Sarge

                                                 SARGE


              “Sarge.”
              “ Yeah.” 
              Ray rolled over, peering into the darkness where the disembodied voice whispered.  Sweat, from the jungle’s humidity, dribbled across his brow.  He recognized the voice of Jeff; the platoons spec four radioman.

         “Cutter’s losing it.”  Came the whisper.  Cutter was the cherry that replaced Gamez, when Gamez DROS’d out.  It was Cutter’s first patrol, and it looked like it would be his last.  It looked like the last one for all of them.  Only nine of them remained from the platoon.  Sergeant Ray Esquivel was the highest rank left, and yet he was only eighteen.
 
They were supposed to set up a night ambush, but were ambushed instead.  Now they were surrounded, not by VC as they had thought, but NVN regulars.

         Ray pulled the dog tags of the dead from his fatigues, and placed them in his steel helmet, along side the final letters each man wrote, to be delivered in the event they were killed.  He wondered if any these letters would reach home, as he slowly crawled through the heavy foliage, carefully picking his way to where Cutter lay on the left flank.  The jungle stood black under the moonless night.  It seemed darker from the eerie silence that screamed from the shadowed starlight.

            He crawled over the prone legs of the now dead Tennessee boy, Harvey.  Harvey was twenty. The oldest man in what remained of the platoon, was Rick, at twenty-one.  Ray didn’t fear death, rather, he only thought  of what he would miss not being alive; a wife, children, maybe a career; the chance to see his parents, brothers and sisters, once more. Yes, he thought, it was that, that he thought of, not dying; dying was simple.

          “Cutter!”  He whispered.

          “Sarge!  I … I … can’t … “ He broke in a small whimper.  His sobs seemed to amplify in the darkness.  Ray put his arm around the trembling soldier.  He felt strange comforting someone older than he.  Cutter was only nineteen, but he seemed younger to Ray, almost a child.  Cutter’s sobs lessened under the comfort of Ray’s strength.

          “Sarge.  I’m afraid of dying … I don’t want to … I can’t … not now!” He confessed.

          “We all are Cutter.  We all are.  There’s nothing wrong with being afraid.”

          “You too, Sarge?  Are you afraid?”

        “Me too, Cutter.”

        “ I guess this must be how Custer felt with the Sioux closing in on him.”  Cutter chuckled at the thought  “I wonder… do you think if anybody will remember us?”

          “Maybe… Family would, for sure.”  Ray thought for a moment.  “Maybe someday, someone will build a memorial, and it’ll have our names on it.  Maybe someone will stop and wonder how we felt … of what we might have thought of in our final moments … I sure hope someone does remember us.”

        “Yeah.” Cutter sighed.  “Okay Sarge.  I’m Okay now.  At least I’m not alone.  I would hate dying alone.”

        Ray smiled.  He scanned the darkness.  The dim shapes of what had been the platoon, lay scattered like fallen leaves, where they died.  Like leaves yet to have fallen, they too, would fall, and with the passing of time, drift away, leaving but a memory of what once was.  He placed his ammo clips beside his rifle and waited in the quiet darkness, Cutter lay to his left.  The rabbit flare tripped, sending the white phosphorous into the sky.

          Nancy stood before the monument, searching for his name.  Tears welled as she struggled to read each name her brother had written in the old, tattered, letter her father had kept by his bedside.  A letter her father had read nightly, crying, as he read each word slowly; carefully folding the letter and replacing it into its’ envelope; a ritual that lasted until the day he died.  Carefully, Nancy placed a small group picture of the smiling young men at the base of each name found. 

        She was only seven, the day she first saw her father cry.  He had stood there frozen, as he listened to the man with ribbons on his chest; listening to words that told him that his son, Ray, would not be coming home.  She scanned the wall carefully, until she found his name, the big brother, she remembered.  With tenderness, she traced the letters that spelled his name with her fingers. The memory of the smiling giant that playfully carried her around on his shoulders flooded her.  With shoulders slumped in anguish, she cried.

          Slowly, a gaunt, gray haired man on crutches, wearing an old camo shirt, came and stood beside her.  Through her own tears, she saw tears roll down his cheeks as he gently taped the medal next to her brother’s name.

        “You knew my brother?”  She asked.

        “Only his strength.” He replied; in a voice broken with emotion.  He then turned and hobbled away.