![]() The second photograph had been clipped from the 1968 Mount Sebastian yearbook. At night, sometimes, Lieutenant Cross wondered who had taken the picture, because he knew she had boyfriends, because he loved her so much, and because he could see the shadow of the picture-taker spreading out against the brick wall. Her eyes were gray and neutral, her lips slightly open as she stared straight-on at the camera. The first was a Kodacolor snapshot signed Love, though he knew better. In his wallet, Lieutenant Cross carried two photographs of Martha. In its intransitive form, to hump meant to walk, or to march, but it implied burdens far beyond the intransitive.Īlmost everyone humped photographs. To carry something was to hump it, as when Lieutenant Jimmy Cross humped his love for Martha up the hills and through the swamps. In April, for instance, when Ted Lavender was shot, they used his poncho to wrap him up, then to carry him across the paddy, then to lift him into the chopper that took him away. With its quilted liner, the poncho weighed almost 2 pounds, but it was worth every ounce. Because the nights were cold, and because the monsoons were wet, each carried a green plastic poncho that could be used as a raincoat or groundsheet or makeshift tent. Because you could die so quickly, each man carried at least one large compress bandage, usually in the helmet band for easy access. Because the land was mined and booby-trapped, it was SOP for each man to carry a steel-centered, nylon-covered flak jacket, which weighed 6.7 pounds, but which on hot days seemed much heavier. As a hedge against bad times, however, Kiowa also carried his grandmother’s distrust of the white man, his grandfather’s old hunting hatchet. Kiowa, a devout Baptist, carried an illustrated New Testament that had been presented to him by his father, who taught Sunday school in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. ![]() Mitchell Sanders, the RTO, carried condoms. Until he was shot, Ted Lavender carried 6 or 7 ounces of premium dope, which for him was a necessity. Scholl’s foot powder as a precaution against trench foot. On their feet they carried jungle boots – 2.1 pounds – and Dave Jensen carried three pairs of socks and a can of Dr. They carried the standard fatigue jackets and trousers. By necessity, and because it was SOP, they all carried steel helmets that weighed 5 pounds including the liner and camouflage cover. Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried tranquilizers until he was shot in the head outside the village of Than Khe in mid-April. Dave Jensen, who practiced field hygiene, carried a toothbrush, dental floss, and several hotel-sized bars of soap he’d stolen on R&R in Sydney, Australia. Henry Dobbins, who was a big man, carried extra rations he was especially fond of canned peaches in heavy syrup over pound cake. Together, these items weighed between 15 and 20 pounds, depending upon a man’s habits or rate of metabolism. Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits, Military Payment Certificates, C rations, and two or three canteens of water. The things they carried were largely determined by necessity. Slowly, a bit distracted, he would get up and move among his men, checking the perimeter, then at full dark he would return to his hole and watch the night and wonder if Martha was a virgin. At dusk, he would carefully return the letters to his rucksack. They were signed Love, Martha, but Lieutenant Cross understood that Love was only a way of signing and did not mean what he sometimes pretended it meant. She often quoted lines of poetry she never mentioned the war, except to say, Jimmy, take care of yourself. She was an English major at Mount Sebastian, and she wrote beautifully about her professors and roommates and midterm exams, about her respect for Chaucer and her great affection for Virginia Woolf. More than anything, he wanted Martha to love him as he loved her, but the letters were mostly chatty, elusive on the matter of love. He would sometimes taste the envelope flaps, knowing her tongue had been there. He would imagine romantic camping trips into the White Mountains in New Hampshire. In the late afternoon, after a day’s march, he would dig his foxhole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last hour of light pretending. They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack. First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey.
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