WITH TWO COBRA gunships leading the way, Chief Warrant Officer Elroy rendezvoused with Second Recon at LZ Juliet Six. It was the alternative pickup zone and it was getting chewed to shit from NVA mortars until the Cobras began to lay down suppressor fire. Things on the ground had been hairy for the marines for some time. Three days previously they had blown cover and had since been experiencing something like an ongoing Chinese gangfuck thirty klicks into Cambodia. The NVA was on them like stink on shit, and if it hadn’t been for the monsoons, they would have been dead on the first day. Charles had the team surrounded and was sweeping the area with tracking dogs. Fortunately the heavy rains that delayed the rescue effort also washed away the smell of the Americans. When the weather finally broke, Officer Elroy received last-minute orders to abort the mission. Headquarters maintained that radio contact had been lost and the marines were presumed dead. Elroy wasn’t so sure. When the team first called for a dustoff chopper, he had been committed to go in; and no matter what the high command thought, there was no way the Americans could sneak out fast enough for Charles not to know that they had crossed the border in the first place. What pushed the flight commander forward was the fact that he knew he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he had left these grunts to hang out to dry. Yet he could only take this line of reasoning so far. I could see by the look on his face that Elroy was thanking his lucky stars that he was not a member of our insert team. We were packed in the back of the overloaded Huey like so many killer sardines with bad attitudes and a whole lot of personal firepower. Felix T., our own radio man and the tallest soldier in-country, pulled out his .45 as the orders to abort came through. Team Break on Through was no more going to allow him to abandon Second Recon than Elroy would have done himself. It was a crass move; Elroy’s courage was well known and Felix had been a cowboy from day one. His mind was locked and loaded in the gung-ho mode; jammed up on amphetamines and pulling out a sidearm was a bad idea, but we all knew what he was thinking. While it was a mind fuck of an order, what we heard over the radio surprised no one. Unlike the grunts in the army, with superior logistical support and better equipment, marines were marines. We weren’t used to hot meals, adequate gear, or being treated very well in the first place, but we were cranked up and ready to engage.
As soon as Elroy brought his bird down, Break on Through hit the ground running. It was an exercise known as a “flip-flop.” Charles sure enough knew there was going to be an extraction, but he wasn’t expecting an insertion on the same flight. Ondine and I helped the Second Recon corpsman load two wounded Montagnards onto the Huey while the rest of the Break on Through laid out a quick perimeter. One of the Yards was squirting blood from his femoral artery while the other had a sucking chest wound. Both appeared to be in shock: their dark faces were ashen, and both seemed to be beyond the realm of pain. I knew they would both be dead before they got back to Da Nang and exchanged a look with their babyfaced corpsman, a kid who didn’t look old enough to be in the war. Still, he looked a good deal older than the prisoner the team had grabbed on their “snatch” mission. The young NVA’s hands were secured behind his back with wire, and whenever he looked up, a powerful marine poked him in the mouth with the flash suppressor of his M-16. “Get used to it,” the marine said. “It’s called the Flavor of the Month, motherfucker.”
I knew it was the first of many new exotic treats in store for the prisoner and was thinking that if it were me, I’d jump out of the bird as soon as they had some suicidal altitude. Over the wash of chopper blades, the corpsman was telling Ondine that the rest of the Second Recon ran for another LZ. “Make no mistake,” the corpsman said, “Charlie has got spotters and fuckin’ bloodhound dogs. You boys just bought the green wienie. Chuck is going to come looking presently.”
“I can dig it,” Ondine said.
“I’m glad you can,” the corpsman said. “Because, man, I cannot. No shit, man! I’m getting too short for any more of this bullshit. I’m getting seriously flaky. I don’t know if I can hack much more.”
“Sounds like you got a personal problem,” Ondine said.
As the chopper lifted off, Elroy gave Ondine the thumbs-up signal. The pilot banked the Huey sharply to the west and as soon as he started to gain altitude, small arms fire erupted from the tree line. The door gunner answered immediately with his .60. Break on Through crashed through the narrow stand of elephant grass at a low crouch. As soon as we hit the tree line, we fanned out into the jungle, fading so effectively that when a company of NVA regulars diddy-moued over to the LZ site, they ran right past us. I allowed myself a small smile of satisfaction. The flip-flop had worked and getting into the bush was a whole lot like being back in the saddle again. I felt lucky. The team was luck all the way in recent weeks, and the sense of omnipotence was intoxicating. I was ready to infiltrate Hanoi, grab Uncle Ho by the goatee, pull off his face, and make a clean escape. Cambodia did not seem like a biggie in any way, shape, or form. The NVA didn’t know we were there, didn’t have a clue. In our tiger-striped fatigues and war paint, Break on Through was invisible.
