Nam Sense by Jr. Arthur Wiknik

rest. What a view opened up before me! I was on the summit watching the action below. “Below me?” I silently screamed. I had run past the left flank of our attacking force! I turned around to tell the others but no one was there. They hadn’t followed me. I was alone. I thought about going back down but realized I would risk our guys shooting me, so I stayed. Besides, exhaustion had suddenly taken command of my body and I could barely move. It became an effort just to turn my head to see if anyone was near, friend or foe.
    Thirty paralyzing minutes passed while I watched the assault continue. The GIs made tremendous progress, killing the enemy in their bunkers where many had chosen to stay and die. Scores of other NVA ran off the western slope toward the Laotian border, a mile away. The fleeing enemy could easily be seen from the air where our helicopters directed a wall of artillery, mortars, air strikes, and automatic weapons fire on top of them.
    As GIs swept past the front of me, I felt safe enough to stand up and be identified as one of their own. Then someone from behind called me by name, it was Howard Siner. Lennie Person was with him.
    “Where’s the rest of the platoon?” I asked, looking past them.
    “We are the platoon,” said Siner. “Nearly everyone was pinned down at the bottom but some of our guys are coming up now.”
    “Were you two up here long?”
    “Maybe fifteen minutes or so. We got separated but just now found each other. We stayed out of sight until more people showed up.”
    We figured that the three of us were the first ones to the top. We must have been concealed within a hundred feet of each other without knowing it.
    “See Lennie,” I said, encouraging him with a pat on the shoulder, “you made it to the top without a scratch. Ten years from now you can tell your kids all about this.”
    “Yeah, right,” he responded faintly, then took two steps backward and stared at me. “What the hell happened to you? You look like shit.”
    After everything that happened to me, I guessed that I probably did look bad. My face resembled a raccoon’s from rubbing the dirt out of my eyes. My bandoleers had caught fire and my shirt had a hole burnt in the middle of it. There was a mix of dried mud and urine stains on my pants, and some of Anderson’s blood had smeared on me. I had quite a tale to tell, so when more platoon members gathered around, they asked and I told it as dramatically as possible with a slight stretching of the truth. I figured my story would either endear me to them or be my final undoing.
    “I look like shit,” I began, strutting back and forth and pointing angrily, “because I had to take this side of the hill by myself. Take a good look at me. I got shot in the face, shot in the chest, and I didn’t even take time out to piss. When I got into the tree line and called for you guys to follow me, nobody did. I was up here alone until Siner and Person showed up. Thanks for nothing guys. This is the last hill I’ll attack by myself.”
    Everyone was dumbfounded. That little performance turned out to be one of the best things I could have done for myself. When word got around about what happened to me, I was regarded as one of the bravest men in the platoon. This respect may not have been exactly deserved, but as a squad leader it was welcome because the men under my command would be less likely to doubt my abilities and may even adopt my cautious approach to the war.
    The fighting had dwindled to sporadic rifle fire and an occasional grenade explosion as our infantry continued swarming over the hill. Cobra gunships roamed the skies firing rockets, mini-guns, and grenades into the remaining enemy positions. The battle was ending. We had won. The final assault had lasted nearly six hours.
    Tired, sweaty, and filthy soldiers straggled past us. Sergeant Krol was with them but he wasn’t tired. He wasn’t even dirty.
    “Pork Chop Hill was tougher than this,” he said,