Sergeant Dickinson Read Online Free Page A

dead center on my first position. I waited, giving the sniper time to adjust his scope, then I moved again, forward and to the right. The fourth round was high and well to the left. I moved to my left. The fifth round struck to my right, still high. I stood up and walked back to my original position and sat down. The sixth round hit where the first had. I didn’t move. The seventh hit wood on the command bunker. The eighth and ninth followed it. The tenth went to my right, the eleventh below my feet. I finished my peaches, tossed the can aside, and stuck thespoon in my shirt pocket. Rounds were going everywhere. I ran back inside the fence of the inner perimeter. The eyes and mouths of the other Americans made perfect Os. They made me laugh.
    On the ninth night I rolled up in a poncho against the wall of the inner perimeter. I lay on my back and tried to focus on the stars behind the light of the flares. I woke up at noon to quiet voices and a dessicating sun; I had slept for twelve hours. Faces were grinning at each other. The battle noises had stopped. The North Vietnamese had gone; the First Cav was chasing them into the Ia Drang.

CHAPTER 2
    The brown grass flattens in whorls. The red dust is sucked up into the cabin so that even before we have settled it coats the clay caked into my skin, my nose and ears. We touch ground, rock, settle, the blades continue to whirl. I jump out, grasping my rifle. The door gunner hands down my rucksack. The
wop-wop-wop
of the rotors smoothes to a high whine; I run back out of the way and the helicopter lifts sideways and up.
    It is hot. The sweat runs into my beard, muddying my face and neck. The sky is whiter than it is gray or blue. Where the sun is behind the clouds I can’t stand to look for the glare. I walk from the helipad across the road to the gate. The Nung on guard duty salutes. The camp is red and the color of baked adobe. There is grass which is just beginning to sere. There are the fatigue-green and camouflage stripe-and-mottle of men going into and out of billets, Supply, Air Operations, the latrine. Vaguely, I begin to feel that I have made a mistake.
    At Supply is a man whose name I can’t remember. He says, “Welcome back.”
    I don’t remember his name. He is a captain. “I need aroom.”
    He takes a key down from a board with nails in it and numbers painted on it. “You can have your old room back.” He looks at me as though studying me, then hands over the key.
    The Enlisted Men’s billets is the next building down from the massive concrete communications complex they call a bunker. Inside the entrance I stop to allow my vision to adjust to the dark. Here the air is almost cool. A Vietnamese woman comes out of a room carrying fatigue uniforms. She sees me and stops but says nothing; nor does her face. She scurries on to the far end of the corridor. The laundry room is there.
    I have forgotten my room number and it is not written on the key. A tall American comes by. I ask him which room is Dickinson’s.
    â€œDixie?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œI heard you were dead.”
    â€œNot this time.”
    He looks at me like the captain did at Supply. Finally he points to a door. “This one is yours.” He walks on toward the white sunlight beyond the door at the end of the corridor.
    This room is mine. I have been here before. I am home here. Suddenly I am very tired. My legs are sore. The muscles between my ribs ache. I hang my rifle by its sling on a nail in the wall, toss my rucksack in a corner, my pistol belt and canteens after it. I let myself down on my bunk and begin to unlace my boots. They have not been off in nine days.
    A Vietnamese girl comes into my room and stares at me. Like the American I didn’t recognize, like the captain at Supply. She smiles, tentatively at first, then without reserve. She says something that I do not understand. “Không biêt,” I tell her. But now she is