Fiction | September 01, 1984

  The setting of Crooner’s Party is the southern Mekong Delta several weeks after the Tet Offensive.  Blueswords and Chemists are U.S. Navy river assault divisions supporting Crooner and Langley, U.S. Infantry battalions.  They are searching for the Viet Cong Tay Do Battalion, the “best in the Delta,” trying to prevent it from renewing the Tet attack on the Delta capital of Can Tho.  There are low level intelligence reports of an American deserter named Tyree operating with the Tay Do.  The voice of the narrative is that of Celery Salt One, a Navy lieutenant junior grade riding aboard Blueswords Mike One, a thirty foot long armored gunboat.  Boats is the boat captain of Blueswords Mike One, By a Vietnamese interpreter assigned to the boat.  Abominate commands the Blueswords units.

They’re dead ducks, any given night, and they know it. Any night Charlie wants to bring enough power to bear on one outpost, it’s gone. The outposts never move. Charlie’s had mortar aiming stakes set in the same place for years. Any given night.