Blog One

We just got here and Ted Lavender's already dead. Humping through nothing but dense jungle and patty fields, with your occasional tunnel sysytem here and there. I remember sitting peacefully in the shade of an old banyan tree. I was using my thimbnail to pry off the body lice, working slowly, carefully depositing the lice in a blue USO envelope. My eyes were heavy, and after an hour er so I sealed the envelope, wrote free on it in the upper right hand corner. I addresed it to my draft board in Ohio. My arms a little soar from loading boxes of C-rations with lee strunk. The other day i told one of my comrads that story i made most of up. you're pinned down in some filthy hellhole of a paddy, getting your ass delivered to kingdom come, but then for a few seconds everything goes quiet and you look up and see the sun and a few puffy white clouds, and the immense serenity flashes against your eyeballs--the whole world gets rearranged--and even though you're pinned down a war you never felt more at peace.