Pool_1

Well, maybe somebody did. Troop C Rifles staged a brilliant counter ambush of agonizing stealth - letting loose two different sets of synchronized claymore mine arrays and automatic rifle fire in a frenzy of destruction on advancing NVA. Aries must have been wild with joy. But, then, there came the counter counter attack by the 8th battalion of the 66th North Vietnamese Army regiment. It, too, could only please the gods of war who revel in decay. Through a wind blown lace of lightening gunfire, like gust wafted insects dodging through deadly spider webs, flew another kind of chopper, medical relief. Whirly birds? No. Sitting ducks, some of which fell apart on landing from sheer loss of metallic substance, taking so many hits getting in and out. In such a wounded bird flew a young, a way too young, airborne marine volunteered via the 1st Cavalry support to assist medical evacuation. It was a kid who lied about his age to save a girl from a brute named Karl. Some plan! Evacuation! Home? Daydreams? None here. Home was no longer home, no peaceful place of safety or tranquility. Shit, rooming-in with Karl would have been a better choice. In Vietnam, home was much more real and immediate. Home was now just another patch of hell, other than the one you were in, somewhere just slightly to the right of Armageddon, such as a grassy clearing dubbed the 'Golf Course'. "Fire! Jesus, we're on fire!" It would have to do. Both pilots were dead, the chopper was aflame and this thing was not going to land itself. There was now a boy at the controls and he only had the abbreviated course. Even those instructions were failing to the searing of his own flesh, but there were dying men aboard. What was he thinking? "Need a plan! Need a plan!" It is hard to think with your hair on fire.