As soon as the enemy troopers rushed by, Ondine took the point until the team reached a fast-moving stream. He knelt down and shook a canister of CS powder along the banks to discourage dogs. As he did so, Dang Singh set an M-14 toe-popper under a pile of wet leaves and dropped a Baby Ruth bar next to it. It was pure meanness, what Singh liked to call “outchucking Charles,” and across the Cambodian border where there was officially no war at all, it seemed like exactly the right thing to do.
At Ondine’s signal, I picked up the point and continued moving north directly up the streambed. The team moved swiftly and silently. Eventually the stream dried out and its rocky bed converged near an NVA speed trail. I flashed an arm signal freezing the squad as three NVA soldiers toting howitzer rounds cruised past on Chinese bicycles. I could have sworn one of the slopes had eyeballed me and had been too cool to make a move. As I played with this in my head, Ondine moved forward and asked what was wrong. I told him, and Ondine resumed walking point while L. D. Pfieffer, who was covering the rear, sprinkled red pepper in our wake to foil the dogs Second Recon had been having such a shit fit over. The team picked up the pace, putting distance between ourselves and the speed trail. In another half hour we reached a bamboo thicket. There was no further hint of the enemy. Break on Through was what you called down and happy. Ondine whispered something to the shooter, Pink, and smiled. Felix T. looked at Dang Singh. “What did the sergeant say?”
Singh looked at Felix and said, “Man say, ‘Welcome to Cambodia.’ ” Singh removed a bottle of bug juice and squirted it on a thick leech that was attached to the side of Felix’s neck. When he showed it to the tall marine, Felix recoiled in horror. Singh snapped the blood-engorged leech in half and grinned. Like Felix and the rest of the team, he was curious about the shooter, a small Chicano–Native American with an angular face and a pair of cheekbones sharper than razor blades. Pink showed up at Camp Clarke wearing Spec Five insignia and an Air Cav pink team badge just two nights before the patrol. Word circulated that Pink was a sniper from Special Operations. After Pink had lunch with the Colonel and Captain Barnes, he dumped his gear in Break on Through’s hooch, and broke out a manila envelope bearing grainy photographs of NVA Brigadier General Deng. Everyone knew about Deng—he was an unorthodox NVA strategist and major pain in the ass dating back to the battle of Dien Bien Phu. By all rights, Deng should have been in an old age home in Hanoi, not out in the field wreaking terror and mayhem. He had been old during the French occupation. There was no way he could still be in the field; it was supposed to be just another rumor. But then, too. You never knew. These motherfuckers didn’t quit. Shit, they didn’t know the meaning of the word.
Just before the mission got under way, I saw the shooter pass the pictures to Ondine. As soon as he handed them back, Pink pulled out his Zippo and torched them. Pink was giving Ondine some respect with this preview. A little r-e-s-p-e-c-t, so he doesn’t come off like some fucking new guy, I told this to Dang, who said that Captain Barnes had stonewalled Ondine, saying that the shooter had a target all right, and Ondine would be informed on a need-to-know basis. As far as Ondine was concerned, the team’s main mission was cartography. Intelligence knew Charlie was running wild in Cambodia and they wanted B-52 targets. When I saw Pink burning the pictures and became part of the secret, Ondine told me to procure an M-14 from the armory. I was one of the better marksmen on the team, and if special ops thought they needed to send us some lame-ass dogface for an assassination, Ondine was going to prove there was no need. Anyone on the team was up to it. Ondine was resentful that Captain Barnes had so little faith and to tell you the truth, Pink was not that impressive—he was a wiry little motherfucker, making the rest of the team look like Clydesdales in comparison. Actually, wiry wasn’t such a bad condition. Ondine had been in a pisser of a mood—restless, edgy and full of bitterness. I didn’t think it mattered. I still believed that luck was with us. At least until I saw the dink on the bicycle. I was sure I locked eyeballs with the cocksucker and now felt like my luck was all used up. I was conflicted as all hell.
