Alwaysawarrior
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IT WAS NO WAY TO WAKE UP!
It's 3:00 AM there's a wailing siren screaming out a warning
Guys are shouting out to those still sleeping in their bunks
Incoming! Then you heard the deadly impacting rounds exploding
Everyone's scrambling for the relative safety of the bunker
Some new guys actually tried to grab their clothes and boots
Your heart is racing it's pounding with every single beat
That damn persistent siren continues it's desperate wailing
As the VC are lobbing in round after round of deadly mortars
These instruments of death and destruction exploding loudly
The ground is shaking as each round impacts trying to kill us
They drop in multiple rounds up & down the length of the base
With a bright flash and a loud bang shrapnel pierces the air
Pieces of white hot fragments ripping through flesh and bones
Tearing and punching big holes through anything that they hit
Metal roofs and vehicles are perforated with hundreds of holes
In the bunkers you are relatively safe from these fragments
But not so when the VC used their rockets in their attacks
Russian 122mm rockets would kill you far easier than mortars
Our bunkers would not stand up to these heavy weight weapons
Even if your not hit by the fragments it's own concussion kills
It's terrifying as you hear them impacting closer and closer
No amount of training & practice prepares you for this terror
You pray as hard as you can that one won't impact close to you
It would be certain death for anyone nearby in a bunker or not
© Terry Sasek - Alwaysawarrior - all rights reserved.
Even now some 46 years later it's very hard for most of us to describe
the emotions and the terror that we had faced while being packed like
sardines in our defensive bunkers during those VC standoff attacks on
our base as we waited for one of those Russian 122mm rockets to land
close enough that it would collapse your defensive bunker in on top of
all those who were huddled inside as we waited for their attack to end
and you were praying very hard that you would survive just one more of
those vicious VC standoff attacks on you and your brother warriors at
our very small and very remote airbase down in the Mekong Delta region.
(Note)
A standoff attack was where the VC would stay just out of range from
your base so that your automatic weapons fire couldn't quite reach
them but their mortars and rockets could hit anywhere on our airbase.
We would have to call in some helicopter gunships or an AC-47 Spooky
gunship to attack those VC positions that we could not reach with our
own return fire from our defensive gun positions around the perimeter.
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IT WAS NO WAY TO WAKE UP!
IT WAS NO WAY TO WAKE UP!