Men among Men (Part Five)
Vietnam’s Mighty Mouse
(Shadows
in the hutch, 611th Ordnance Company, Cam Rahn Bay 1971) Part V
He had
awaken from his light sleep, having got used to always sleeping with one eye
open, it was near 3:00 a.m., he had been dreaming of an old dark evil, the
demigod he called the Vietcong, he shot a side glance at a man, was it part of
his dream or real? He asked his alternate-mind.
The military hutch, in Vietnam, was no
more than two-hundred square feet, which kept four soldiers, one in each
corner, and he had one corner in it, the Corporal Chick Evens. The glance and
the figure, more like a shadow, transformed him. No longer was he ruminating
from one edge of his sleep to the other, no longer sulky with haunting dreams,
but half alert. The figure towered above him, his gray eyes—slightly
gleaming—someone was holding the hutch door open for a quick escape, and the
moon and stars’ light gave a gleam to the culprit’s eyes. Was this to be a
plunging attack or thief? He asked himself. For there were many druggies in the
Company, and this was a way to get one’s drugs.
He saw the shadow pass by his shoulders,
as he lay quiet on his bunk within his little space in the cubical, then it
stopped, his back shoulders to the dupe to be, it was a thief by a druggie,
looking for whatever he could find of value,
and that which could be taken easily; his buddy still in utopia, holding the
door open, stoned. Yet of the two, he
was the huskier and broader shouldered.
The Corporal took a leap as the thief
made an attempt to getaway, hearing the body on the bed, its movement turn
somewhat, and the Corporal having already said, ‘Haw!” Whatever that meant, it
was the only thing he could think of to say at the time, thinking the black
soldier would stop, —renovate his bad intention: but careless he was, he run
with what item he had taken, and as the soldier rushed forward to make his
designed escape, the Corporal jumped, leaped on him, swung at the same time,
his quick right fist to the thief’s face, with a power kick of his knee to the
stomach area of the thief, that might well have filled an ox.
This was all in close quarters, as the
black soldier at the door, lowered his
arms after seeing the Corporal’s results, the dark-visage devil stunned, saw
the fists of the corporal brought up and aimed at him, ran with a howl of
duress.
The Corporal was not to be dispatched so
easily though, he pulled up the young black shoulder to his level, clutching
the fellow by the shoulders ready to thrust a lasting kick to his groin area,
then pitied him, and hurled him from the doorway, after grabbing his wallet he
had held tightly in his grip.
Taking a shower the following day,
several black soldiers passing through the narrow doorway, of the shower room,
looked at the Corporal as if looking for trouble, having little to say but the
following:
“So you’re the Mighty Mouse of the
White Race, haw!”
Almost simultaneously and with a little
gasp of dismay, the Corporal had pitched forward his face, showing no fear,
even if there might have been a tinge, as they had retreated with an emulated
yell: “Mighty Mouse!”
No: 1030 (11-1, 2014)
