A History of Luna County

This is part of a chapter I wrote several years ago for A History of Luna County, the history far from complete, more an ongoing idea. Priscilla said I should put together all my research on Red River County. Luna County is the result of that suggestion -- historical research, plus people I met.

Nathan Bullock


Nathan would have been beyond surprise had he known April drove down that street hoping to see him there.

As much as Nathan thought about April, he never considered whether she thought about him. In the war, a few months after reading of Tom’s death, Nathan did wonder, but those thoughts came when he thought about April, when the tears threatened, because to think of April was to think of goodness, and there was none of that in the war. Those times, Nathan sat alone, sometimes on ambush in the jungle -- his reclusive nature made others avoid him -- or at a fire base when the company was in from the bush a few days and everyone had at least one night of drunkenness. Sometimes there would be more than a few days, occasionally a week or ten days. Most soldiers became uneasy when in from the bush longer than a week. Officers and sergeants too often decided soldiers needed reminding they were part of the army, and that the army survived by regulations and standard ways of doing things. What the officers and sergeants could not understand was that, yes, they were part of an army, but most of their soldiers were not. The soldiers were part of a great, efficient killing machine. Some soldiers considered themselves only a cog on a small gear in the machine; others knew their true place as an essential part of the machine, that without them, the machine could not function. Those men were very good at their job. Nathan knew his place.

When Nathan sat alone in the war, he read, oftentimes books of history, although he yearned for books of poetry. When such works were available at the fire base library, Nathan borrowed the books, read and reread the poems, then studied favorite poems assiduously. In August 1968, Nathan discovered Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. It was a momentous discovery. He had not known such writers existed. In his senior year of high school, Nathan read The Waste Land. That poem opened his mind to style; Sassoon and Owen led him to content. Nathan tried his own hand, writing several short poems, reading and revising. He discovered in those early attempts too many dead bodies. In late August, the company went back to the bush. In that three-week period, Nathan discovered the death of a single person as meaningful as the deaths of thousands. The first night of the company’s return to the fire base in the bush, Nathan took a pad and a pencil and wrote:

“The old woman shuffled to the village gate,
“And Wizard made her dead.”

Nathan wrote many lines that night and in nights that followed. He declined to term the lines poetry, instead considering what he wrote as running prose with natural breaks. Poetry was a delicate thing and should consist of endearing terms. What Nathan wrote that night was a hammer, pounding a piece of metal, red hot and recently removed from smoldering coals.

There were delicate writings, but those always were of April. Those lines Nathan wrote when on ambush or in night defensive position, taking quietly a small notebook from a pocket, sometimes writing in total darkness, translating the scribbles when the sun rose. At times, though, Nathan wrote of April, and his love for her, on fullmoon nights and he could see the words. In one such writing, he told of the difference between Texas and Vietnam in the rising of the moon, how the moon appeared full grown above the trees, with no glow on the horizon to announce its imminent arrival. On those nights, Nathan achingly remembered the moon at home, of the paling on the horizon, of the sky satin and the moon easing through thin clouds edged with gray lace. At times, he closed his eyes and saw April standing before such a moon, her profile in sharp detail. On those nights, Nathan compelled the tears to remain where they belonged.

Nathan kept all the writings in an ammunition can in his tent at the fire support base. Some notebooks were damaged from heavy rains and Nathan’s sweat. Writings in those books he transcribed in ink on lined pads. Notebooks bought at the small PX were almost useless in the humid jungle. Nathan began taking small items from the VC and NVA he killed, exchanging with the company supply sergeant North Vietnamese currency, belts and knapsacks for army notebooks. Those notebooks had thick covers and pages relatively water resistant.

When Nathan left the war, he wrapped notebooks and pads in plastic and wound large rubber bands around the packages and packed them in the middle of his duffel bag. Inspectors at Long Binh did not ask about the notebooks and pads; they were interested only in finding drugs, weapons and military equipment.