"861"
A Poem with reason but no rhyme

Hal Croft, K Co 3/3

A few yards from the top of 861
Pinned down in a deep, dark fog,
So deeply dark we could only touch and hear.
Hearing dying wounded marines
Hearing NVA taunts

Crawling toward his garbled groaning
I grasped a taught leg as his voice
Drew fire from the darkness.
A Marine wrenched back and forth
Bleeding from a sucking chest wound.

I pulled a poncho over us
Lit small light to set our stage.
He wheezed as a square or poncho
Seemed to stop the bleeding as hours
That were minutes passed,

The black marine whispered his way to death.
And I rolled away to a hole
And passed into a jealous sleep
While sticky blood dried on my hands
The fog kept me alive for tomorrow.

The fog faded to a gray dawn.
Three black Marines with bare backs
Bandaged white faced the far tree line
Bought time as I bandaged a corporal
Stunned by shrapnel and shock

More mortars, more shrapnel, more shock
The corporal was dead.
Hueys strafed the top or the hill
More time for the few who could walk
To drag the dead down.

My burden had no face
Feeling only his boots, I never looked back.
But felt the thumping or his head
Like a sledge slamming my chest.
A final thump at the LZ.

I spat at a chaplain who told us
"Good job."
Hands crusted with dried, brown blood
Had done not a good for the black PFC,
The Corporal, or a faceless Marine.

'Twas the night before Christmas and I was on alert
My perimeter was secure with trips set in the dirt
The fog was playing games with me and images appeared in my brain
The jungle grass was making noises I could not explain.

As I strained to see what was in front or me.
Not a mouse or NVA but an ape was staring at me.
I called on the phone to the CP
Shoot the thing it don't matter to me.
My sight was true-my aim was clean
I couldn't pull the trigger being;
Being Christmas eve
Off he went up a tree — then he did spot me.

He waved and said to me Merry Christmas
So you don't believe, this tale—
It's my tale and I'm sticking to it.
To all a good night.

Jim Wodecki
 

Khe Sanh Memories

Khe Sanh was so very long ago to me,
They now even nave tours there for all to see.
No incoming, no trenches, no body bags at all,
Not even brave warriors would not let it rail.
Time passes, we get older, and memories begin to fade,
Unfortunately, the ghosts stay with us every day.

Eternally Bonded

Twenty Seven seconds for each mortar to fall.
From Hill 881N. "Incoming" we did call.
"Twenty -seven years and the echo is still there.
Those haunting memories, sometimes so hard to bare.
Our lives go on, the older grayer we become.
but we remain Eternally Bonded, equally as one.
 

David "Doc" Steinberg