blank at an enemy and the grenade got stuck in the guy's gut without exploding!

I snatched bandoliers, took magazines out of ammo pouches, and fed them as fast as I could to the guys with 16s. Nobody ever filled their magazines completely. The quirky, zigzag way the bullets fit into the twenty-round magazines made the last two bullets unusually tight fitting. Over time, dust, dirt, moisture and metal fatigue would make the spring fail, jamming the gun. Even then, a spent cartridge case could fail to eject from the firing chamber. The new round would bump into the old casing and cause a different kind of jam, a failure to extract: 

Can I get a whistle? My gun's broke!

Our 16s had been bored-out, eliminating the problem. 

Thirty minutes of fire had almost drained our ammo when Capt. Jackson changed the balance of power—he called for Shake, Rattle and Roll, a tactical air-strike from Bien Hoa's huge runways. Because the enemy could throw matching smoke, Killer only identified our camp with lefty lemon (yellow) when Jackson was still talking to the overhead forward air controller. 

F-4 Phantom 

In the blink of an eye, a pair of swept-wing F-4 Phantoms—the leading distributors of MiG parts—came screaming out of the sky like fiery Bellonas,¹ skimming trees, dropping high-drag 500-lb shakes and dashing out, trailing black smoke from their twin GE turbojets. 

I hate noise!

Concussions from the ill-natured bombs pounded our chests, kicked tons of dirt and dust into the sky and scared the living shit out of us—and we were expecting! It couldn't have been any better for the other side—imagine the looks on their faces.

As soon as the music stopped, we evacuated our bunkers beat it to the nearest tree for an umbrella against the dirt balls raining down. Lt. Ashmore, our platoon leader, had gone poof! What the hell? He had remained in his bunker and been hit by a dirt ball a foot in diameter. It knocked him ten feet through the air, breaking his thigh bone.

The NVA rounded up their dead and went đi đi mau ("go quickly"). They had a prior appointment.

We had taken no casualties except for the lucky Lt. with the million-dollar wound. He would likely get to go home after the medevac flew him out. But there was no joy in Mudville. We were in shock. Shit happens, your survival instincts and training take over and you react to the chaos around you.

The molten sun was up now. A squad went down the path to take stock. I only saw one dead enemy, dumped into a bomb crater for later retrieval. Vietnamese believe that the souls of the dead will be in turmoil forevermore, if not buried on family soil—a custom that obfuscated our body counts.

Bob took off with the patrol and came back with a bag of meat, blood and bone meal to add to the pile of remains.

You fuckers figure it out!

He estimated 200 coonskins on the wall.

Oops. The NVA had miscalculated, but Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap threw cold water on Gen. Westmoreland's strategy to break Hanoi by attrition:

Every minute, hundreds of thousands of people die on this Earth. The life or death of a hundred, a thousand, tens of thousands of human beings, even our compatriots, means little. 

We would out-kill; they would outlast. If they didn't lose the war, they might win it; if we didn't win the war, we must lose it.

The platoon leaders added the number of enemy bodies on the ground to those hauled away by the enemy and gave the inflated count to the CO. The exploits of Charlie Co. accrued to the balance sheets of the officers, lifers and those above; they were punching their career tickets with our kill ratios and body counts, like Edward III after the battle of Crécy. Therein lay the rub—why we grunts were resentful and suspicious of the higher-ups.

Victory had been brought and we remained the victors, but to go in and get out was Capt. Jackson's motto. We skipped breakfast, pressed play and gave back the won territory; air-strikes would obliterate our shallow entrenchments and what they had built.
After a wild one-night-stand, we rode out essentially as we rode in until an intemperate endnote arose. We crossed an open field and halted in front of a wood to rest our asses in the elephant grasses. Sam looked over his shoulder and saw two figures following us a hundred yards distant. NVA tracking, coming up before we were into the tree line? Curiosity seekers? We were still in Tet.

Sam, our John Wayne, stood up and spoke in his slow Texas drawl,

Well, gentlemen, the party's over.

He opened up with his 16 and several more of us let fly. I lobbed a few grenades on target with my 79, but our after-action patrol found only one body.

Jean Dixon had misfired, but we hadn’t. We had dodged a bullet—several, in fact.

Ha! I never believed in horoscopes.

¹ Roman war goddess. As the twin sister of Mars, she loved to spill foreign blood and wield a spear, sword, shield and fiery torch while bellowing orders and war-cries over the roar of battle. She's said to bring good luck. The Roman Senate met in her temple when business was foreign war.

