little girl, old blanket

the ravings of an earlier lunatic. Copy right H20wader March 2006
I consider poetry as a way to tell a story so what I write in in the Homeric style.

As an assist:
Three-quarter ton=a large army pickup type truck
Six dollar pot=a large pot in 1965, especially when the pay for me was 250 a month.
Chopper=helicopter most often a Huey gunship or a medical evacuation ship
Charlies = the VC = Victor Charlie =the foe in Vietnam
Swabies=army slang for any one in the Navy, there are different terms for Marines

* * * * *

I sat there at the footlocker being used as a poker table
And a GI blanket used as a covering.

Queens and trays, my house was full, I had a sure winner
when the loudspeaker broke in

“Chopper come in!” and I had to toss it in, the six dollar pot
was no longer mine.

I ran across the bridge that spans the gully that had water in it
when it rained.

I hurried to the truck and head our to meet the birds
and to refuel them.

But they needed no fuel, they just dropped by to drop off
a couple of Charlies.

So hell I park the old truck and took a good long
look at the enemy.

The man was lying on a stretcher, bleeding from a slug
in his belly

The woman was covered with an old olive green blanket
and she was dead.

The three-quarter ton came and the swabies tossed the
the man in

And roared away, the man would live to fight again
somewhere in the future.

The woman, I knew it was a woman there was a, skirt
black and long

Was still on the ground, small, qiuet, still, unmoving,
the enemy I did not hate.

The Arvins would just dump the body in the jungle amd
that was not cool

So some American would have to see that she was buried
in the ground

I asked the Chief Petty Officer if I could do it and
he gave me four

Friendly Vietnamese, I sent three ahead to dig a grave
and dig it deep.

The last one and I took a long look at on e of the thousands
of the enemy

That died that year, fighting a civil war with the Americans
on the losing side.

She was young, very young, I’d d say twelve maybe thirteen
too young to be dead.

She had started to develop and I could see one
tiny breast

But not the other one, cause where it should have been
was a hole

That you could put a fist into, an M60 machine gun hole
i wanted to puke

We rolled her back up in her old blanket and gently
we picked her up

She was as light as a feather but she was dead weight
so young and so dead

We laid her in the back of a green pickup truck and the Arvin drove
out the gates of the landing area

We headed north on the road to where we could see the
the other three digging

The hole was less than a foot deep, I cursed them with the very little
Vietnamese I knew

So they dug deeper taking turns so that two dug and
two rested

I sat and smoked and looked at the girl and the sweating men
and at myself.

The little girl and the old army blanket looked so alone
no one crying for her

A dead little girl who only knew war, and guns and bombs
and finally a M60

A dead girl who never knew how to live, how to love
she only knew how to die

But I also knew that if she were the one smoking and I were
the one in that blanket

She would not give a damn for me, she would happy that
one more GI was dead

The hole got deep enough and the Arvins rolled the little girl
out of her blanket

She was half naked and they did not care, but I could not put
her in the ground half naked

They were arguing over the blanket, they were going to toss the dice
for her blanket

I screamed and yell and they left in the damn three-quarter ton
I was alone

Well not alone there was a little girl who was half naked and
totally dead

I slid the blanket around her and folded it so she was covered
and I lifted her

As gently as I could and I eased her into her final resting place
a crude hole

By a road south of Saigon in the fall of the year where she would
stay, forever and ever

I striped to the waist and picked up the shovel and started to cover
a little dead girl

And with every shovel full of that black dirt the feeling of the
uselessness grew

The people and the war and the guns and the countless dead
and the burying

Useless totally useless, and I was a part of the most fruitless
venture on earth

I sweated and I shoveled and thought and shoveled till the grave
was filled to over flowing

Then I stood there sweating breathing hard, and I tried to think of
something to say

I failed, I could think of nothing to say, nothing to say for a Little
Dead Girl in an old blanket

Lying beside a road that leads to Saigon, who was covered with dirt
in unhallowed ground

I drove away with tears because I had failed to even show that
last touch of mercy

I got drunk that night and the next day I was hung over
I felt lousy

Every day I drove by that place where she lay to pick up the
fuel for the choppers

I saw the grass return to that place, I saw flowers grow there
I saw weeds grow there

I knew I was guilty because I did not have anything to say
to a Little Girl

In an old blanket, who had died before she had really had a
chance to live.

So many years later there is still guilt, for her, for 56,294 dead
Americans

And the countless thousands of the Vietnamese who perished
in the longest war we ever lost

Only now do I see that there was nothing I could say for a Little Girl in
an old army blanket

Only now can I see what can be said now, with many years behind me
and only a few ahead

I see you Little Girl, there along an unknown road, lying buried in
your old army blanket

I know you cannot hear me but I speak anyway, not for you
but for me

I am sorry, Little Girl, I am sorry that you are dead and I am sorry
the man took his in his guts

I am sorry that I was there putting you and you old army blanket
into the ground

I am sorry for the war that killed so many for so long
and solved nothing

But you Little Girl helped me, for you were the one that opened
my eyes so that I could see

So farewell, Little Girl, sleep in peace in you old army blanket
in your hidden grave

Farewell, Little Charlie, maybe somewhere, somehow we might
meet again

Farewell.
* * * * *
i am the h20wader. comments are open say what you will