After we set up for the night, Ondine broke out a map and conferred with Pink in the fading light. Early the next afternoon we skirted the bunker where the snatch had been made. An hour later the team was poised on a hill overlooking a huge NVA base supply camp that was a beehive of transport and supply activity. Buried in a narrow valley, the camp was surrounded on three sides by mountains. A well-guarded single-lane road hidden by triple canopy jungle allowed truck traffic into the camp from the north, while narrow speed trails, too small for trucks or tanks, fed into I Corps to the south. Not only was the NVA able to move fresh troops and resupply into Vietnam, the base had a hospital complete with doctors, nurses, and sterile operating rooms. There were dozens of women, in fact. Undoubtedly the base served as a safe haven for the troops to R&R after excursions into I Corps. Judging by the look of relaxation on the faces of the NVA, it did not appear they had been receiving much in the way of harassment. Pink used his own binoculars to scout the surrounding valley. He marked possible target positions on Ondine’s map with a red pencil. He was lining up shots at three, five, and seven hundred meters. The shot he liked best he penciled in last. It was a spot approximately one hundred meters behind the hospital. Ondine shook his head, like “no way!” Pink pointed to the heavy cloud cover and made hand signals to indicate rain and fog. We were far enough from the base to break out a hi-fi and have a party, but Pink was cautious to the point of paranoia. He was so quiet in fact that everyone on the team was beginning to get spooked. Not only had Ondine been acting strange, no one was overly thrilled with the fact that we were in Cambodia. Normally you could blame this sort of weirdness on the new guy, but while Pink may not have been an impressive physical specimen, he certainly had his shit together. While Ondine began to diagram a plan to provide Pink with diversionary fire, the rest of the team contented themselves passing the binoculars back and forth. We saw a pair of dog teams come into the compound followed by an NVA assault team. Felix T. nudged Ondine and said, “Look, Sergeant, those are our gooks!”
A few seconds later, General Deng stepped out of a fortified bunker, one that Ondine figured to be an ammo dump. “There he is,” Felix said. “Goddammit, motherfucker!”
The General wore a tan uniform with no insignia but it was clearly Deng. He was a man in his early seventies, with thinning gray hair that he wore in a swept-back fashion. His smile was warm and revealed a great deal of gold dental work. Deng walked with a limp. His left foot was shorter than his right by several inches. This was not from a war wound but rather a hereditary condition. With aides on either side of him, Deng leaned on his cane and spoke to the commander of the tracker platoon, who pointed back at the jungle. L. D. Pfieffer mimicked the sort of lame excuse he imagined the platoon commander must have been reciting to General Deng, who had to be very concerned with the knowledge that the Americans were in Cambodia and had made their camp. You could barely see their lips moving but Pfieffer supplied the dialogue. “Oh yes man! We lit a fire under their ass, General. You betcha! Jar-head took a number one run through the jungle.”
Pfieffer twisted his head to the side, screwed up his face, and took on the part of Deng. “What! You mean you let them escape! You bungling fools! B-52s come now. Boom Boom! Efferybody, get down and give me fifty. Very bad. Very bad.”
Singh and I cracked up until Pink shot us a look and then Ondine raised his head and told Pfieffer to knock it the fuck off. Felix T. pointed his M-16 at the General and kept it trained on the officer as he moved back into the bunker. “He’s a motherfuckin’ ant.” With a scope, the shot was doable from where we stood; it was just that we would have been pinned down on the same ridge where Second Recon had caught hell. We were out in the open.
Ondine was highly p.o.’d and said, “Put that weapon down and quit fucking around, Felix. That goes for everybody. Now listen up.” He flattened out the map on a boulder. We gathered around Ondine’s map. He said, “We recon the valley first, but I think we should place our shooters here and here,” he said, pointing to the red Xs on the map with his forefinger. “Hollywood doesn’t take his shot unless Pink is compromised. He’s got the M-14, and if he shoots, he gives away his location. After Pink takes out the General, we detonate nightingales at the north end of the valley while the team runs south. That should give us time to boogaloo. Two escape routes,” he said, pointing down to the valley. “Right there along the streambed or straight out of the valley on the high-speed trail. They won’t be expecting it. Once we get clear, we fade into the bush, circumvent the bunker, and make our pickup. Felix calls in the coordinates on the camp and while we beat a retreat back to Camp Clarke, the carpet team comes in and levels our good buddies. They’ve got a lot of people down there, but we’ll catch them with their pants down. It should be easy. Any questions? Sound like a plan?” Ondine said. “Okay. Break out your chow; we’re going down into the valley in twenty minutes.”
