Richard Barnes “Dicky”
23
Place of Birth: Miami, Florida
Physical Description: Caucasian male standing around 5' 9" with blue eyes and dirty blonde hair; cut in a fade that grows into a spiking mess at the top. Relatively clean shaven and built moderately when stood next to his peers.
Squad Role: Grenadier
Rank: Private First Class
Equipment: Boonie hat and fatigues, Bandelier across the chest, Fulton Flashlight, M18 smoke grenades (x3 white) (x1 red), E-tool, Purification tablets, Canteen, Small towel, Colt m1911a1, M16, M79 grenade launcher, a green yoyo with
Attitude Is Everything engraved on the side with a winking smiley face in the middle.
Skills: Agile, has an eye for ranging distances, has picked up the local language but is shotty at best, not half bad with a yoyo
Flaws: Hard of hearing, has almost zero tact, can be a tad selfish sometimes, and possesses a big mouth.
Fears: Mass amounts of fire, inexperienced officers
Personality: The reasons for his general attitude can be found below, but as far as this section goes, Richard's most prevailing trait is his neutrality on most things. Don't confuse this for acceptance, as he's very quick to point out the problems in most cases. He's blunt with his opinions, and due to certain past experiences, he doesn't care how high a rank hears them. When it comes to procedure he feels the same way, his one goal is to do his job and get home. Now this doesn't mean he'll gun down civilians because one "might" be Vietcong, he's not a broken man that'll cross any line, but if someone tells him to secure an asset that is clearly lost...yeah good luck. The only exception to his policy of self preservation is human life. He will NOT hang out his comrades to dry, not after his first platoon, and conveniently enough he usually has to break protocols to do this.
Furthermore, his stance on the war itself is almost non-existent. Is it good? Is it bad? In Richard's mind it doesn't matter, they're all involved and the only way out is to play the game. Keep in mind though, he's playing the game so that HE wins, not his superiors. Some might accuse him of being unpatriotic or a boot licker, as both sides don't approve of his lack of a stance, but in the end he sees the idea of them being "good" or "bad" as irrelevant. It's just something else to worry about on top of surviving.
Personal History: The Barnes household was split from the get-go, a condition that persisted for as long as Richard could remember. On one side, there was his father, a dive master operating out of a small shop along the Miami shore. He was foiled by the boy's mother, an officer of the law who continually patrolled the city's twilight district. Though it was true that they completed each other, they always seemed to but heads more than most marriages. The onset of the war in '65 didn't help.
Between the two were three brothers, with Richard being the youngest. Both of his brother's were the results of his parent's previous marriages, the oldest from his father's ex-wife and the middle child from his mother's ex-husband. Richard had the "privilege" of being the only child that could call both his parents biological, which also placed him in the center of quite a few family disagreements. For most of his life he was the middle man, as his older brother would side with dad and his middle sibling with mom. Whenever the adults got to criticizing one and other, their "proxies" as Richard liked to call them, would step in and only add to hostilities.
This gave Rich plenty of opportunities to practice the art of moderation, which usually consisted of him being as blunt as possible to both parties involved. In his head the idea was simple, "they'll either all see reason or just rally around being pissed at me," if the result was the ladder, it never lasted for more than a day or two at a time. This was the routine, and it worked surprisingly well, but nothing is ever truly a cure-all. Even before US troops were officially in country, the topic of the conflict in Vietnam strained his parent's marriage immensely.
At the end of the day, the debate was more a clash of lifestyles and ideology than anything else. Mr. and Mrs. Barnes couldn't have been more different in that regard. "Thank god college was right around the corner," was all Richard could say, as it seemed his usual style of diffusing hostilities just wasn't working. Thankfully the "proxies" were too occupied to weigh in, as Rich's older brother enlisted in the Marines right after high school and the middle one went to study nursing. It seemed Richard was all that was left between his mom and dad...until one fateful day.
Death has a funny way of shuffling one's priorities and whether through a mixture of desiring vengeance, wanting to end the war, or simply seeing an out the US government lost one Barnes brother and gained another. Leaving a confused set of parents behind, Richard was trained and soon found himself in Southeast Asia. He quickly learned the attitude of his platoon, and was surprisingly relieved. There was no more room to slug it out over the politics, they were in country and the only way back was to do their jobs. Instead, the bickering focused on more universally agreeable topics, like why the contents of the heads had to be burned so close to their tents. It seemed that no matter the background or ideology of the individual, most slid right into the established mind set. Being apart of a united group was new to Rich, and he soon found himself missing home less and less.
He should have learned his lesson the first time, because fate quickly reminded him that nothing lasts forever. It was a simple mission, search and destroy enemy caches within a set of villages. Unfortunately, the brass never counted on insurgents coming to retrieve they're supplies on the same day as the operation. What was meant to be a relatively unopposed search and seizure became into an extended firefight. Locked in a stalemate, air was requested, a godsend if the lieutenant coordinating the strike had known his distances better. Long story short, no fire is friendly. With the platoon practically wiped, Richard was circulated into his current unit.
