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badly want you to kick the bulldog shit out of those evil northerners occupying Hue, but it must be done gently , gentlemen. No heavy artillery, no airstrikes, and you’ll just have to go through the houses and buildings one by one and kill all the NVA without dirtying any carpets or breaking any china in the process.
    What’s unfair about that? Aren’t you the vaunted American freedom fighters pledged to save our country? Don’t you possess special skills and spirit to defeat an enemy that’s foiled and frustrated us for two decades now? Well, OK then, and why can’t you kill the northern invaders without also destroying the sacred city? Why should it be necessary to damage the homes of the rich people who live in that fabled city? Perhaps what we have here is a massive cross-cultural failure to communicate. We should adjourn to the conference table while your Marines get on with the bleeding and dying up there in Hue.
    That doesn’t sit well with Alpha Six. He’s an attack-trained dog on a choke-chain and his outfit is rapidly losing momentum. He charges toward the head of the stalled convoy when he hears another of his Marines is down by fire up there. Before he can do much about dragging the wounded man out of the impact area, Alpha Six is also down, blown back into the concertina wire flanking the canal. For some reason, that finally trips the trigger and we start maneuvering forward, shooting pictures of grunts shooting gooks.
    Three platoons are maneuvering rapidly now. We spring forward and join an outfit being run by a tough Tex-Mex sergeant playing whack-a-mole with NVA shooters bobbing up and down in second-story windows. He’s trying to get a tank forward to relieve the pressure and in between times, launching rockets at the enemy from a supply of LAAWs he’s got piled behind a stone porch. Steve knew this guy Gonzalez from earlier actions south of Danang and recommended we latch on to his outfit. They didn’t look like they were skating and most of them had bloody battle dressings covering some sort of wound, but I was in no position to argue due to the distraction of incoming rounds.
    Alpha’s 3 rd Platoon—of which we were hesitant members—was ordered to occupy a two-story building they had just cleared and keep watch on an open area of paddies and farm-fields with a large blockhouse in the center. We could see troops of some sort milling around that building, but no one could tell if they were NVA or ARVN. Gonzalez set up a machinegun to cover Alpha’s 2 nd Platoon which was moving toward a fork in the main road leading into the city from the Phu Cam area. Snuggled up next to the gun-team, I watched the shadows.
    Code of the Grunt: Shadows will kill you. No veteran gook is going to show you a silhouette or move from dark to light. If you are motivated to see an enemy before he gets close enough to rattle a grenade inside your position, you watch the shadows. If one of those shadows looms, blow it away.
    The shadows below that building were taking a pounding from the 3 rd Platoon grunts. Everyone was on full alert, with adrenaline alarm clocks keeping them awake out there on a jagged edge. Grunt on the other side of the window from me fondled his M-16 with one hand and his crotch with the other. Bloodshot eyes bugged from their sockets as he searched the shadows. We could see 2 nd Platoon moving below us. Helping the assistant machinegunner link belts of ammunition was sufficient distraction and I started to drift away from Hue City.

Worlds Away
    In this place and at this time, my parents are dodging their own brand of threatening shadows. Mine was a simple mantra: Shut up and do your homework, shut up and study to make good in military school, shut up and be a good soldier. Just shut up and it doesn’t matter if what you have to say is interesting or intelligent. No one wants to hear it. No one has time with all those looming shadows out there. And I started writing just to avoid those orders