"Joe Haldeman - 1968" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

The sling was useless.
When you tried to sneak through the jungle, the hollow stock made loud clacks and scrapes against the
brush. The sling swivels (unless you'd taped them or taken them off) made jolly little squeaking,
snickering sounds.

It was very disconcerting to American soldiers when, after a battle, they would collect enemy ordnance
and find that the primitive superstitious devils had been returning fire enthusiastically with weapons that
were dirty, rusty, and held together with wire and friction tape. Whereas GIs often had to scrunch down
behind a tree in the middle of a battle, and take their beautiful weapon apart and try to figure out why it
had stopped working.

A graffito often found scratched on the stocks of M16s was MADE BY MATTELL, IT'S SWELL.

Hygiene

Scratched on the stock of Spider's M16 was the disconcerting legend this machine doesn't work. The
supply sergeant who had issued him the weapon said not to worry about it.

Spider cleaned his hands with a little bit of the gas, then worked over the external metal parts of the gun
with a piece of toilet paper moistened with gas.

"Good morning, Mr. Spider." Wilkes, buck sergeant, Spider's squad leader.

"Pull up a chair." Spider worked the little toggle free and the gun swung open. He dropped the slide, bolt,
and trigger assembly into the helmet to soak.

"Know you're not supposed to use gasoline." Wilkes sat down across from him. "Fire hazard."

"That a fact." Spider threaded a patch of cotton the size of his thumbnail through the eye of a cleaning
rod. He soaked the patch with gas and ran it through the barrel.

"Yep. If you try to shoot the gun when it's full of gasoline vapor, it'll blow up in your face.

Spider showed him what was written on his stock.

"Guess you're safe." Wilkes broke open his rife. "Can I bum some?"

"Go ahead." Spider ran the cleaning rod through again, this time with a few drops of LSU light grease. He
took the soaking parts out of the gasoline and lined them up on a strip of clean toilet paper on his knee,
then offered the helmet to Wilkes. "Save me some for my ammo."

He didn't want to go through the hassle of taking apart the bolt and trigger assembly. They looked clean
enough, so he just wiped them off and gave them a thin coat of LSU. "True we're goin' out today?"

"Shit, I hope not. I had early guard last night. Didn't get two hours' sleep." The fire base had gone on
"100% alert" after the abortive sabotage: everybody up and standing guard in bunkers around the
perimeter, until dawn. If you were already up, you had to stay up.

Spider started to put the thing back together, which always took as long as all the rest of the cleaning