Defiant: Part 1

 “Charlie!” I could hear the door gunner scream as he cranked his M-60 machine gun towards the tree line and began a firing a rapid succession of bullets. The pilot had wasted no time on the ammo drop and barely touched ground it seemed then the helicopter began a fast assent up and away from the enemy fire.

“Hope you are hard at work attempting to communicate with us on this side? Let me know!” said Dave the radio operator clearly frustrated with his machine. “I don’t know if anyone can hear me, I think the radio might be cooked I can’t seem to get HQ for more than a word or two.”

I could see the concern on the captain's face as he looked at the battlefield. He yelled “Broken Arrow”

Dave run up behind him and said “Captain, I just briefed you and told you that the radio is down. We don’t have that ability to call that in.” Dave looked worried.

The Captain said ‘right, the radio — the radio — okay you get on that chopper that’s coming down now and you use that choppers radio to call in the strike, then you need to go get us a radio; better bring a couple as we are a company and company’s should have far more radios than one….what was Radio Shack on strike?’ asked the Captain.

I could see Dave thought hard about what he was going to say next and like a smart man he said, ‘yes sir I’ll be back with a new radio asap and I’ll call in the air strike from the Huey.” he then ran toward the LZ to catch the chopper.

I took a moment to reflect on the situation with the bullets whipping by my head with that familiar whining sound or I watched them dance in the dirt in front of me like a ballet of bullets hitting the ground causing little geysers of dirt to pop up in a distinctly uniform pattern, one right after another.

I wondered, do you think that those little monkeys that are in the trees sit back and watch the concert of lights and sounds thinking that the gods are using their angry magic? Or is it more like ‘monkey hear bang bang — and monkey stay the frick away and go find some little miss monkey to monkey around with?’. I suspect it’s the latter.

It’s not for me to reason why I thought and it’s probably unreasonable that I’m still standing here in the open with all of these bullets whipping by me like I’m one of Wyatt Earp’s immortals.

After all, I have not one but two purple hearts for doing just this. Daydreaming while the fire fight is on and getting shot in the shoulder and in the calf of the leg. I wonder how many more times that is going to happen to me.

That calf of the leg was like a ninja foot sweep. I didn’t see it coming and I ended up on my back seeing a bright white light as I hit my head. Then, I could see these massive plumes of water shooting up into the sky like little mushroom clouds as the mortars started sighting up our positions with the first exploratory rounds.

One of these clouds of water hit beside me and I watched with a vivid slow reality as it gradually made its way upwards with little sprinkles of water coming down as it ascended. Once it reached its vertical peak the water began to spread horizontally and reversed its direction causing the plume to disburse while surging back toward the earth. Without blinking I watched the slow motion flood rush towards me engulfing my whole body and near instantly retreating back into the rice patty from which it came leaving mud as the last remaining evidence of that unexpected journey.

The shock of the water’s hitting me brought me out of my daze, and so I tried to stand-up.

I was in so much shock that my brain was not yet made fully aware of the fact that I had a huge hole in my leg. As I went to stand up and use the butt of my gun as a crutch the barrel to hand onto something like a mini cane or a walking stick.

A rapid succession of distinct thudding sounds rang in the distance accompanied with a freight train rounds went screaming past my head which brought me out of my daze where I seen half of my squad pointing at something behind me and I could only imagine what it was by the sound of those screaming shells. I rand for the nearest cover which was a few yards toward our flank.

It was a bush of some type that seemed reasonable when I was in sheer panic standing there for target practice but in practical application for cover — once I arrived, I realized they were going to be drastically insufficient.

Still, I was committed, and this was my Alamo. I jumped over the little shrub and landed and immediately fell onto my back for the quickest way down onto the ground. The shrub instantly took a dozen of those oversized rounds but to my surprise the Alamo was better than I had originally thought.

The ground took a sharp dip on the other side of that shrub and it afforded me 18 inches of rock and ground cover before the piddly shrub poked out of the ground. Still gasping from partially winding myself with that fall I concentrated on slowing my breathing and getting my diaphragm back aligned. I felt a moment of panic as I still wasn’t able to really catch a breath when all of a sudden that muscle stopped spasming and my lung function returned.

I thumbed up the release for the clip on my Widow Maker.

Here’s a not so fun fact but, when we first got to this god forsaken country we were given these new lighter state of the art automatic rifles. They replaced the M1- Garand which was the workhorse through World War II and Korea and was a wonderful and proven weapon to be dependable and accurate.

Apparently, those were characteristics they didn’t value in rifles anymore as these new M-16s were prone to jamming, ceasing, and were not a dependable rifle at all. We started calling them the Widow Makers because it never failed it was always at the worst time that a bit of sand would get into the bolt action and jam the rifle or some water would get in there and wreak havoc. These things needed to be kept in a sterile museum to be dependable and here we are in a jungle.

