Fran continued writing. As he did so, tears started forming in the corners of his eyes before creeping tentatively downward onto his cheeks. Fran swabbed at them semi-successfully with the heel of his left hand. He sat his pen down for an instant to think about the previous few weeks. The time machine unceremoniously interrupted Fran’s reverie at that point, transporting him back in time several decades earlier……….
……….they didn’t trust him on point. No, not a fuckin’ brand-new greenhorn, just new to the country!! It was nothin’ personal against him, though, mind you, nothing to suggest the quiet kid was an obnoxious asshole or a prick for the ages or a fount of dissension……..
Just too goddamned gung-ho and reckless, this Fran Blahnik from some hick town in……….Iowa, was it?????…..no no, the newbie was from Minnesota actually; hell, the two states border on each other and grow a lot of corn so they may as well be one and the same, right? Anyway, this Fran Blahnik kid was like all the other “fresh meat” who came on board. Why, the damned naïve fool could lead you straight into a fuckin’ enemy ambush without ever realizing it or even suspecting a thing!! New pieces of shit like that were more dangerous than the fuckin’ Cong, at least until they got their feet “good and wet” and got shot at a few times and got the living shit scared out of ‘em to make them suitably cautious and think twice before they went charging into a jungle clearing like some modern day version of John Wayne!
But the rookie sure didn’t deserve to be way in the back of the formation either. The young buttfucker hadn’t paid any dues yet, hadn’t done anything to earn that distinct honor. Why should he get a cushy position in the relative safety at the rear of the platoon while longer-tenured soldiers risked their necks up front dodging bullets and absorbing Cong shrapnel???
Correct answer: He shouldn’t!!!!!!!!!!
NO FUCKIN’ WAY, JOSE!!!
Nah, let’s just stick the jittery son-of-a-bitch second to the guy on point in our classic “V” field formation. That way the careless rookie won’t go mindlessly barging onto any landmines and fucking everything up for the rest of our platoon, yet he’ll be right in the thick of the action earning his keep if anything nasty does flare up.
And hence that’s where nineteen-year-old Francis Blahnik found himself on that stultifying afternoon in the steaming Mekong River delta of South Vietnam in September of 1968—tucked safely into the second position of the sweeping “V” platoon formation behind an experienced hand on point. It was Fran’s first mission into the field, and he was scared more shitless than Gramps had been heading into the clinic for a colonoscopy following a night encamped atop his toilet. Fran had arrived “in country” just two weeks prior and had spent all of his time since then safely ensconced behind the base camp’s concertina wire perimeter performing tedious labor.
But not now..…..
Now the time had finally come for him to “earn his stripes” in the field. Now the time had arrived for him to display his mettle and to find out whether he possessed the true makings of a bona fide soldier inside his stout frame. Fran shook his head nervously and stared balefully at the foreboding, sweltering jungle surrounding base camp; it was as though that amorphous mass of trees was smiling back at him with a sinister grin, inviting him to come take a leisurely stroll under its thick, lush canopy and indulge in whatever pleasures it might hold in store. Fran eventually sighed and yanked his eyes away from the tranquil treeline. He couldn’t pinpoint precisely why, but he had an uneasy, nauseous feeling in the pit of his stomach that fateful Oriental morning.
But if it was any consolation—and, truth be told, it definitely was a huge consolation to a combat neophyte–at least the soldier in front of Fran that day knew what he was doing. The guy was a grizzled veteran, had been “in country” for a long time and knew all the ropes by heart; it wouldn’t be long before the cool-as-a-cucumber dude’d be going back home to America “victorious”, if simply being alive while not missing any of your limbs could or should ever be categorized as “victorious”.
Yeah, the combat veteran on point that day would soon be catching a plane homebound for the United States, and new-to-Vietnam Fran Blahnik already envied the hell out of him and feverishly wished he could trade places with the man.
Life is unfair…..that lucky goddamned bastard!!!
Or so Fran believed, until halfway into their mission–way out beyond the security of base camp—Fran watched in horror and disbelief as the guy destined to go home shortly literally disappeared before his eyes; a massive landmine erupted immediately in front of Fran, obliterating the experienced sergeant on point while sending a stream of searing-hot metallic fragments straight into the Minnesota newbie’s left side. Fran collapsed in a bloody heap on the jungle floor, the sounds of screaming men and chaotic hollering volleying over his head like so much enemy gunfire. The pain in Fran’s side was excruciating and unlike anything he had ever felt before in his nineteen years on Earth, yet that scorching fire in his abdomen didn’t even cross his mind.
You see, Fran Blahnik was hopelessly paralyzed with fear…….
As he lay bleeding on the jungle floor, writhing about not unlike a felled, mortally-wounded whitetail buck and too scared to even cry out for help, the thought raced back and forth through Fran’s mind: What the hell am I doing lying here half-dead in a goddamned shithole the politicians back home in Washington, D.C.. call a “country”……..halfway around the world from everything I love and hold dear?
Just a month earlier he had been back home on the dairy farm on which he grew up in extreme southeastern Minnesota, celebrating his nineteenth birthday with his family and relatives, lounging under a big box elder tree in the front yard while clutching a cold bottle of Stite’s beer on a comfortably familiar northern latitude afternoon. Fran was scheduled to ship out of country immediately following that idyllic furlough, and it was his last opportunity to luxuriate in life’s better things before the “clock struck midnight”.
And now……?
Now he lay in a strange, tropical jungle with gargantuan, ever-hungry, twenty-five-foot Burmese pythons slithering around on the same forest floor where he lay suffering, while fuckin’ enormous, fiendishly savage Indochinese tigers prowled unrestrained and unseen within the dense foliage surrounding him. A thick canopy of exotic trees blocked out whatever sunlight was feebly attempting to peek through such an unwieldy mass of vegetation. Fran was bleeding profusely from his left side as he waited impatiently for help to arrive………all the while praying frantically and with a newfound zeal akin to Jesus during his forty-day sojourn in the wilderness spent rebuffing Satan.
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