Danforth
When I saw the AK fire for the first time, shots lit up the dark sky like little green meteors all along the horizon.
There were so many and were so widespread that it was hard to think of anything else actually. There was a firestorm of bullets right before my very eyes with bright rocket flares and VCs moving around us like a dark whirlwind, in the shadows.
For a split-second, I even forgot about Krakauer.
I didn't ask myself where Coletta, Rambo or Berry was, or think about setting up line-ups or perimeters either.
I thought and felt like an animal.
I fired every bullet in my Uzi in a single, never-ending shot.
I hit two of the filthy bastards on the spot breaking up the barricade they’d formed in the middle of the rice field almost instantly.
Not long after, someone else fired their Uzi in quick short successions and it sounded like fire crackers were going off. Then after that, the shots I heard sounded a lot like thunder. So they were definitely the M16s and a lot more powerful.
That was Coletta and Jorgenson with the M16s. At that point it seemed like everybody was shooting, but actually there were still some of us missing.
I let the empty cartridge drop and dove into the water as I reloaded and without giving it any thought.
It was the same as being in some kind of trance.
There was a regiment of troops. We were on our own against an entire military regiment. It was real it was happening and we weren’t dreaming.
It was comparable to having a nightmare and never waking up from it.
That battalion could even have been an automatic for all we knew, and if it had been during the day rather than at night they would have started shooting artillery weapons at us.
Just like it had happened to previous SOG teams, and they’d never made it back alive to tell it.
Now it was happening to us.
It was really happening to us.
I threw myself in the water, leaving out only the head and the Uzi, and fired the second endless charger. It never ended.
The Viet were out of range by then – apart from the two that I had hit,, who were still lying there face down in the water – but it didn't matter. The important thing was something to block them where they were, or, in short, to keep them away. As long as there was that a body of water to cross between us, we had some hope of keeping them at a distance, and then shaking them off.
Conversely, if they were able to get close, even just a little... Even if there was a high casualty price to pay. In that case, we’d have been dead, and that meant all of us. Somehow, it was like it was already happening, if we were already dying, because the way things were going, it wasn’t that different from a death sentence.
When I turned back all I saw was the occasional red streak in the green jungle vegetation, which was actually nothing more than the rest of the team’s flash lights.
I couldn’t take care of Krakauer anymore either: in a situation of that kind he was practically already 'gone'.
We needed a gunner at that point. We needed Jorgenson.
He only had an M16 though and we’d left the sixty back home because of the HALO jump. He was covered from head to toe with brand new, thirty round cartridges, just like the ones the Vietcong were using against us.
“GRIZZLY.”
We needed a machine gun and maybe even the flamethrower, since we would never get to the bunker. Not alive, at least. Yeah.
We might as well use it to set the whole jungle on fire, before making a run for it.
“GRIZZLYYY!”
“Here am I.”
“We give up, Grizzly.”
“What?”
“We give up. Where's your flamethrower?”
“I don't have it.”
I turned to him and said:
How the hell could he possibly not have it on him?
“I lost it,” he said.
How the fuck do you lose a flamethrower? - I asked myself.
“Then shoot God Dammit, shoot! I want you to shoot like you were holding a pig and not a Goddamn' M16.”
“Kill 'em all, Grizzly.”