Things We Carried

I'm Mitchell Sanders and I am a Radio Telephone Operator in the Vietnam War. I carry a very heavy PRC-25 radio which is 26 pounds with the battery. I also carry around brass knuckles. Something else I carry around is a set of starched tiger fatigues for special occasions. When something happens I report it to let people know what to do. Like when Ted Lavender died I had to report a KIA (kill in action) so I could request a chopper. I always have morals to events that happen. The things that people carried always had some extent by superstition. One time we came across this boy corpse that was about fifteen or sixteen years old. He was at the bottom of an irrigation ditch and was badly burned; he also had flies in his mouth and eyes. I thought there was a moral here so I put my hand on the boy’s wrist couldn't feel a pulse. So I took Kiowa’s hunting hatchet and removed his dark brown rubbery thumb which weighed about 4 ounces and wrapped in toilet paper. Then gave it to Norman Bowker. There was no blood and right after I gave it I kicked the body and watched the flies scatter away.