Above Excellent Quotes #26

I turned around again and started shooting gooks. They were blowing holes through the wires with bangalor torpedoes. A man I took to be one of our own jumped into the trench and jabbed Gerber in the back with a bayonet. Singh saw it happening as I did and reached up on top of the trench where he had set his .45, picked it up, turned, and fired the gun in the man’s face. Because the man was wearing a helmet, the concussive effect of the round blew his face away. Gerber was lucky. He was wearing his flak jacket and the soldier had only made an arm thrust with the bayonet. If he had followed through with a full body thrust, he could have buried it into the hilt.

An absolutely captivating passage from Thom Jones’ story, ‘Break On Through’, taken from his first collection of short stories, The Pugilist at Rest. The scenes in the book which depict the madness and destruction of the Vietnam War, as this story does, are compelling and unforgettable. I highly recommend getting yourself a copy.