"I'm not here. I'm walking through the jungle gathering mangoes.
aaI meet Raquel Welch. I make a nice mango cream pudding.
aKinda spread it around us.
See, she's into mangoes too. She's like one limb above me.aaaWe're both in the jungle here, nude.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa"Just don't go out there by yourself.aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaYou don't wanna go in there alone,
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaunless you really know the territory."
"Chef?""Yes, sir?"
"How come they call you that?"
"Call me what, sir?"
"Chef. Is that 'cause you like mangoes an' stuff?"
a
"A sauciere?""Yes, sir. Specialized in sauces. See, I come from New Orleans.
I was raised to be a sauciere... a great sauciere."
a
"Has to be a mango tree here somewhere..."a
"I was supposed to go to Paris, to the Escoffier School.But then I got orders for my physical. Hell, I joined the Navy.
Heard they had better food. Cook school. That did it."
a
"Oh yeah? How?""They lined us all up in front of a hundred yards of prime rib.
Magnificent meat, beautifully marbled. Then they started throwing it in these big cauldrons. All of it. Boiling."
a
aaa"I looked in, and it was turning gray.aaaaaaaaaI couldn't fucking believe that one!
a
aaaaaaThat's when I applied for radioman's school, but..."
Never get out of the boat. Absolutely goddamn right. Unless you were going all the way..
.
Kurtz got off the boat. He split from the whole fucking program. How did that happen? What did he see
in that first tour?
.
38 fucking years old. If he joined the Green Berets, there was no way he'd ever get above Colonel.
Kurtz knew what he was giving up.
a
The more I read and began to understand, the more I admired him. His family and friends couldn't understand it, and they couldn't talk him out of it. He had to apply three times and put up with a ton of shit, but when he threatened to resign, they gave it to him. The next youngest guy in his class was half his age. They must have thought he was some far-out old man humping it over that course. I did it when I was 19 and it damn near wasted me.
.
That tough motherfucker. He finished it. He could have gone for General, but he went for himself instead.a
October 1967, special assignment, Con Tum province. Kurtz staged operation Arch Angel with combined local forces. Raided a major success. He received no official clearence. He just thought it up and did it. What balls. They were gonna nail his ass to the floorboards for that but after the press got hold of it they promoted him to full colonel instead.
.
Oh man, the bullshit piled up so high in Vietnam,
you needed wings to stay above it.
aa
