The Sun

is down now. But, thirty minutes ago you could see it going down between the short leaf pines and scrub oaks (black jacks, post and pin oaks) to the north west of here.

Shining like the proverbial big red ball, you could see a gray band of clouds striping it, as if a child had swiped it with a huge paint brush.

For some reason it took me back damn near 40 years and placed me atop one of he huge 10 ft high, 3 ft thick metal revetment walls filled with sand, grass and weeds struggling to get a toe hold, (only to be ripped out by rotorwash when they got too big) between which we parked our snakes for the night.

From there you could look west over the airfield, across the landing pad for the 18th Surgical hospital, to the mountains west of Mi Loc just NW of which was the notch in the hills that QL1 ran thru and you'd know that vehicle traffic was stopped and troops were in an RON position, possibly with the Vietnamese whores set up in their cardboard box bedrooms taking on all comers (pun not intended).

The sun would set in that notch, much the same as tonight, its blazing light damped to a reddish glow through the haze, fog, and especially dust, of war.

You'd not be able to see them, but just over the horizon would be the rockpile and the razorback, riddled with so many holes and tunnels, from which the enemy would even now be venturing, beginning their nightly trek toward Vandergrif or possibly up the steep hand cut dirt steps which would lead them to the punchbowl north of the mountains rimming Khe Shan, from there to the Ho Chi Minh trail leading them either north or south depending on whatever their orders were.

Some days it'd be the most beautiful place in the world. You had one less day to go.

Funny how just a moment in time can transport you back 70 pounds lighter and sporting a mustache so if you ever made it back to the world you'd have a chance of not getting thrown out of the bar.

Maybe I'm entering my second childhood.