Pool_1

huge losses, chalked up to inexperience. Hell teaches well. But, enrollment is open. There were students on both sides. North Vietnamese troops, barely held or fell back by day but infiltrated closely at night. Stalking with the eyes of cats, they lashed out with deadly claws of sniper gunfire from the impossible reach of overhead tree tops, an appropriate veil of black. They ripped at those fingered by the moon goddess. Casting her glow, Io worked for the North. Sound was fog. The scream of a rifle seemed to jolt from everywhere at once. The only clue was splatter. But who could see that unless it was your own? Some compass. The whole of this place, in every detail, was a trap. For this, caring American mothers raised sons, fretted over them, their childhood rashes, manners, sitting straight and walking tall, wiping their noses, teaching them spelling, numbers, fractions, social skills, including being kindly and having goals. A huge investment - for what? Hand to hand combat with an enemy who ate mud for breakfast and whose single greatest ill was overpopulation? Did anybody do the fucking math? Did an American president really decide to "match force" with "equal force"? This??? Can somebody that stupid really become president? Damn. There's little that mind can embrace when the body is in fetal fold in moon shade. Help? Everything was on the fly, so don't count on it. There were no real immediate landing places. Troops were shuttled in broken groups of, maybe, thirty or less at the only clearing available, though it was far from secured. In this mish mosh of stuttered deployment and evacuation, a bedlam of soldiers, of marines, of special forces in varied - even single mission - uniforms confused both sides. Retreat - advance - who knew? Just be ready to run, or wade, from death or toward it. Run, save your ass, or attack, nobody knew which was which.