That morning, at daybreak, Delmore Barry decided he wanted to apply to join the Green Berets.
He wanted to be a Special Forces soldier.
He wanted to 'cross the border'.
He wanted to fight with those who were smuggled across or ‘dropped’ somewhere on the other side of the border, alone and with no assistance, and they weren't going into Laos and Cambodia just to fight.
No.
They went across the border to murder the enemy.
It was the only way to do it. The war was not going on there ‘officially’, and any American was automatically considered a criminal after crossing the border, even though he was only following orders.
Of course, the orders were never written and if necessary it would have been possible to state they had never been issued; these ‘non-existent’ orders would have meant a death sentence in any case for the soldiers involved. If not worse. They might have been left to rot forever in a prison in Laos, without being recognized as prisoners of war.
They made it legal to do anything they wanted.
Barry was fully aware of the fact, but he didn’t give a damn.
He knew what the score was and he was willing to take the risk.
It was what he wanted to do, and he wanted to do it more than anything else.
Because as he saw it, crossing a border was simply the thing that he had not been able to do that night.