You quickly glance around, the gunfire whizzing about your head. You hear the characteristic thwak of a bullet hit not two feet from you, implanting into a nearby tree, the bark splintering off. The sound draws you in temporarily, a small relief of the chaos going on around the area, the one sound a vacation from the anarchy. Soon enough the silence fades into gun shots and screaming, your fellow soldiers yelling in anger, agony, fear, or whatever emotion they happened to be feeling.

You, however, are silent. You’ve done this before, felt the emotions, felt the fear, but you have accepted it. If you die, you die, so be it. It must have been your time. But you have a good feeling it’s not today. And be damned if you’ll go quietly to the Vietcong bastards.

Hefting your M-16, you slowly begin to crawl forward, over the small grassy hill. Small flashes of red mark the landscape, the shots all blending together creating one sound. Still, Charlie is nothing but muzzle flashes and darkness. You feel lucky, so you bring up your rifle and take careful aim at one of the red dots across the field. Slowly, you depress the trigger, your rifle screaming as the bullets fly across the battlefield. After emptying the magazine, you check for your own personal red dot. Smiling grimly at the darkness you see, you snatch up another magazine and jam it into your rifle.

You look around for Jeremiah, the man with the radio. Scanning quickly, you notice him firing madly toward Charlie. Running over to him, you shake him until he realizes that it’s you, a friend.

"Jeremiah!" you yell, "What’s the deal with those choppers? Where’s our LZ?"

He looks back at you, unmoving, and utters, "The napalm is coming in ten minutes, we have to get across this field to the LZ. HQ wouldn’t even listen! We have to get across!"

With that, he put another clip into his M-16, got up, and began to run wildly across the field, shooting at everything and nothing.

"Jeremiah! Get back here!"

You’d seen it happen before, men losing their minds, all hope gone. You watch as he gets cut down in a hail of gunfire. The rage swells, and you begin to lose control as your friend is killed right in front of your eyes, another tragedy in this endless loop of death in the jungles. Looking around quickly, the red eyes of gunfire stare back at you, so you raise up your M16 and begin firing wildly into the night, hoping your small magazine will cleanse the jungle of the infectious Vietcong. Shot after shot after shot punches through the wilderness, displacing leaves, bark, bodies, blood; death is your only friend now, and he wants you to introduce him to your enemy.

After unloading three clips into the night, you finally regain control of your senses, falling prone on the ground near some brush. The whiz of bullets fly near your head, realizing how close death just came to knowing you a whole lot better. Instead, another clip slams into your M16 and you begin to crawl quickly toward the field. Time has to be running out. You hear what could be the faint sound of choppers heading toward the area, whether they are coming to pick up the platoon or instead to cover the area with liquid fire, purifying the disease of the Vietcong. Regardless, there is no time to be losing your head; you must keep calm in order to survive this.

The others; where are they? Checking around, you see no one; it has become a one man mission of survival. Did they go deeper? Did they already head back? Are they even alive? Panic begins to well inside you again, but this time you quell it quickly, knowing that your life is at stake and you are on your own. No use going out with a whimper if you have to go out at all. Probably about five minutes ETA until the choppers get to the LZ, seven to eight until the napalm rains down. You take a deep breathe, check the surrounding area for any VC, and pick your route. There are only a few red flashes on the path toward the LZ; it’s time to move.

Staying low, you begin a quiet sprint away from the zone where the impending napalm was coming. Your M16 is raised, firing controlled bursts toward the Charlie dots, conserving as much ammo as possible, keeping any possible enemies in the dirt to try keep the way clear of bullets. Despite your efforts, the whiz of the bullets still dominate your sense of hearing, perhaps because you’re body is so focused on survival that it focuses on them. Whatever the reason, all you can hear in your head is the implements of death around you and the quick, rhythmic pace of your own heartbeat, a clock of survival; one that must not stop for any reason.

By now you must have crossed at least a hundred yards in the last minute or two, the sweat pouring off you. The heavy backpack, ammo, and always carrying your gun around begin to wear on you and you slow down. Your head begins to throb, the anticipation of the soon to come events bearing down upon your mind. You shake your head, more of a symbolic motion than anything; can’t let your mind wander now. You pick up the pace, sprinting faster, only slowing down after every fifteen to twenty yards in order to fire off a few short bursts until your magazine is empty.

