BETWEEN INJURY AND ETERNITY: THE CHAOS OF VIETNAM

I can visualize a moment frozen in time, a small, tense fragment of a larger story. The men in that photo are on the edge, standing between life and death, uncertainty and resolve. The standing man with the shocked expression — he knows what’s coming but not what form it will take. The crouching men, one on the field phone, their eyes likely scanning the horizon for anything that can save them — together, they brace for something none of them can predict. The others are waiting, trying to understand what seems like a lost cause. But they will move, one way or another.

That’s the thing about war, isn’t it? You wait. You plan. You think you understand the battlefield, the enemy, the support you may or may not get. Then, the trapdoors open, and all the assumptions collapse. You hope you’re not in the wrong place when the artillery lands, but you can’t be sure.

But combat is often unpredictable and absurd. The Army doesn’t care about plans when the ground becomes soaked with blood and fear. You can’t count on anything, not the things meant to help. Like Sgt. Figueroa said, “You’re effed, no matter what.” And he was right. The war didn’t care about plans. It was bigger than planned.

When we narrowly outran a more significant enemy force, Herc’s words hung in the air like an open question — was it luck, magic, or skill? Maybe it was all three. We survived. We got out. The rest…