The Infirmary

So We Shot

61 s o W e s h o t We liked to shoot things. Boys being boys. We shot flying and crawling things and swimming and walking things. We shot birds and parrots and gulls and beautiful things we didn’t know the names for. We shot monkeys and gibbons and lemurs and deer and pigs and dogs and turtles. We shot oxen and water buffalo in the rice paddies and bet how many m-16 rounds it would take to buckle one to its knees because it was big and stupid. We shot tigers and elephants. Because we rarely saw them, we rarely shot the enemy. We shot Vietnamese women and children in their yellows and blacks and a goodly number of old men. and if any of that were not enough, we shot each other. Then we went home and shot ourselves. ...