Word: platooner
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Soon the men reach what seems to be their destination. Two soldiers begin digging a position from which they could fire a 5.56-cal. machine gun at approaching Iraqi vehicles. But another soldier appears out of the darkness and tells the machine gunners that their platoon has ended up in the wrong place. It is too close to the road. In fact, it turns out that the platoon would be in the fire zone if the 82nd were to launch a mortar attack...
Eventually the men find their way to safer ground. The company commander explains that the platoon's lieutenant is new. "It's good to get him out here to practice," he says dryly. Observes the sergeant: "It's a small price to pay to be one of America's finest...
...week earlier, Saw Klee Moo was part of a 15-man reconnaissance patrol that was ambushed in the jungle by a six-man Burmese platoon. The Karens outnumbered the Burmese but, taken by surprise, didn't have time to seek cover. Saw Klee Moo and the others just froze and shot at the enemy, raking everything in sight with automatic fire. He doesn't remember how long he stood there, firing madly, but eventually the Burmese withdrew, dragging their wounded with them. It was the first time Saw Klee Moo had encountered the enemy face to face. Asked...
...extracted itself from Vietnam. From The Deer Hunter and Platoon to Born on the Fourth of July, interpretations of the war continue to be big at the movies. Television has China Beach, the award-winning series about a rest and relaxation center in Danang. The London hit show Miss Saigon, a musical about a doomed romance between a Vietnamese bar girl and an American soldier, will be coming to Broadway next year with seats costing as much as $100. Bookstores are filled with memoirs, histories, reprints and novels. This spring Harper & Row even published The Vietnam Guidebook, with advice...
...gear that he and his platoon carried are precisely itemized: a 26-lb. radio, an 8.2-lb. fully loaded M-16, a 20-lb. pack of necessities, including canteens of water. There are heavier burdens. The chapter "On the Rainy River" finds the narrator considering a dodge from the draft. It is set mainly at a fishing camp in Minnesota where young Tim can practically cast a line across to Canada. The scenery and tone suggest early Hemingway; the difference is that O'Brien's uncertain youth must still go to war before he can join a lost generation...