Why Me?
by George Cramer
“Sarge, why me? I’ve never even been in a massage parlor.”
Posts from the ‘Fiction’ Category
Sep 22
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Setting the Woods on Fire
by Robert Goswitz
Quang Nam Province, South Vietnam
June 15, 1972
Private Ed Lansky felt dispirited, seized by a debilitating lethargy. Always afoot on endless patrol his fatigue went beyond the physical; it included a burden of iniquity that accumulated as he walked.
He stood at rest now, looking down at his blackened boots, wondering how much farther he could go. With a shrug of his shoulders, he scanned the burnt prairie grass that covered the foothills in which he waited. His eyes settled on the ground his platoon had just patrolled.
Don’t Mean Nutin!
by Donald Miller
“Who opened the peanut butter?” Must be the new guy; “hey newfer, don’t you get that you’re sleeping in a jungle.” “Look around.” “You’re lying on the ground with five other LRRP’s.” Shit all I want to do is get some sleep and here I’m whispering to a newfer. “Damn newfer, you, us, we are in triple canopy jungle. There are snakes, tigers and monkeys all around us not to mention enemy NVA. Plus, and I’m sure your newfer brain may be catching on to this, there are elephants. Hear the falling trees? Feel the ground shaking? That! New guy is an elephant or two or three. Big elephants! Do you know, shit-head newfer, why they may be stampeding right at us? Do ya? You numb nuts; it’s that C-ration peanut butter you just opened.”
Homecoming
By Margi Desmond
Mayor Richard Powell ordered all Woodbury flags to fly at half-mast in honor of hometown hero, Army Sergeant First Class David Lehane, who gave his life fighting for the United States of America during Operation Enduring Freedom.
The Lehane family replaced the blue star flag hanging in their home’s front window with a gold star flag.
Mai Tais in Paradise – 1967
By Louis M. Abbey
The man stands naked in front of the sky-filled window curling his toes into the pile carpet. A drop of sweat trickles down his hairless chest. He feels the walls press close around him like the reeds would at night on the river. Fifteen stories below, bathers wander in and out of surf and traffic crawls along a flower-lined boulevard. Colors mute, merge and separate in the glaze of bright sunlight. He turns.
The Light in the Kitchen
By Ruth Deming
My duffel bag is my pillow. A fluffy pink bathroom rug, my floor. And three upside-down cardboard boxes, snug on top of one another like a Chinese puzzle box, is my home. You see, when I served my twelve months in Kandahar, all I wanted was to be alone. A self-constructed solitary confinement is my home now in the woods. My music? The sounds of nature I hear when lying on the bathroom rug I pulled from the trash. Now I awaken to the early morning chirping of the birds I so missed in our housing units, custom-made for temperatures which, I’m sure you’ve read, can get up to 140 degrees, and then drop drastically when the ice-cold rains and snows fall from the sky.
Romeo Sierra
By Peter Gamble
I looked out at the morning horizon and saw some much needed rain clouds approaching. I didn’t know if they would bring rain or snow to this elevation but I knew we needed that rain/snow.
O-Dark-Thirty 