You drop to the jungle floor, ejecting the empty bullet container and slamming in one of the last two you have. Pulling the top of the gun back, you slide a bullet into the chamber and allow yourself a few seconds of rest. Your legs feel like jello, but you press on, grinding your teeth, pulling out strength where you didn’t know you had any. The body can do amazing things when the threat of death hovers at the edge of your peripheral vision; it grasps onto anything to get you out of that situation, away from the ghostly specter.

Again you’re sprinting, the sounds of the helicopter somehow override the pounding of your survival clock as they fly overhead. Looking up, the chain gun on the sides of the transport cut through the brush, the fire from the muzzles illuminating the area. Suddenly, a lone Vietcong soldier appears in your vision, directly ahead of you, shown by the passing copter. Your eyes meet, both widening in surprise of an enemy so close, only ten or so feet away. Going on instinct, you sprint at him while he tries to raise his weapon. Seeing you flying toward him, he panics and fumbles with his AK-47. You raise your M16 and slam the rifle butt into the Vietcong’s face with a ridiculous amount of force, your survival instincts taking over again. There is the sound of cartilage breaking and he falls to the ground, knocked out or dead, it doesn’t matter. The way is clear again, the field just in front of you, so you take off across the field, staying low and using the few bushes for as much cover as possible.

All you can do is pray that no bullet hits you on your dead sprint across the open area as you make your way to the landing zone. The ground occasionally explodes from low flying bullets hitting, the grass coming up in clumps. Luck was with you, however, as you make it the entire length of the field, though only a scarce fifty yards, it is an open plane of bodies from other attempts to get across. Looking down as you run by, you see a few of your friends, broken and bloodied, eyes devoid of life. No time to mourn now. Survival comes first.

Miraculously, you make it past the field. Your lungs are on fire as you attempt to breathe in the fresh air. Collapsing into the jungle, you crawl into a bush and keep as quiet as possible, your breathing hidden by the large amount of gunfire. Once you see that you’re safe, your mind catches up to your body and you vomit from exhaustion onto the ground, still trying to get the much needed oxygen. After a minute or so, as much as can be spared, you realize it’s time to get moving again. The napalm could be off a bit, or even be in a larger area than first realized. There should only be a few minutes left before the area is engulfed in flames. The chopper must only be past some of these trees; the sound of it is loud and you can hear it unmoving. They must be waiting until the last moment before they fly off, hoping to pick up any last stragglers. Got to keep moving. Got to get to the chopper.

Picking yourself up, you take a quick glance around to look for the eyes of Charlie, and he is nowhere to be seen, so you quickly move forward, dropping your backpack, your mind finally realizing how dumb it was to keep it. If you don’t make it to the chopper, you’re dead, so why even worry about it? With the lost weight of the pack, you feel two hundred pounds lighter, and running through the jungle seems to be a walk in the park compared to the earlier treks across the landscape. You burst though a wall of trees into a small clearing, and your heart leaps at the sight of an American helicopter. You wave your arms, holding your gun above your head so they don’t shoot on sight, and you approach the chopper at a light jog, not wanting to startle them.

Fortunately, they spot you and wave you in. Your shirt soaked in sweat and blood, some yours, some others, you slide into the side behind the chain gun locked into place on the side of the copter. Breathing hard, you crawl and sit against a crate of ammo, your heart finally starting to settle down. Looking up, you see a man seemingly yelling at you, and after a few moments his voice finally comes through to you.

"…are the others? Where are they? Hey! Answer me!" his words finally making sense to you.

"The only one…" you stutter through ragged breaths, "I…am…the only one…that I…know of…" you mumble, loud enough that he hears you, and his eyes widen in horror.

"What?! That’s not possible! Are you sure? The gook bastards got them all?"

"Don’t…know…" you mumble, leaning toward the open door, vomiting again, your body finally relaxing. "I was by myself," you say, "just trying to get out of here. When’s the napalm coming?"

"In a few minutes hoss," he explains, wiping the sweat from his brow. "We’re gonna hold off a little while longer to see if anyone else shows up. God, I hope they do," he adds to himself.