Dang Singh could second-guess Ondine better than anyone. “That’s the plan?” he said.
Ondine said. “Shoot ’n’ run.”
“Keeping things simple,” Singh said.
“I’m open to suggestions,” Ondine said. “I’m always glad to hear a brighter idea. We can’t make the shot from up here. We’ve got an ideal vantage but we’re too far to make the fucking shot. I can’t think of another way.”
“Why don’t we walk back, real careful like, and let the air force take care of General Deng?” Gerber said. “You got the coordinates. As soon as the shooting starts the gooks are going to hunker down. This is a job for the bomber pilots. Why can’t the air force handle it?”
“Because that would be the smart thing to do,” Ondine said. “Anybody else?”
We were quickly out of the rucks and tearing open C-rats. Everyone ate without saying much. Pink ate not at all. He took a swig from his canteen, swished it around in his mouth, and swallowed. While the marines carried three canteens each, the shooter carried only one. Also, while the marines carried the maximum amount of personal firepower, Pink only had a single-shot bolt-action carbine. The end was tapped for a silencer and there was a scope mount on the rifle. He carried his ammunition in a single pouch on his cartridge belt. He wore a bush hat and no flak jacket. While the marines ate, he pulled a small copy of the New Testament from his pack and read a passage from the Book of John. Then he spread a fresh application of greasepaint on his face. While Pink wore no dog tags, he carried eight morphine syrettes around his neck. I didn’t really blame him. I had been captured once and it had been one time too many. Eight syrettes would certainly do the job.
As soon as it got dark, we slipped through the bush and infiltrated the valley with little trouble. A cold rain began to fall, and after we established a rendezvous point, Ondine went over the plan with everyone again. After Pink got his shot off, he would beat feet to the second shooter’s position. That was me. I would be stationed south of the hospital where I had a clean shot at the General’s quarters. Together Pink and I would double-time to the rendezvous point. The rest of the fire team would be planted back in the bushes waiting to lay down cover fire. If necessary they could run an IM drill, where each member of the team would jump out into the speed trail and fire his weapon at full automatic. As soon as a man shot off a magazine, he would run to the back of the formation. like a quarterback that had just passed off the ball to a running back. The next man would step onto the trail and shoot, followed by the next and so on. Within thirty seconds a squad could put out the concentrated firing power of a fully armed infantry company. It invariably confused and frightened the enemy and gave the team our one chance to run. After running the drill, ammunition would be essentially gone. The element of surprise would be gone, and if the rain were to stop, the dogs would be all over us.
The quickest way out of the valley was by using the same speed trails the NVA were using to ferry supplies into Vietnam. The jungle leading out of the valley was thick, as we had already seen, and it was going to be quite a run to the LZ. If there was a major fuckup, we could take our chances in the bush. It was a bad option; it was the one Second Recon used. Ondine knew if we blew the pickup, we were in serious trouble. It wasn’t like him to gamble in this fashion. There was an alternative LZ, but nobody even wanted to think about it. The Invisible Man couldn’t make it to the alternative LZ.
Pink attached the sniper scope and silencer to his carbine. He removed two mesh screen devices known as nightingales from his ruck. These were simply screens wired to a web of firecrackers and cherry bombs and hooked to a detonator. Each would give off a five-minute explosion simulating the heavy weapons and M-16 fire of a full company. The rest of the team took positions along either side of the main trail and planted their claymores before huddling down in the bush establishing their fields of fire. The nightingales were covered with sheets of plastic to protect them from the rain. He gave one to me, along with a long coil of thin wire and a detonator. The rest of the team hunkered down and prepared themselves for the uncertainties of a long wait, while Pink and I slipped into the bushes, keeping away from the trails. It took several hours to get in position. I never saw a soldier more cautious than Pink. While my mind was jamming with amphetamine and the hot blood of fear, Pink was as cold as a snake.
