War Year by Joe Haldeman Page A

turned to the Vietnamese. “Di di! Di di mao!”
    I don’t know much Vietnamese, but I know that “di di” means “get outa here” and “di di mao” means “get the fuck outa here.” The boy left in a hurry.
    â€œNow hold real still until I tell you. Good.” He went off into another room and flicked a switch. The machine hummed for a few seconds. “Okay,” he said, and came out of the room. Then he took pictures in two other, slightly more comfortable, positions.
    He poked his head out the door and said something in Vietnamese I didn’t understand. The boy came back in, they put me on the cart, and he wheeled me another couple of blocks.
    We went into another building marked NO ADMITTANCE. It was air-conditioned, deliciously cool inside. We went down a hall and into a gray room. The only other patient was a Vietnamese with his arm in a bloody sling, screaming. A medic was sitting at a desk, ignoring him.
    The boy wheeled me into position next to the screaming Vietnamese (who was a soldier, or at least wore battle fatigues). The medic filled a needle from a little bottle and came over to me. “You just get X-rayed?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œWell, this little shot’ll make you feel better. You are John W. Farmer, aren’t you?” He poked the needle into my arm.
    â€œRight.” Twenty Questions again.
    â€œYeah. Well, I’m gonna shave yer leg, so the doc won’t hafta look at all that hair.” He soaped up an old shaving brush and lathered my leg. The Vietnamese soldier kept screaming.
    â€œLook, shouldn’t you be doin’ something for that guy?”
    â€œNah. He’s shot so fulla dope he can’t be feelin’ any pain. He’s an enemy, though, NVA trooper they caught up by Kontum. Guess he thinks we’re gonna torture ’im.” Then I saw that he was strapped down, the buckles all out of his reach.
    It’s funny, I never could get up much hate for the enemy. Like I say, this is Johnson’s fuckin’ war, let him fight it. But I can’t say I felt too bad about that guy, screaming bloody murder over a bullet in the arm. In fact, I’d rather have seen him lying on a jungle trail with his throat ripped out and giblets dribbling all over the ground. He couldn’t have been the guy who buried the mine, not if they caught him in Kontum—but he’d do until the real thing came along.
    The medic finished shaving me and I started to get a little woozy. Thought that shot was supposed to make me feel better. At least my ears were ringing so loud I could hardly hear the guy screaming, if he still was. For some reason, I couldn’t focus on anything more than a few feet away.
    The medic rolled me down to the other end of the room and through a door and into a room that seemed much darker and cooler. I remember an old guy with white hair and big bushy white eyebrows, wearing a green surgical mask, leaning over me, then everything shrunk away and I was out cold.
    I woke up struggling against the straps that held me in bed, shouting and crying. A pretty little nurse held my hand and dabbed at my face with a piece of cotton.
    â€œIt’s all over, soldier. You’re gonna be just fine.”
    Nobody ever called me “soldier” before. But the way she said it, it was nice. She must have given me a shot—the world sprang into focus and I was wide awake. The first thing I saw was a big red NO SMOKING sign.
    I looked up at her and asked, “Got a cigarette?”
    â€œSee what I can find.” I watched her walk away. The white uniform was tight enough to give her a nice swivel. That was something I hadn’t seen for a few months. Not that I’d stopped thinking about it.
    She rummaged around in a desk drawer and came up with a stale pack of Kents. She brought them over with an ash tray and a pack of matches. First civilian matches I’d seen in a long