The Path

Combat Assault

In early December, we had orders for a combat assault. Firebase Jamie's artillery prepped the LZ (landing zone) with HE (high explosives). CS (tear gas) was not used.

A Huey can get you to ground where there's no roads or train tracks. The next morning, five landed thirty feet apart on Jamie's dirt strip. They flew back and forth to the LZ in formation, lifting thirty G.I.s at a time, to a field not too distant.

We scrambled out and made a bee line for the wood line. From there, we formed into platoons and worked our way into the jungle, breaking bush all morning. In the afternoon, we came upon a meandering path. As each platoon crossed, two guards posted right and two left. Once the platoon was across, the guards scurried to catch up.

Our platoon was the last to cross. The bush was thick, limiting our vision. Lt. Martinez picked Sam and me to guard the right.

Beware, friendlies are patrolling in front of you.

We peeled off twenty feet to the right, behind bushes, Sam two feet ahead.

I remember it like yesterday. Sam opened up with swift rounds from his M16, scarin' the livin’ shit outta me!

My God, are we shooting friendlies?

He yelled back,

No, no, this is enemy!

Are you sure?

He screamed,

Take my spot! My gun jammed!

I came up, shot off a tentative three-round burst.

Are you sure?

Faster!

I couldn't see. Sam grabbed my weapon,

Let go. Unjam my gun!

Sam had the better view. He had seen the threatening shape and had acquired the target, an NVA (North Vietnamese) officer moving toward us on the path about thirty feet away. Evidently, the guy didn't get Capt. Jackson's memo on the dangers of trails. Sam held on him, pumping through magazines like there was no tomorrow. Luckily, he didn't see us. If there were any more behind him, they had already dropped.

To kill, you have to move fast.

The M60 machine gunner came running up, plopped to the ground, mounted his gun on a tripod, mouthing the same shit about friendlies. I had Sam's gun ready to go, but he took over the M60 instead, mowing the jungle like grass with 100-shot belts.

Bob, who had been guarding the left flank came over and opened up, too. When the firing stopped, Killer, a highly respected old-timer, rose from the dirt and walked ahead with a couple guys from his squad. All they found was a bloody pile of raw hamburger they could have washed away with a garden hose. No jungle alive anywhere around it.

The poor guy was unavailable for comment. Sam said nothing. My guts went cold.   

Five minutes and it might have been us.

I remembered what they told us in basic,   

Never point a gun at anyone unless you mean to shoot him. And if you do shoot him, you better make sure he's dead. 'Cause if he ain't dead, he's gonna shoot you.

Killer collected maps, documents, an AK-47 and an aluminum belt buckle. His men threw dirt on the site to keep flies away. He gave me the buckle, a rite of passage that I still have.

This was no time to relax and count our blessings. Capt. Jackson radioed that our platoon would stay here and camp overnight on the bloody path. The rest of the company would push ahead and set up in the jungle.   

What if they return?

We set up a perimeter with flares and Claymores, dug bunkers for cover and clocked our weapons. Killer's squad was on our right, fifteen feet from the remains, an unnatural conjunction of the living and the dead. Any shreds of military romance or chivalry in me were banished forever.

The Hell With It

When it finally happens and it's over,
As you stand there and think—
Something so mutilated can't be human
So it was dead enough without this
But even here there is beauty
A small flowered patch of ground, a bird's call
And the grace of a butterfly
Frustration and disappointment
Become a laughable thing
But always the conflicting emotions to smile
Or say the hell with it and cry

—SP4 Bob Jackson (1970)

We slept alfresco, as usual; each of us would pull an hour of guard duty. In the middle of the moonless night, POP, a flare tripped. All was quiet until the flare had almost burned out. Then the Claymore blew, too late to do any damage. The guard either had trouble finding the clacker or hit it when the flare woke him up.

Now we had a hole in our perimeter—no trip flare and no Claymore; a blind spot and too dark to chance a reset. The enemy could waltz right in! For the rest of the night I could taste the stress.

Are they coming back for the body or for us? Are we bait on a hook?

Thank God, the rest of the night passed quietly. In the morning, after sending out a patrol, we rejoined the rest of our company at their camp nearby.

Life was not so shiny anymore. I thought things would be calmer than this—I'll never survive.

I needed to shut that out from my mind—otherwise I would be unable to fight. Yet it was all I could think of. Fear of death is a normal thing, but after those bits and pieces scattered all over the place, uncontrollable cough and choking spells plagued me each night for the next week. Doc Walsh gave me the entire bottle of cough medicine to stifle it.

And then for some reason, I got used to it. I felt war and I was learning to be a soldier, hard and fast.