It seems like you have been sitting there for years, but it feels so good to rest. You see more bodies fly through the tree line, running for the chopper. A few people on the crew take pot shots at a few of them, realizing they are Vietcong. By the time the group of U.S. soldiers reached the chopper, the number was thinned to four.

"God dammit!" the man who spoke to me yelled, his ear on a radio, "we have to go now!" With that, you feel the chopper begin to lift off the ground, flying fast away from the impending napalm strike. You feel like it’s only been in instant, and through the door you see the jungle explode in a fiery explosion, the heat burning your nostrils and singeing the hair on your arms. It hurts your eyes, the mini sun in the black of night sucking all the blackness away for an instant, relinquishing it slowly back to the moon’s domain of darkness.

You finally allow yourself to relax, breathing in some big gulps of non-fiery air once the chopper has cleared the area. Your heart beat begins to fade from your ears as you realize that you’re going to survive today, though it was easily the closest you’ve come to dying so far. Exhaustion overtakes you and you drift off to a weary sleep.

It could only have been five to ten minutes when you are shaken from your sleep by what you think is only regular turbulence from flying in a war zone. When you see the pilot begin to fly over his knobs and levers faster than he should, you realize something could be wrong. Snapping to your senses, you notice bullet holes in the windshield of the copter. You look around, noticing one of the gunners is down, clutching at a bleeding hole in his throat. The other gunner is down attending to him, applying pressure, but even now you can see that his efforts are for naught, as he has lost far too much blood to survive. The pilot must have crossed over a hot zone, and the gooks had nothing better to do than to shoot at an American helicopter.

You haven’t had much experience, but your instincts tell you to jump on one of those chain guns and go after Charlie. Sliding behind it, you begin to open fire into the jungle, aiming at nothing, just playing the odds that someone down there is shooting at you. The chain gun roaring at the Vietcong on the ground, biting into their flesh as they try to shoot down the helicopter that is getting away. It’s hard to do, but not impossible, to take down a chopper with smaller firearms. Hit the pilot, or cause a major malfunction in any of the major mechanisms and it can drop out of the sky.

Unfortunately, this is one of those times. The pilot caught a stray shot right in the eye, and he fell, limp, onto the control panel, spasming as the life left his body. You can do nothing but curse bad luck; surviving that hellacious span on the ground only to be killed by a stray bullet that found the pilot of the chopper. You jump into the nearest seat and slam the harness on, hoping that maybe you’ll be able to survive one more insane test in this already grueling day. You close your eyes and feel the copter begin it’s fast descent toward the planet.

The impact jars your entire body. You can feel your bones rattle from the intensity of the smash, and each tree the copter hits just increases the pain and discomfort of the sensations of the crash. You are in agony, and your body goes limp, your head cracking the wall. Blackness envelops your vision.

You open your eyes, and your vision is blurred beyond anything you’ve ever experienced. Your head is pounding, but your eyesight improves slightly with each passing second. Fortunately, it appears you haven’t been out long, though you reach back and feel the back of your head where it got cracked. Bringing your hand back in front of you, you can see it is stained with blood. Now not only do you have to worry about the Vietcong, but also massive head trauma. But at least you’re alive, and can still make it out of this God-awful situation if you can get a little luck and a lot of help.

After sparing as much time as you think is possible to let your head stop pounding, you reach down and unfasten the harness. As soon as you do, you try to stand, but lose your balance and reach out and grab a bar on the inside wall of the chopper. Standing again slowly, your senses finally begin to come back to you, but your head is still throbbing with a lot of pain from the smack it took in the crash.

After a few moments you look around to see if anyone else survived the crash. The pilot was dead, his co-pilot, the man you first talked to was laying against a wall, broken, but apparently alive, the gunner who took a shot to the throat was long dead, and the other gunner who was helping him was nowhere to be seen; probably thrown from the helicopter when it smashed into the Earth.

You pull yourself over to the co-pilot, each movement becoming easier and easier, the pain subsiding some, and shake him, trying to get him conscious. "Hey, wake up! Hey! Come on!" you yell at him. He slowly begins becomes aware, rubbing his head, it no doubt throbbing like yours. While he is trying to get his bearings, you check the radio in the cockpit: broken. The few radios on all the men were destroyed in the crash. You’re on your own with this guy.

"What the hell happened? Is anyone else alive?" he says to you, and you look around one more time.

