NO ROOM FOR SWAG

The XO job on Nui Ba Den put me on the perimeter constantly. Walking the wire, looking for weak spots. Looking for ways to funnel the enemy into the kill zones our .50-cals covered.

The Viet Cong knew our layout — spies embedded with the Vietnamese forces on the mountain saw to that. So I moved the guns. No schedule, no pattern. Just enough to keep a spy guessing.

The M2 is an incredible killing machine. Get the headspacing wrong reassembling one, and it kills the men putting it back together.

One of my men got complacent on a move. Couldn’t find the Go/No-Go gauge. Set the barrel from memory instead of waiting.

He guessed wrong.

By the time I reached the bunker line, he’d already bandaged his own hand. He was joking with the guys next to him, easy and calm, like nothing had happened. That’s what threw me off — nobody jokes around through real pain. I figured it had to be minor. Told him to unwrap it anyway.

I almost passed out.

A perfect circle, the size of a silver dollar, blown straight through his hand. I could see daylight on the other side.

He wasn’t in pain. Turned out he’d been in a bad car accident as a kid — no feeling left in that hand at all.

Three months later, the Army discharged him.