Suddenly reality called back to me as I heard someone screaming for a medic to my left. I grabbed my clip and banged it on my helmet to make sure any sand that had gotten in there fell loose before I jammed the clip back into the rifle. The heat formed a wave like mirage across the horizon but I could see in between the mist wafting what seemed like a continuous stream of black pajamas and rice patty hats. I could see the hats of the enemy moving as once in pulsing like motions as the wave of soldiers came and crawled forwards.. They were planning on swarming us to take our position.

They use their sheer unending numbers to swarm and choke us off so that our air support is of limited value. We risk taking out as many of our own guys as the enemy when we order direct fire onto our won location but — the captain knew what he was talking about I have no idea how he could have seen this coming.

The thundering shake of the M-16 on my shoulder as I carefully fired one round at a time toward the oncoming wave. The flanking M-60s fired up and started providing some good covering fire and caused the enemy to full out charge. Their whistles blew at first breaths blow and at once the soldiers stood up and ran towards us without any regard for their safety.

The Barbed wire started slowing them up as their clothes and skin caught on it as they tried to jump over and past. This made perfect target practice for the M-60s with a cross bead on the center section where the charge was concentrated. Still, nothing was stopping this wave from coming. I seen soldier after soldier fall down and the army never seemed to lose a step as they charged enmass towards us. It was getting loud enough that it felt like they were on top of me.

I flipped the selector switch to full auto and started spraying into the oncoming rush of soldiers.

Out of nowhere the sound of the battle faded out and was replaced by a dull drone sound and time seemed to slow down. Suddenly, I thought — is that a radio I hear? Sure enough. It’s CCRs Bad Moon Rising.

“I see a bad moon rising” my M-16 shook. The enemy was close enough that I could make out their facial features.

“I see trouble on the way” I sprayed a horizontal swath left to right on full automatic catching one of the VC in a back swing with a grenade. The grenade dropped about two feet behind him and he looked at his arm and screamed.

“I see earthquakes and lightning’” It looked like he was planning on charging me with the distinct angry hate look on his face.

“I see bad times today” He began to scream and run toward me when the grenade blew taking him and 4 of his compatriots to never, never land and that same arm that he was tossing that grenade with came flying wards me hitting the bunk of sand 2 feet to my left.

“Don’t go around tonight” The little bastard was still trying to beat me to death.

“Well, it’s bound to take your life” I popped out my clip and grabbed the next one from my vest and banged it on my helmet and popped it back into the M-16.

There’s a bad moon on the rise” I took a cue from my little ‘army’ buddy and grabbed one of the pineapple grenades off of my vest and tossed it 20 yards forward where there was a mass of soldiers grouped up.

“I hear hurricanes a-blowing’” They didn’t even notice it rolling up in between them as they struggle to get free of the barbed wire when suddenly an aerial ballet interrupted their plans.

The first solider did what seemed like a slow-motion impromptu back flip and on his second time around on his full circle flip I could see distinctly that he had no lower jaw.

“I know the end is comin’ soon” His left leg must have stepped on a land mine and immediately and violently yet so beautiful how physics seemed to cease to matter as his body’s moment was quickly completely reversed with zero regard for conventional laws of motion as we know them tearing his weak flash from bone causing his arm to come loose and fly towards their officer knocking him flat backwards onto his back.

“I fear rivers overflowing’” The officer sat up and continued blowing his whistle when he suddenly stopped and looked to the west.

A trail of carpet bombs came in a direct line towards him evaporating him and stopping the beautiful ballet. I was put off by the sudden end of the aerobatics but rocked by one blast hard enough that it made me realize I needed to get back in my position.

“I hear the voice of rage and ruin” Line after line of aircraft came down. The planes were stacked every thousand feet for 40′000 feet and they brought in all the fire they had on each run. Quickly, the enemy so exposed in the rice paddy was forced to reverse and a new whistle sound was being blown.

“Don’t go around tonight”

The guys stood up and really poured the fire on their backsides as they ran for the treeline.

“Well, it’s bound to take your life” I unloaded clip after clip in succession seeing at least 8 of their soldiers go down just on the retreat itself.

Then I heard a familiar drone of a prop plane and I realized we were going to be in for some special BBQ when a column of fire erupted between the VC and the treeline cutting them off from their retreat. The M-60s kept a constant drone and body after body was cut down as there was literally no way to go. I thought to myself — damn I’m not going to get to finish my song

“There’s a bad moon on the rise, alright” faded out as the sound of the world came back in and I could hear the McGregor asking me if I wouldn’t mind loaning him an ear. As he laughed pointing at my shoulder where my ‘army’ buddies' ear was stuck.

I laughed at him and said — I’m all ears…then I tossed it at him as he laughed running away.