The Memoirs of Sam Renier

Chapter 29: The
Sacrifice of Saigon Suzi

November 11, 1968. It
was the closest thing that passed for winter in this commie, godless hellhole.
It was the dry season, and CenCom said that
fall-grade camos were back-ordered five months. Great. We’re really gonna
enjoy the cold weather gear when it arrives in June. Goddamned armchair
Generals! None of those Beltway assholes have even opened a door for themselves
for a decade or two, much less seen a real ‘Merican
up close and fighting for the Red, White, and Blue.

What the hell.

Colin Rodriguez called CenCom on the wireless and ordered a combo batch attack of FAEs (that’s "Fuel/Air Explosives for you
draft-card-burning pinkos) and cluster bombs on
Jungle Sector 119/F. That warmed things up a bit.

As always, the U.N.
Observer (also known as the goddamned commie spy who writes trash about BravoDelta Group to the New York Times) made some sort of
stupid noise about section 119/F having a rural village in it. I was waiting
for him to make some sort of point when he got his foot impaled on a
feces-encrusted pungi stick.

"Look here,"
I said, and loaded a fresh clip into my M16. "It’ll take two weeks
to die of gangrene. Better to make this quick."

That ungrateful bastard
died begging for his miserable life until I shut him up with a three-round
burst. A waste of three good bullets, if you ask me! But we couldn’t
leave him behind for the VC to find. He’d sing like a canary.

I chalked up the death
as a "non-combat, accident-related field fatality".

CenCom sent us new orders over the
wireless. We were supposed to recon with a replacement Observer at village
#237. Some VC propaganda whore named Saigon Suzi was
running some anti-American radio station out of a mud hut. The
Reds air-dropped a gasoline-powered generator and a portable transmitter.
Commies. Radios don’t work so well riddled with
small-arms fire -- and that’s a lesson that BravoDelta
was happy to teach!

We got to the village
by nightfall. Like so many other spots in this third-world hellhole, it looked
like a crumbling collection of mud huts that could only benefit from a good
burning. BravoDelta Group specializes in "rural
renewal".

Colin Rodriguez and
Jose O’Kiefe snuck up on the perimeter guards
and cut their throats using service-issue kabars. The
sentries gurgled a bit but otherwise didn’t complain too much. Juan Fraiser and Duane Diez set timed
explosives around the village. Me, I just readied an RPG in one hand and a M16
with a rams’ horn clip in the other. We don’t need no stinkin’ belt-fed
revolvers!

Juan triggered the frags, and all hell broke loose! VC farmers jumped out of
their huts with their second-hand Soviet specials and shot at anything that
moved. Colin mowed them down with his Remington Street Sweeper.

Saigon Suzi came out of the radio shack with bazooka and fired at
Jose. When the smoke cleared, all that was left of him was his combat boots.

"Damn you to
hell!" Rodriguez shouted before I could.

We both opened fire on
her at the same time. Her body twitched and jumped all over the blood-spattered
dirt as we ventilated her with over a hundred rounds of the finest ‘Merican ammo.

Colin and Juan finished
off the stragglers with their machine guns. Hell, these babies have a
"full auto" setting for a reason, goddamnit!

I secured the radio
shack, picked up the mic, and said, "This is
your godless commie radio -- signing off for the last time! Semper
Fi!"

I shot the radio with a
RPG just as the new U.N. Observer showed up.

"This is an
outrage," he declared.

"War’s hell,
buddy," I replied, lighting up a fat cigar.

But I wasn’t
worried about bad press. These U.N. fools don’t exactly have to worry
about collecting on their pension plans, if you get my drift. We left the VC
corpses lay where they fell. After all, buzzards have just as much right to eat
as the worms.

Semper Fi, Baby!