We picked out positions and then moved north with the com wire, toward the feeder road. The trail coming down into the valley had a guard patrol and a pair of dogs, but the security was fairly lax. We set up the nightingales, camouflaging them with tent-shelter halves, and then returned to our positions and spent the night in a bone-chilling rain. It was so cold I could see my own breath. My feet, ears, and fingers were numb. I wondered how a puny guy like Pink could take the cold since I had body fat and he did not. My teeth began to chatter and I was practically into hypothermic shock by dawn. I popped greenies and wolfed down Nestlé’s chocolate bars. The mission was beginning to feel like some major suck. We didn’t need to do this. We could walk out of the valley and let the B-52s take care of the situation. Headquarters, had they been there to see it, would have known for themselves. I guess they wanted Deng no matter what happened. He was a slippery guy, and people wanted confirmation.
A low fog clung to the camp and it didn’t begin to lift until noon. I saw General Deng for a half a second, but suddenly he thought of something and returned to his bunker. I wondered what Pink was doing. There was no way of knowing if he had his shit together or not. I was determined to make the shot the next time I laid my eyes on Deng’s skinny ass. I wanted to get out of that place before I froze to death.
At 1530 hours a truck carrying rockets rumbled into the camp and a number of people emerged from the bunker to inspect it. Finally, General Deng came hobbling out of the headquarters. The sight of the rockets seemed to give him a great deal of pleasure. As his face cracked into a wedge of a smile, a glimmer of sunlight reflected off of the General’s gold bridgework. I drew a bead on his narrow chest and waited. Suddenly the General took a half-step back on his short leg and then dropped without a sound. The NVA aides standing with the General were busy inspecting the rockets. Deng collapsed of old age. One of the aides knelt down to lift the General’s head when he saw that most of it was gone. The aides scurried, and in seconds a warning siren went off. I knew that in moments the woods would be crawling with NVA. But then came the sound of the nightingales exploding to the north of the transport truck. It sounded like a small war was coming down into the valley, and the NVA did just what anyone would reasonably do. They hunkered down before their guns and poured out a “mad moment” in the direction of the nightingales. By luck, a loose RPG round hit the truck, setting off an explosion that rocked the earth. By this time Pink and I were highballing down the speed trail. A two-man NVA security team stepped out of a small grass duty hut; but our machine gunner, Pfieffer, cut them both down with short bursts from his .60. I hated the fact that he was making noise, but it had to happen. More NVA began to appear, but the team was all up and moving now. In a moment a series of small explosions was heard as the claymores the team had planted were tripped. As we continued to run we heard the anguished squeals and high-pitched bellowing of dogs along with the more familiar cries of grievously wounded men.
Pink was ahead of me running alongside a pair of unarmed NVA who had just dropped a container of rice. Both of the men wore thick tortoiseshell spectacles and were clearly noncombatants. I watched the three run in unison for a second, then, in spite of my heavy gear, broke past them like a man hell-bent on the finish line. A few seconds later both of the dinks passed me with a look of terror on their faces. Motherfuckers looked like dinks with Down syndrome. As they increased their lead, Pink raised his carbine and placed two rounds into the base of each man’s skull. It was the best kind of one-handed “John Wayne” shooting I had ever seen.
Then Ondine was up running alongside me, laughing his ass off. “Man, what kind of stupid-ass shit was that?”
“They were unarmed,” I said, panting for breath. “It didn’t seem right.”
“Tell me the last time Charles cut you a line of slack,” Ondine said.
“Tell me the last time Captain Barnes cut us any,” I said. “Everybody in this for-shit country is out to fuck us, Ondine. I mean fucking everyone.”
“Tell me about it,” Ondine said.
In moments the team gathered at the streambed that led back to our primary LZ. Everyone was accounted for except for Felix. The sound of small arms fire from behind began to pick up. Suddenly Felix T., with his long stride, came galloping down the rocky creekbed. In addition to his rifle and gear, he was packing a PRC-25 radio and two bandoliers of .60 ammo. As he passed by, Ondine began to laugh hysterically again. I said, “Christ, Ondine, what’s so goddamn funny?”
Ondine was hysterical, which wasn’t like him. I wondered if Ondine was going to maintain or not. He was pointing at Felix. “Yeah,” I said, “the retard Olympics. It’s a regular side-splitter.”
Up ahead Felix slipped on a mossy rock and went sliding down the wet rocky bed. He looked like a man trying to make a hook slide into home plate. Suddenly there was a flat, muffled explosion and Felix T. gave out a sharp piercing scream. A white phosphorus grenade attached to his web gear had become unpinned as he fell. By the time Ondine and I reached him, he was holding on to his chest. Blood was spurting from his uniform. Ondine pulled his shirt back. “Lung,” he said.
