January 21, 1968

57 years ago I’d been on R and R in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and had just returned to Khe Sanh.

I’d just turned 21, one of the oldest men in Second Platoon, Bravo Company, 26^th Marines.

I’d be of legal age to drink in a bar in my hometown if I lived that long.

Just turned 21, a bit salty, with almost 10 months in-country.

The night before, January 20, Snoopy circled the combat base. Heavy mist hid the plane except for the red streams of tracers waving into the foggy Khe Sanh sky. The plane’s engine moaned and so did her guns.

In the morning, shouts, the earth a rocking, bucking bronc.

Voices of men who never scream, who always laugh and joke and bitch but now, no laughter. Screaming.

The black sky of early morning alive with red, oranges, yellows of fire.

The deafening sounds of incoming, outgoing, explosions, the thunder of scuffed jungle boots in the damp trench.

No time for coffee and cigarettes this morning.

Fear runs rampant like a wild beast, the heart thump, thump, thump.

Sergeants duckwalking below parapets telling us, “Get your asses up, into your fighting holes and face the enemy.”

We crawl into our bunkers as our NVA-targeted ammo dump starts to go up, gas, gas, gas masks on, the whistle of our own ordnance falling from our sky, our sky.

We look through our bunker apertures for the enemy we know will soon appear, in the wire, sappers first, the onslaught behind. We watch, our muscles tight, our thoughts long gone from the girl in the back seat of Daddy’s brown Buick.

A gash in Corporal Taylor’s right leg from flying shrapnel. Blood on the deck.

The ammo dump goes full-blown and the sky turns into a miasma of gas and smoke. Errant artillery rounds. Our rounds. 105s, 106s, 155s, our home away from home now a wreck and pummeled piece of a map.

Convery’s right arm in a sling, his jaws wired shut.

Down the trench to contact other platoons.

Marines in the bottom of the trench.

Crushed legs, broken arms. Haul out the morphine and pop them in the thigh.

We stand and throw the spent rounds from our dump out of the trench.

NCOs bark orders. Staff Sergeant what’s-his-name digs with his fingers in the bottom of the trench, barking like a dog, but not orders; barking his fear and his need to leave. It’s the last we see of him, sent back to the real world.

We wait.

Later. Hours later.

No ground attack comes, the ammo dump still cooks off, squiggly lines of smoke in the sky.

We think that tomorrow things will be like they were before.

We don’t yet know about the attack on Khe Sanh village or the assault on Hill 861 earlier this morning.

Wishful thinking: just a one-time event.

We are in for a rude awakening. Little do we know we will endure the onslaught for another 77 days.