When I was about ten or eleven years old, my very first girlfriend (or at least that is what she liked me to call her) asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.
“A doctor, I guess,” I lied, trying to impress her.
“That’s wonderful,” she said, somehow already aware, even at that tender age, that if she was going to start getting serious about a boy, he ought to have a decent future ahead of him.
I didn’t have the courage to tell her the truth, that what I really wanted to be when I grew up was a professional tracker. That’s right, one of those quiet, hard men who used to ride bent over in the saddle looking for clues on dusty trails that would lead them to outlaws with big bounties on their heads, or to bands of renegade Apache Indians who needed to be rounded up and returned to the reservation.
My mother had told me years earlier that I had some Indian blood running through my veins (1/16 I think), so I was pretty sure I would make a great tracker, assuming of course that there was still going to be something left to track when I grew up. At the rate Apaches and other Indians were dying off in the cowboy movies I was always watching, I had my doubts. But I still often fell asleep thinking about how pretty and fast my pinto horse was going to be (his name would be Patches) and how I would be such a good tracker that no one would ever double back on me. I could hardly wait to grow up and head out West (although I was already living in West Sacramento, California at the time) where I could chase after desperados or put my ear down to the ground and listen for the distant thundering hooves of unshod ponies.
Then one day in 1969, just a few weeks before I was going to turn 21, I suddenly found myself way, way out West, in a place called South Vietnam. I had a tracker’s uniform on alright, and they had even given me my own rifle and a whole bunch of bullets, but other than that and the fact that the C-rations we had to eat tasted like they had been packaged way back in the days of cowboys and Indians, it didn’t have the fun feeling that I had always associated with being a professional tracker. Plus, it dawned on me that back when I had wanted to be a professional tracker, I had definitely not spent enough time thinking about what happens when you actually catch up with the guys you are after!
Anyway, on that particular day, I was shivering from a combination of fear and chilling drizzle as I cautiously trudged through the dense elephant grass on the way to our next objective. My backpack felt like it weighed a ton, and my feet were absolutely killing me. Where was Patches when I really needed him, I thought to myself.
Up ahead, our point squad leader suddenly thrust a clinched fist high into the air, mercifully bringing our 30-man Aero Rifle Platoon to an unexpected halt. He and his gangly friend and radio carrier were a good 15 yards in front of me, obviously worried about something they had seen.
He finally glanced back over his shoulder and casually motioned for me to join him. He had barely uttered a word to me since I had been placed under his command, and hoping to get on his good side, I rushed forward. But my prompt arrival went unnoticed as both he and the corporal were busy staring out intently at an ominous looking tree line some 50 yards to their front.
Finally, he fumbled around in a pocket and pulled out a damp cigarette and lit it, he turned his attention to me.
“You’re Fisher, the new guy, right?” he asked me, looking directly at me, almost through me.
“Yes, sir,” I said, making a mental note to stop calling non-commissioned officers ‘sir’.
“Fisher,” he demanded, pointing down to the wet earth with the barrel of his rifle, “what does that look like to you?”
I desperately wanted my first answer to one of his questions to be correct, so I took a studied look at the object he wanted me to identify.
“Well, Sir,” I finally mumbled, “it kinda looks like a pile of shit.”
“Very good, Fisher, and now just what do you think a pile of shit is doing way out here in the middle of nowhere?”
I looked back down at the ground. It had obviously been left by a human being, and it looked like it was pretty fresh. Then I bent over for a more detailed look, trying to give myself some more thinking time.
“Fisher,” he yelled, “get your face out of that!”
Then he grabbed one of my arms and abruptly straightened me up, causing me to lose my balance and step right into the center of the topic of our discussion.
“Fisher, that is enemy shit, and where you find enemy shit, what else do you think you will find?”
I didn’t have the foggiest idea, and it apparently showed on my face, because shortly after I had stopped gagging from the smell coming up from my boot, he barked, “You find the enemy, Fisher, the enemy! Do you understand?”
“Yes, Sir,” I blurted out, making a quick mental note that if careers as professional trackers ever came back into vogue again, I wanted no part of becoming one.