Food & Culture

FOOD ON A PLATE

by John Akins

Weapons are shipped coated in cosmoline.

Combat meals come in a can;

lumps of stuff cast in gelatin.

In 1968 I eat C-rations for five straight months.

I think of it when I grease my truck.

Some vets recall Bob and the Playmate of the Year cavorting on the tarmac

at Ton Son Nhut.

I remember the day we walk through the wire at Khe Sahn.

There are insulated cases of pot roast and mashed potatoes.

Hot chow.

It comes by chopper from a mess hall in Dong Ha.

The North Vietnamese Army howdy us with 122mm rockets and

152 artillery rounds.

I stand with two heaping paper plates in my hands —

my M-16 tucked under my arm.

Box cars screech through the air.

Red dirt and jagged metal blasts around me.

I don't flinch —

don't flop onto my face.

I genuflect.

Bend over the hot food like it's a newborn in a gust of wind.

John Akins: “I was about to be drafted out of college in 1967. I was twenty, and I enlisted in the Marines andserved as a rifleman in Viet Nam, beginning in Tet 1968. I was part of an infantry battalion and later worked with small teams called Combined Action Platoons. I was wounded and medevaced once. I was recommended for three medals and also recommended to bereduced in rank, the latter of which came about. After the military, I roamed around working in various occupations including construction electrician and welder, reporter on a small daily, minister of propaganda for the Washington State legislature and a couple of state agencies, including the Washington Conservation Commission, and as a high school teacher. This spring, my memoir Nam Au Go Go (subtitle, Falling for the Vietnamese Goddess of War) was published by Vineyard Press, New York. I explain how war fighters who see too much and do too much may cross a threshold into an addiction to violence. Those who survive pay a high price.”