“I’m fuckin’ burnin’ up,” Felix said through gritted teeth. The white phosphorus continued to burn within his flesh. Ondine looked him over, not knowing where to start. Felix was covered with holes. He cried, “Burnin’ up, do something! Get me a fuckin’ medic, Jesus!”
I pressed my field dressing against Felix’s chest but all that did was send a gusher of blood from his nose and mouth. Felix’s teeth began to chatter and in another moment he was dead. He was truly lucky. It was over in less than three minutes.
Ondine wasn’t laughing anymore. He stripped the radio off Felix and handed it to me. “This is yours,” he said as he hoisted Felix over his shoulders.
‘You aren’t going to try to carry him all by yourself?” I said.
Ondine said, “Greenie power,” and his black eyes flashed amphetamine. He took a few steps down the creek before he stopped and dropped the body and frantically began brushing burning pieces of phosphorus from his shoulders. Singh and Gerber caught up and without saying a word helped carry Felix’s large lanky body forward. Overhead we could hear the sound of Cobra gunships and in the clearing ahead I spotted smoke grenades in the LZ. Pink and L. D. Pfieffer came back to help with the body. We got into the slicks in a hurry, remembering how Charles had locked in on Second Recon’s pickup zone with mortars. Everyone braced to receive enemy fire but in moments the slicks were airborne and headed back to Camp Clarke. Singh turned to Pink and in a necessarily loud voice said, “Did you make the shot?”
Pink, the diminutive speaker, raised his voice in a shout to be heard over the helicopter noise. “It was a perfect shot. One of the best I ever made.”
“All right!” Singh said. Relief was written all over his face. His expression spoke volumes for the adrenaline euphoria of war. Once the perils of a situation have been escaped, the good times roll. It’s a lot like hitting yourself over the head with a hammer. It really feels good when you stop, and beyond that there’s no point or moral lesson to be learned whatever. Singh was Mr. Happyface. I suppose I was, too.
“Sorry about your man, Tall Paul. What happened?” Pink said.
“Felix liked to keep the pins on his grenades straight,” Ondine said. “Like fuckin’ John Wayne. Well, take heed. The cat rolled a willy peter.”
“Jesus,” Pink said.
“Uh huh!” Pfieffer said. “You remember that bird he torched back at Pendleton? That fucking roadrunner?”
“I do. That was some sick shit,” Gerber said. “A low deed.”
“Well, that’s all I’m saying, man,” Pfieffer said. “What goes around, comes around!”
“Man!” I said. “Don’t start with that! One doesn’t lead to another, like that. It just doesn’t work that way.”
Pfieffer looked back at me with a wide grin on his face. “I can’t fucking hear you, man. What did you say?”
I didn’t want L.D. inadvertently inflicting “boonie voodoo” upon the team by establishing prophecies, or a train of thought that made such prophecies seem logical. But I didn’t have the strength to shout over all of the helicopter noise. I looked down at my hands, which were sticky with Felix’s blood. My rough palms were blackened like charcoal from white phosphorus burns. They were little black bore holes, the very opposite of white. Beyond those I had to thank God that I made it through another mission without suffering great physical harm. I cared not at all for Felix, never had—and who could the stupid fuck blame except himself? Had it been anyone else, it would have bothered me. I watched smoke coming from the little bore holes in my hands. Adrenaline aside, they really did hurt, but it was the sort of hurt that almost felt good. Christ! I was alive. Soon I would be guzzling beer and smoking reefer. Maybe Barnes would give us five days of out-of-country R&R. Bora Bora was supposed to be very good. I could feel the smile muscles begin to activate but couldn’t help but wonder if Pfieffer wasn’t right with his boonie voodoo theory. Maybe Felix T. had hexed us when he torched that fucking bird back at Pendleton. For all the smiles, something felt wrong, and we all knew it and felt guilty for not stopping him when he set the goddamn thing on fire. I pulled a small jar of Vaseline from the medical ruck and used it to cut off the oxygen supply to the white phosphorus burns on my hands. As soon as the rest of the team saw the Vaseline, they begged for me to pass the jar around. I wasn’t the only one suffering from internal combustion. Wisps of rancid smoke were steaming from little pinpoint vent holes off of just about everybody.