It was so hot all the time. Hundred and five, hundred and ten. Sweat so much guys were dropping from heat exhaustion. Bugs, mosquitoes, leeches. You didn’t even have to get in the water to get leeches. They just dropped off the trees on you.

The people, they sometimes acted like they liked us. Other times like they hated us. We could never tell which was real.
Booby-traps everywhere.... I could open the door to this pen and the whole place would blow up. Walk through the woods, the ground would open up.    Some guy in a hole would shoot you and, poof, disappear.    
Walk through a place, fire-fights with Charlie. We’d ambush them. They’d ambush us.   We’d clear ‘em out. And by the time we were on the chopper out of there, they were back. They always came right back.
It was like this game. Something that wasn’t real.
The officers—the officers would say “Go over there and do that      Come over here and do this”  And we would do it.
But it never made no difference.

That old guy Clayton,   he was right.          Just wasted our time.   I mean guys --- guys that you see back home bagging groceries or something,         they’d be over there and their guts would be hanging out all open. Or Their arms and legs would be blown off. God knows what .......For What?    
For Nothing.   
We used to say it, too.   Don’t mean nothing   Don’t mean nothing  ................Maybe that’s why we said it.
Because it really meant so much . It Meant so much.