"I think it’s just you and me," you say looking him up and down for injuries, "and it looks like your leg isn’t doing too well. Not a bad break; just a minor one, but you won’t be walking. Shouldn’t hurt very much if I carry you outta here. Charlie got us good, but he got you worse."

"Just leave me, man, get out of here," he says, the whole cliché noble act, which of course won’t work.

"Don’t even start that shit," you say, smiling despite the grim circumstances. "Just tell me how close we are to some friendlies, and I’ll get us there."

He thinks to himself, grimacing in pain every few moments. "I think just a few clicks west; not too far at all, and they should be moving toward us."

"Good enough," you say, pulling him up onto his good leg. "It’s alright, we’ll make it out, and make it out alive. I’m Shane."

"Bill," he says and he hobbles to the edge of the chopper with your help. You slide down, pick up an M16 and a few extra clips, and Bill falls onto your shoulder, his head watching your six. Your body is yelling at you from every muscle and joint, but at this point it’s mind over matter as the saying goes; you have to keep going to survive. It’s a miracle that you came out of that crash with such minor injuries, but you’re not expecting much more luck like that out of this day.

"What’s Charlie like around here?" you ask him, moving cautiously away from the wreckage.

"Shouldn’t be much of them," he says to your back. "They moved out of this area a few days ago when they caught wind of our forces coming in from the east. That’s just as well for us."

"Yeah," you say, my mind now concentrating to try and survive again. "Keep an eye out back there and let me know if you see anything." You move west, through the jungle, trying to watch for any type of movement.

We move without incident for a few minutes when Bill taps your shoulder, indicating he’s seen something. "What is it?" you ask.

"Give me your sidearm," he commands quietly, and you slowly reach down and pull your pistol out, handing it to him. "A patrol is moving, going to come into view in a few moments. Don’t move; he won’t see us. If we move, though, he’ll probably catch wind of us and then we’ll be in deep shit. Better just take our chances killing this guy," Bill brings the gun up and you wait, muscles tightening in anticipation. Bill fires, the explosion of gunpowder causing you to startle. "Did you get him?" you ask eagerly, wanting to get moving.

"Yeah, he’s dead, but that shot will bring more in soon. He looked like he was the point man, so they’ll come up on him in maybe a minute. Get moving, Shane." And with that, you take off.

You don’t get more than a few steps when you hear a Vietcong soldier yell out from behind you. Looks like the point man had a friend, and immediately a few shots fly out in your direction so you zig-zag into a copse of trees, the shots all missing.

"Oh fuck me," Bill says. "He was not alone. There’s at least six or seven of them running toward us now. Give me that M16!" he yells, and not having any other option, you trade him for the sidearm. You reload it quickly and take off, sprinting yet again through the jungle as fast as you can with a two hundred pound man on your shoulder. It’s not near as fast as you would like, but with him firing every so often, he keeps them at least cautious.

"Got one," he says, "gonna need another clip in a few seconds!" You holster your pistol and grab one from a pouch on the front of your pants and hold it up to him, your other arm keeping him steady. He snatches it from you and you keep running, your legs feeling like they’re about to give out, your shoulder and arm hurting from carrying and running with him. Just a little farther, you tell yourself, and you’ll be with friendlies who will take care of Charlie and get you out of there.

"Faster if you can! They’re coming up fast!" A Vietcong jumps out ahead of you and you, but you don’t even hesitate as you bring your pistol up and unload four shots at him and watch him fall to the ground.

You burst through a few trees and suddenly you see a river in a small, open clearing. Across the river is a Godsend; thirty American soldiers, at least, and they all notice you. A few guns come up, but is quickly halted by their C.O. when they realize you’re on their side.

"Vietcong!" you yell, and to Bill say, "Hold on, this may hurt, we’re hitting the deck." He grunts and you fall forward, covering your head, hoping the soldiers across the small river got what you said.

In a few moments you hear gunfire from across the water from many guns, and the Vietcong yelling and screaming. The bullets whiz by your head, but this time it’s a beautiful thing. You let Bill fall to the side, and you lay on your back once the firing stops. Drifting in and out of consciousness, you see a man with a red cross on his helmet over you and Bill, and you smile. You can’t hear what he says, but your body finally lets go and you drift into blackness. You’ve made it.