A memoir of a Vietnam veteran
He looked away again, "So, I'm up there and I'm gettin' off lookin' around the base camp, seein' everything from the top. I'm noticing where everything is, lookin at the people walkin around, like a kid in a tree house and I'm thinking, 'Hey, this beats a sharp stick in the eye!' Then I get over the first look and start looking out at the perimeter. You remember we had some rain and fog off and on back in December?"
I nod.
"Well, we had patches of fog lying around about 20 - 30 meters beyond the wire. Just enough to look interesting but sort of spooky too." Anyway, I'm up there with an NCO. We're taking turns, shooting the shit, sharing smokes, trying to kill the time. We run our commo checks. We log everything in. Time is just dragging and by now there's nothing new about the tower's view. The sergeant pulls a poncho over his head, gets out his flashlight, sits on the floor and tries to write a letter to his girl back in The World. I'm looking out at the wire but I'm seeing the beach at Sydney, imagining a few blonde Aussie lassies grooving on me, when POP! Up goes a red flare. I stare at it in disbelief. I start to reach for the chart to find out what the hell red means when Pop! Pop! Pop! I got red, I got green, I got white. I reach out to shake the sergeant and get his ass in gear when I see long arcs of red tracer go all over the place. Pop! Pop! Pop! I got more colors than I have on the charts, I got small arms chatter on all sides, all 360 degrees! I got ribbons of red dots going into the air. Thump! Thump! Thump! I got illumination rounds from some mortar team. I'm thinking, holy shit! This is Tet all over again and my ass is in the barrel. I grab the hot line and I get this sore assed major, I'm screaming into the mouth piece, "Sir you need to get up here now! The whole perimeter's goin up! I got flares and illumination rounds going everywhere, there's small arms fires, too many to count!"
He takes another pull on the Bud and looks away from us for a second, then returns, his voice angry, "So I hear this tone in his voice. You know, that 'Why-are-you-telling-me-this?' tone; like he's really impatient.
Next