[Penn]

The drill was the same, the layout, the gear check, battery check, ammo check, chest rig, knife, med kit, assignments, the plan, if SHTF, PACE and rondo. No detail was too small not to discuss, no time was wasted on talking caca. Everyone embraced the rushing adrenalin cementing the infused tension of the mission, with their place, assignment, and commitment to each other, a palpable and absolute trust.

The same drill ran for any mission, but to execute an ambush, lighter loads and swiftness ruled the day. Ammo, water, explosives, commo.
There was no need to speak from load out to insertion, and once inserted, heart beats were thunder drums in the silence.

Conscience of the monotony embedded in the routine; every member of the team invests in the redundancy. One knife in no knife, two knives is one, three knives save lives. Over and over there is reductive simplicity, all related to discipline and discipline related to survival.

Mission and assignment set at the check point in the layout as it is called, each team member responds with a verbal “Ready!”

Load out into the birds is quick, entering, everyone sits in the exact same place. Exiting, everyone executes to the exact same dial on the compass.

Secured, they move to place. There is never a set distance. Insertion purposefully seeks surprise, it could be a minute, or 5 days over impossible terrain to reach the contact point. Ambiguity is an asset within the team. Each member concern is the mission, the process is just part of the mission. It ends when it ends.

The scenario plays outs night after night, the layout, the gear check, battery check, ammo check, chest rig, knife, med kit, assignments, the plan, if SHTF, PACE and rondo. No detail is too small, no time is wasted talking caca. Everyone embraces tension, the mission, their place, absolute trust.

What seems like hours moving to position, was in fact 30 minutes.
Based on intel, the 9 team members moving in single file formation, aligned in an L shaped formation, with 6 team members on southern side of the trail, and three on the eastern side. The enemy would be entering from the west.

Danny ran the drill over and over in his mind as he lay in wait for the enemy. He ran everyone’s layout through his head, everyone’s position through his head, everyone’s possible reaction through his head, over and over again, he assessed and reassessed outcomes.

And then without warning, hell destroyed heaven.

Gunfire, claymores, grenades, explosions, in a slow-motion view Danny watched as men fell, stood, fired, charged, while screaming and dying. Flesh and body parts in the air, yelling names for friends or comrades, the commitment the same, and then Danny see’s MSG Green buried in the smoke and haze.

MSG Green nurtured Danny, he mentored the young Platoon Leader knowing full well the hardship of leadership, and the deadly coincidence of inexperience. They both had been orphaned, they were brothers of the bond, could have been mistaken for father and son, except for MSG Green professionalism, based in tradition and respect.
which demand that Danny reciprocate the same.

Danny exits his position, running into the fray from the long, south side of the ambush to extract Green, taking a bullet in the foot, knocks him to the ground. Down, he surveys the ambush and realizes that to get Green he has to go down the trail, that is now zeroed in by the enemy.
As he low crawls forward, he encounters other wounded soldiers, that are not members of his unit. At each encounter, his decision is to bring them back to safety, all the while being targeted. Every time Danny goes down the trail to retrieve a wounded soldier he is shot again and again.

It’s an hours long trip into the abyss that simultaneously recognizes sacrifices and futility as the same measure certifying existence.

Then, as if the heavens and hell have extracted their full measure, a quite ensures that smothers your ability to reason and contract a common point of departure.

Danny makes a final effort to reach Green. As he descends the trail a withering fuselage is unleashed, every square inch of ground is taking bullets, earth and dirt are being kicked up. At a log on the trail, Danny see’s SMG Green.

Severely wounded, with individual bullet wounds to the forehead, R/hand, R/ankle, and through both the L/R thighs, and the loss of one testicle, when reaching SGM Green, Danny in his effort to pull him over the log, takes two more 7.62 rounds to his lower back and spine, as his fruitless effort to save the SMG is cut short by an explosion separating them and which cuts Green in two.

Knelling and facing the enemy, Danny continues to fire the M-60 machine gun until he runs out of ammunition and succumbs to his wounds, falling face forward into the good earth.

53 plus years later, the dream augments and incorporates current war time visuals, making the dream much more real, the screams are the same, the time of day is the same, the wake up in a cold sweat is the same. There are variations of intensity and duration, due to semiconscious dream awareness, but the absolute realness of fighting through to survive never changes. It wears on the emotional stability, praying to God for it to end, but I know it’s the only way I can honor them, is to bear witness to their story.

In all its horror and all its glory.