FIRST NIGHT:

The first thing that impressed me about Vietnam was the stench. The air was filled with the smell of diesel fuel and death. The mood was heavy, and the look in the eyes of the Marines who had been there awhile was little more than a vacant stare, As if their souls had been sucked out from their beings. I later learned that the term and the look were called the 1000 yard stare. This look you had to earn, and it was all about self-preservation. Vietnam had no place for emotional attachment, in fact you made no friends, so the term military acquaintance was used. After the loss of my first two friends, it seemed best to detach and resist for fear of loss. As a young Marine I had a lot to learn and just a short time to learn it in. My first night in Vietnam and here I was in a foxhole south of Phubai. It was unbelievable. I want to tell ya, that it was the last place I expected to be on my first night in country. The view was less than spectacular; my foxhole overlooked a rice paddy field. In front of me was concertina wire was strung out in rows of three. Tin cans were placed dangling from the wire at various intervals within the wire. Inside the cans were pebbles, which would serve as an early warning device. Claymore mines were in position for detonation in case of attack. We were armed with M14 rifles, Bayonets and a whole shit-load of grenades. My greatest asset however, was the fear of the unknown. But then I had that redneck to worry about, He was always smiling and as far as I was concerned he was one round short of a full clip, if you get my drift. Night fell quickly in the boonies and the silence was deafening. I know that sounds strange, but when you can hear a skeeter sucking blood out of a water Boo at 100 yards it's to damn quiet. In the distance I could hear shots being fired and watched in awe as tracer rounds lit up the sky in the darkness. It looked, as though the tracers were coming right at me, it was unnerving to say the least. It was an illusion, but the reality of Vietnam had set in like exposed nerve on a broken tooth and I learned my first lesson. This was not a game and I was not humping up some hill in a war game on the Island of Greece, this was the real deal. The bullets were real and death was real, This stinking fox hole was real and reality sucked. Believe it or not even the 100-pound cracker was comforting to have around. He kept asking, " are you awake pencil neck" And I kept replying, " are you shitting me who can sleep," He continued to grin. I continued to watch the perimeter with one eye on the nutcase. The night was pitch black, For you city folks who have never experienced pitch black, try this, bandage your eyes, then jump into a hole 30 feet deep at midnight on a moonless evening. Then have a lid placed over the hole. If you even have the inclination that you are still living, there is still too much light. If we were to get any sleep at all it would be in two-hour snatches, but sleep was not on the agenda for this night, my first night. I was scared to death to close my eyes I couldn't even bring myself to blink, and if I had blinked I wouldn't have noticed it anyway. This form of darkness was a hard one to overcome, but in time I found that this darkness would become a blessing as well as a curse and completely necessary for survival. From the darkness in front of us came the rattle of a tin can. My heart was beating a thousand beats a second and with each beat I felt as though my head was going to explode. The deafening roar of silence returned once again. It seemed as though an eternity had passed, I wondered to myself, where is the dawn, Will I live to see it, this was just my first night in this shit-hole and will every night be like this one? Question after question popped into what little room I had left in my mind; fear had taken up most of the space already. Another rattle of a can twenty yards out at the eleven o'clock position, nobody breathed. A rustling in the dirt, we had no patrols out, it's gotta be charley. A trip flare ignites, the claymores are detonated and explosions fill the silence. A burst of flame emitting from the barrel of an M-60 machine gun lights up the night, Hand grenades follow. Silence, Silence, Where is the dawn? The redneck continued to smile.