When Numbnuts had originally been assigned to Alpha he had been an assistant gunner but he had decided it was safer to carry an M-79 because as a thumperman he would always be far behind the point, behind the front of a firefight. Thumpermen pump grenades up and over the M-60s and 16s. With a 79 one could not walk point. One could not walk slack. But M-79 rounds are heavy and Numbnuts was now carrying 58 HE and three buckshot rounds, twenty-seven pounds of ammunition. “This is kickin my ass,” he whispered to himself. “I’ll die here. I’m goina die of heat frustration.” At each stop after the incident at the steep bank, Numbnuts discarded rounds of ammunition. He hid them. Two in a small crevice, three beneath a rock, six in a cathole beneath his defecation. He bailed out anything he could,
