OCR Text |
Show Flying - 178 awakens to t h i s sound of impending doom. Over the brow of the h i l l where John Henry walked guard last night comes the plexiglass nose of a helicopter flying about ten feet off the ground. It flies slowly over the tents and keeps heading south. Over the h i l l behind i t come more and more l i k e i t , until the noise is unbelievable and everyone's grabbing at the tents to keep them from flying away in the wash of the r o t o r s. " I t ' s the Thirty-second Helicopter Company," says O'Connell. "I heard on the radio they were going to fly down the coast today to pick up some troops, but I forgot about i t ." But John Henry w i l l not be so easily comforted. What if after a l l i t had been the end of the world? I have often dreamed i t would be l i k e t h i s . A t e r r i b l e noise that comes from everywhere and a gentle sliding away of the ground beneath my f e e t . What if I had been carried to oblivion in a moment of moral compromise? Hiding under my rock instead of standing on i t . What then? We stood at a t t e n t i o n s t i f f with respect and told the captain i t wasn't our f a u l t . We cringed in front of that pompous f a t - b e l l i e d bastard. We turned away his wrath with soft answers. If I want to, I can spend eight hundred and forty-three more days pretending to be a good soldier. Pretending to be a s o l d i e r . Then Wham! Bam! Shazam.' back to |