Jenkins Quotes in Fallen Angels
The village was a good ten minutes away and everybody seemed relaxed. I wasn’t. I was scared.
I had never thought of myself as being afraid of anything. I thought I would always be a middle-of-the-road kind of guy, not too brave, but not too scared, either. I was wrong. I was scared every time I left the hooch.
On the way to the chopper, I found myself holding my breath. I kept thinking of the noise I had heard when Jenkins got it. By the time we took off I was panting.
An image of the VC we had killed flashed through my mind. I wondered if he had a family? Had he been out on a patrol? When did he know he was going to die?
What was worse than thinking about him dead was the way we looked at him. At least we had cared for Jenkins, had trembled when he died. He was one of us, an American, a human. But the dead Vietnamese soldier, his body sprawled out in the mud, was no longer a human being. He was a thing, a trophy. I wondered if I would become a trophy.
“We won.” Walowick came in after the volleyball game and sat on the edge of the bunk. “They’re paying us off in beer.”
“Way to go,” I said.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Seeing that dead gook mess you up some?”
“A little,” I said. “Maybe even more than Jenkins.”
“Who’s Jenkins?”
The war was different now. Nam was different. Jenkins had been outside of me, even the guys in Charlie Company had been outside. Lieutenant Carroll was inside of me, he was part of me. Part of me was dead with him. I wanted to be sad, to cry for him, maybe bang my fists against the sides of the hooch. But what I felt was numb. I just had these pictures of him walking along with us on patrol or sitting in the mess area, looking down into a coffee cup. It was what I was building in my mind, a series of pictures of things I had seen, of guys I had seen. I found myself trying to push them from my mind, but they seemed more and more a part of me.
Jenkins Quotes in Fallen Angels
The village was a good ten minutes away and everybody seemed relaxed. I wasn’t. I was scared.
I had never thought of myself as being afraid of anything. I thought I would always be a middle-of-the-road kind of guy, not too brave, but not too scared, either. I was wrong. I was scared every time I left the hooch.
On the way to the chopper, I found myself holding my breath. I kept thinking of the noise I had heard when Jenkins got it. By the time we took off I was panting.
An image of the VC we had killed flashed through my mind. I wondered if he had a family? Had he been out on a patrol? When did he know he was going to die?
What was worse than thinking about him dead was the way we looked at him. At least we had cared for Jenkins, had trembled when he died. He was one of us, an American, a human. But the dead Vietnamese soldier, his body sprawled out in the mud, was no longer a human being. He was a thing, a trophy. I wondered if I would become a trophy.
“We won.” Walowick came in after the volleyball game and sat on the edge of the bunk. “They’re paying us off in beer.”
“Way to go,” I said.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Seeing that dead gook mess you up some?”
“A little,” I said. “Maybe even more than Jenkins.”
“Who’s Jenkins?”
The war was different now. Nam was different. Jenkins had been outside of me, even the guys in Charlie Company had been outside. Lieutenant Carroll was inside of me, he was part of me. Part of me was dead with him. I wanted to be sad, to cry for him, maybe bang my fists against the sides of the hooch. But what I felt was numb. I just had these pictures of him walking along with us on patrol or sitting in the mess area, looking down into a coffee cup. It was what I was building in my mind, a series of pictures of things I had seen, of guys I had seen. I found myself trying to push them from my mind, but they seemed more and more a part of me.
