GRUNTSPEAK

The training of actors for “Platoon” included retired Marine Capt. Dale Dye’s lecture on Vietnam “gruntspeak,” the colorful, often cryptic words and phrases of the grunts, the Marine and Army riflemen fighting there. It was a shorthand form of speech, a language all its own.

For example, a slick was a troop-carrying Huey helicopter. It took you to the LZ , the landing zone. Everyone prayed the LZ would be cold , without enemy fire.

An M-79 grenade launcher was a blooper , so named for the sound it made when fired. Spooky was an AC-47 gunship, an Air Force version of the DC-3, while a Loach was an OH-6 light observation helicopter.

A LAW was a light anti-tank weapon mainly used against bunkers occupied by Charlie-- the Viet Cong or the NVA, troops of the North Vietnamese Army. Charlie’s version of the LAW was the RPG , or rocket-propelled grenade.

Rock ‘n’ roll didn’t always mean music in Vietnam: It also meant firing your M-16 rifle on full automatic. If that didn’t work, you pulled back and tried to bring smoke on Charlie--air strikes or artillery that might include some Willie Peter , or white phosphorous.

Happiness for an 11-Bravo --an Army infantryman--was being a short-timer . It meant your Vietnam time was almost over. The Army tour was 12 months, one month more if you were a Marine. Everyone knew his DEROS --date eligible for return from overseas.

That was when, God willing, you’d board the Freedom Bird . But it wasn’t until the plane had taken off that you finally relaxed, maybe let loose a cheer, and realized that you really were out of it and heading home, going back to The World .