When We're All Used Up

Chapter 11: Back To Work

"I wanna get back into the Marines, sir.", I tell the recruiter in his Dress Blues uniform.
"Of course sir, I'll get to you", the recruiter says to me. I finish all the paperwork needed and I leave.

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I return home and see my mom outside of the house just sitting and watching the neighborhood.
"Ma, que paso, porque estás aquí afuera?", 'Ma, what happened, why are you outside?', I look at her when I say that. She looks at me in my eyes and she tells me,
"Porque me haces esto? Dime, porque?., 'Why do you do this? Tell me why.',I look at her eyes, she's been crying from what I see, she had dried up tears and red eyes. I look at her, I feel like I have been crying alongside her since she started.
"Porque me gusta, cada día que me levante en la mañana siempre nos hicieron hacer más y más trabajo. Me encanto quebrando me cada día, pero con la mentalidad que nada me puede parar.", 'Because I like it, every day that I woke up in the morning they always made us do more and more work. I loved breaking myself every day, but with the mentally that nothing can stop me.'.
"Okay", my mom said, sadly with a twinge of disappointment. My mom is someone that you can't really tell what she's thinking. I walk in behind her and close the door behind me. I walk over to my room and lay down.

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I hop out of the bus back onto the Vietnam soil, I smell the familiar smell of jungle. I look around, nobody greets me or any of the new soldiers. I look at a board with the names of soldiers and where they're assigned.
"Barracks room 5...", I say, to make sure I have it in my mind. I walk over to the barracks and open the door. I smell something I haven't smelled before. Cigarette smoke. I look around and almost everyone is smoking and is drinking at least one bottle of beer. I see them all. I have no clue who these people are. I open a window to let out the smoke and walk over to the back of the barracks room to pick up a gun. I pick up the M-60 7.62 caliber machine gun, thinking that I'd give it a shot. But someone 2 times taller than me slaps it out of my hand from behind me.
"Fuck off you little shit. Use this instead.", the guy says. He then hands me a weird looking, very worn, gun.
"What the hell is this? What happened to the M-14?", I look around and see that they are all the same rifle with a weird looking thing at the top.
"They got rid of them, guess wood and 7.62 were too hard to keep.", the guy says as he walks away. I look at the rifle and mess around with it. I see a selector on the left side of the gun, it has 3 modes, Safe, Semi, and Auto. I guess for safety on, semiautomatic, and fully automatic. I pull the magazine but it's stuck inside. I push one of the buttons on the left side by the magwell and nothing happens. I push the other and the magazine drops to the floor. I pick it up and see that it is way smaller. I look at the rifle closer and see Caliber 5.56 carved in the metal.
"I guess that's why...", I look back and see that the men's ash trays are full of cigarettes. I go outside to see if there are any officers to discipline these men but when I walk to the officer's quarters I see that they are just as much of drunkards, if not more, than the boys in the barracks. I walk back to our barracks and see the men are finally outside. Only to empty their ashtrays, though, I pick up a handful of dirt and throw it on the ash on the floor.
"What the fuck happened to this place", I tell myself. I don't see anybody doing PT, or exercising at all. I walk over to the small field in the middle of the base and I run around the square shaped area. It's the only thing I could think of to get rid of my frustration.

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I have been alongside these men for over 3 months now. And I'm done with this shit. They barely try, fail tests, but still somehow manage to stay here. I had respect for everyone in my old squad, even Ray, but I have no respect for these men. Or our Sargent, Sgt. Fourier, has horrible leadership skills. The guy makes us charge ahead of him as he sits back and watches. And it always ends the same way. We push into North Vietnam from an area without many troops, get shot at, and run away, usually a man dying on our way out. I'm surprised that I'm not dead yet. As far as I know, nobody here is my squad mate. They are all just lousy and lazy. 4 out of the original 8 guys have died thanks to Fourier's dumb tactics. I am nearing my breaking point, I look around the jungle, our tents are set up and my rifle is on my back. I finally got the hang of the M-16, it works perfectly fine to be honest, but it jams. A lot. More so than the M-14. It jams so often that I've given it a nickname, Jammy Jane. Apart from that, today we're on patrol. Sargent Fourier always goes along with us on patrol. We pick up our guns and I take 3 fragmentation grenades. I clip them on my shirt and walk back to the rest of the squad.
"Let's get this on.", Sargent says as he walks towards a small and thin dirt path. I walk behind him and keep an eye on the side of the path.
"Sir, there are some weird lookin footprints over here", I say as I point at some footprints.
"Alright men, we're going over to check out these footprints.", Fourier says, I think that that is a normal course of action. So I walk behind him and hope for the best.

{CHAPTER 11, END}

[Thank you for reading, I'm genuinely so so so sorry that these episodes are getting worse, I'm just really losing motivation. I'll probably take a break for the holidays for some time. Thanks for reading, love to all]