Salvatore Matola, Mulder and others in “Sleepless”

They said it'd be like living two lifetimes. At- at first, that's what it was like. Not having to sleep at all made us feel like nothin' could touch us, you know? We'd do 24 hour patrols, night ambushes, you know, and that type of thing.

And you never got tired?

No. Not so that we had to sleep. And then, nothing that the pills couldn't fix.

Serotonin?

Yeah.

How long did this go on?

Quite a while, I'd say. Quite a while - until we stopped taking orders from the company commander in Saigon.

You mean the entire squad went AWOL?

Yeah, somethin' like that.

Well, then who did you take orders from?

We just made up missions as we went along, until it didn't matter anymore who we were killing. Farmers, women. Outside of Phu Bai, there was this school...they were just kids.