SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest

Young was always good for a smoke and a joke, he was always smiling. He was real smart, too, but he wasn’t no high hatter about it. This one time, they’d all been sitting at mess talking about how shitty Korea was and how they never should have come in, and Young had started explaining all the politics, like with Korea being so close to Japan and what the Soviets wanted to do, and how bad that would be for the rest of the world. Burtoni had stopped giving a shit if the commies took over about ten minutes after he’d set foot on Korean soil. The gooks could all take a flying fuck as far as he was concerned, but the way Young told it… He said what they were doing was important, stopping the Reds, and he really believed it. Burtoni still hated the fucking place with his whole heart, and prayed every day to go home. No conversation was going to change that, but it had made him feel a little better, like at least it wasn’t all for nothing.

Besides which. Burtoni had heard that the MASH units were nice, clean, lots of drafted doctors and support personnel with no interest in mitt flopping to the brass. Decent chow, hot water, less horseshit… and nurses. American women of the Army Nursing Corps. He’d never been to one of the mobile hospitals but the fellas talked, saying that for every battleaxe stomping around there were three Doris Days looking to hold hands and kiss it better. Plus a Jane Russell or two thrown in, for thinking about later.

Burtoni needed to see a pretty face, some baby-doll ready to hear some sweet talk from a well-mannered Catholic boy like himself. There had to be at least a few lookers in the pack, but he was entirely prepared to compromise. War was hell. He got his kit together, his exhaustion turning to a kind of wired giddiness. He was famous back home for having a way with the ladies. Maybe he could salvage something from this clusterfuck of a day.

Full dark and Cakes drove them along a beaten track headed south and west, headlights illuminating a sea of nothing but trees and hills and rocks. The night was cold and damp. The wind whistled through the Jeep’s buttoned flaps, and the heater didn’t work. McKay, a skinny redheaded guy, sat in the back with Burtoni but kindly kept his phiz shut for most of the trip, an hour and a half of ass-cracking potholes and Cakes snapping his cap about them. Sergeant West stared out into the dark, thinking whatever it was he thought about. Burtoni focused himself on the promise of talking up some split-tail Sheba, trying not to see what he kept seeing in his head — Addy, falling, shot in the face, never to see his rugrats again. Kelly bleeding out into the rocks a million miles from home.

Finally, they crested a low rise and there were lights ahead, lights and shitloads of tents and Quonset huts tucked between two hills. Burtoni studied the place through the smeary window. There were some beat up crash wagons just north of the camp, the white-outlined crosses they wore flocked with mud. He counted three copters parked some distance away. Cakes swung around south, past a couple of long barracks buildings to the motor pool in back. Farther south was a camp village, dark hooches stretching out of sight.

A short corporal with peepers and a baby face signed them in and gave them the dope on the place, pointing to a hand-drawn map on the wall — mess, guest quarters, post-op, NCO club. The sarge asked where the honcho was and the corporal, name of O’Donnell, said he’d still be in his office; CO was a bottle-cap colonel called Sanderson. The sarge got a sour look at the name. He hid it quick, but Anna Burtoni hadn’t raised no knuckleheads. If Sarge didn’t like the guy, neither did Burtoni.

Sarge said he was going to talk to Sanderson and sent them ahead to see Young. McKay led the way through the tent town, and Burtoni quickly surmised that the 8011^th pretty much beat the living snot out of their Company base. It didn’t smell like shit, for one thing, but also the walkways were packed and smooth, and most of the tents had real floors. Buzzing lamps, swarmed by moths, sent down smooth planes of yellow light, cutting cleanly through the shadows. Someone had planted flowers along the bases of the Quonset huts. Most of ‘em were dying, but still. Some of the guys walking past were regular army, tucked and spiffy, but there were some real slobs, too, and no one saluted. He even saw a pair of Joes walk by wearing nonreg civvies, cackling like hens.

“Where’s all the gooks?” Cakes asked, and Burtoni finally noticed the most obvious difference. The Koreans who lived in the 33^rd’s little camp town went to bed early, but there were always workers and sellers hanging around, kids running errands, the occasional slicky boy looking to boost anything that wasn’t nailed down. At the 8011^th, he didn’t see a single Korean face.