Perfect



Raindrops fell on the men as they trudged through the mud and slop on their way to the LZ. The two man squad, consisting of Corporal Marsh and Sergeant Lombardo, had just finished a small reconnaissance mission and were on their way to their rescue chopper. Their boots were heavy with excess mud and the noises their feet were making sounded like a duck quacking. The men were hungry, sleep-deprived, and eager to get to the evac so they could rest without having to worry about being shot at.

“I can’t believe it. All this killing - for what?” said Cpl. Marsh. And so many innocent Vietnamese people have died, he thought.

Marsh had always been lackluster, Lombardo thought. Last one to the objective, last one to finish the runs, even last one to clean his living space. He also had the biggest heart. To honor the memory of every soldier, enemy or friendly, he’d rip their dog tag off and keep it so he could remember everybody.

“Shut up Marsh, you’re always whining about something. Focus on what’s happening now. You have to be sharp. You hesitate, you die. Worry about the dead and you join them,” said Lombardo.

Lombardo’s first name was Vince, but all the boys back at the base joked that his real first name was Don. It was stupid stuff like that that pissed him off the most. He was easily the most organized one of the group, he never messed up or did anything that you couldn’t find in a how-to book.

They continued slogging through the sludge, praying for that heavenly image of the friendly helicopter.

“Damnit, I think we took a wrong turn somewhere. Nothing is matching up with the map,” said Lombardo.
“Lombardo, you idiot, I thought you never messed up. I thought you were Mr. Perfect,” teased Cpl. Marsh.

“I don’t mess up, it was your stupid talk about how when you got to the chopper-” Lombardo’s retort was cut short by gunfire.

Neither of them saw the group of Viet Cong soldiers moving towards them in a 4 by 4 formation. Bullets began whizzing by the two soldiers’ heads. They dropped to their chests and moved into cover behind a boulder. Marsh panicked. He fired without aiming, shooting for any part of the enemy soldiers he could hit. Lombardo calmly adjusted the sight on his rifle, loaded the clip into the barrel and began firing short bursts. Marsh’s shots went wild, not coming close to hitting anything. Everyone of Lombardo’s shots hit an enemy soldier and they dropped one by one.

Marsh stopped firing and, for a moment, he was still, wild-eyed and staring.

Lombardo barked, “Marsh, reload!”
Marsh’s hands were shaking so much he couldn’t get the clip in the barrel.
“Marsh!”
Marsh turned to Lombardo, a blank look on his face.
“Focus, damnit!”
Marsh startled out of his trance and started to fumble with his rifle. Lombardo snatched it and re-loaded for him and the two of them kept firing. After one more reload for Lombardo, there were no more troops to shoot at.
Lombardo looked at Marsh with a smirk.“If I weren’t here, there’s no way you would have made it through this hell fire,” he boasted. “Now reload that rifle. I’ll be damned if I’m doing it again.” He began to reload his own weapon.

A Viet Cong soldier, who had hidden behind the two men while they were reloading and not looking, jumped out. Lombardo turned and drew his gun before the Viet Cong soldier did and fired.

Click.

Lombardo hadn’t pushed the clip in all the way, the most common error of any reload. The Viet Cong soldier pulled his trigger and sent Lombardo sprawling to the ground. Pain spread like fire in his guts and blood flowed over fingers and metal. The Viet Cong soldier then turned his gun towards Marsh, but Marsh was quicker - he fixed his sights on the enemy soldier and fired. The Viet Cong soldier crumpled to the ground. Marsh stood up, and the weight on both his soul and body came into effect and he crashed to the grass. Lombardo was the leader, he couldn’t be dead! Marsh crawled over to Lombardo’s bloodied corpse and saw that his dog tag had been shot through and the name could no longer be made out. Suddenly, everything went silent. Marsh couldn’t hear.

Marsh woke up back at base in an all-white room that reeked of ammonia and disinfectant. A woman in a nurse’s uniform came over to him.
“It’s Thursday,” she said kindly. “You’ve been here nearly a week. The PTSD guy will be along to see you later.”
Marsh sat in his bed, picking at the dirt under his fingers, unable to think about anything else but Lombardo. The only problem was that Marsh couldn’t remember what Lombardo looked like. He could remember fighting alongside him, but he couldn’t remember his face. All he could remember was the bullet hole in the dog tag.






THE END