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....the rain had gone from verticle to horizontal, lashed by the monsoons dancing across the Gulf of Tonkin, hunting every last dry spot on your body regardless of how deep or how much clothing you put around it. It also didn't help that I was lying in two feet of rice paddy bilge, trying to keep my sight clear and my rifle clear. There were three of us on point; me, Bill Howard, an older second tour sniper from Kansas City, and Eric Severn, a baby faced kid from San Diego who probably lied about his age. He was picking leeches off his face and wouldn't hold still.Howard kept giving him dirty looks but to no avail. The rest of the platoon was fanned out behind us, some in the muck, some behind the dikes, some lying in the ox dung that seemed to be everywhere.

....we had been out humping for the last three days, chasing some supposedly crack NVA hit squad who was running amock all over the rice paddied low lands. Our, haha, intel somehow kept them just one jump ahead of us, shot to hell bodies and empty burned out vills were all we were finding. The LT, some 90 day wonder fresh from the world, had decided that if we were to somehow get in front of them, it would be them who was walking into the next ambush and not us. He was a moron.
....it really wasn't fair, ya know. Seven months ago, I was a just another dumb assed fresh outta high school jock, more interested in getting laid and trying to score beer in one of the only three places in our little Norther California town that sold the stuff. Problem was that everybody knew everybody and you couldn't bluff your way around your age. And the 'older guys' extracted huge payments just to get your skinny as six beers. Pamela Estensen was almost six feet tall, well breasted, blonde and blue eyed and deeply in love with me. I couldn't care less...except when I couldn't get anybody else.She would come when I called, get screwed and go away when I was done. I was very cruel back then. I am thinking about her when the first shot rings out from the tree line about 100 yards in front of us.
....we return fire; which proves to be a mistake. Mr.Charlie is counting out our guns. We hold fire. All is quiet for a minute then then whole tree line lights up,green AK47 tracers trying to rip my head off. The ground in front and them paddies beyond all exploding and dancing. The LT calls for the Pig Man and he slogs forward and shloshes in beside me. Whipping the tripod down, he opens up that fify cal machinegun like 4th of July.The

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