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The quilted pattern of emerald green rice paddies interlaced with mustard brown dikes swept past our wind blown eyes in a vision of unimaginable beauty and forlorn trepidation. Never in my short life span had I seen such a panorama so brilliant and majestic with all the colors of the palate set before my eyes at one time. The hues, along with tints of green, yellow, and blues sank into my memory so vividly that I knew I would never forget them, if I was ever allowed to leave alive.

What I was commanded on entering this war torn land which struggled just to exsist from day to day, was to check in, pickup my piece and ammunition--along with all other essentials, and wait for further orders; they would be coming down from headquarters shortly. Then the horror stories came in earnest; and the name calling began with a relentless barrage; cherry being the name that stuck in my mind the most.

This slow and dazed drama of human conflict at its worst was all new to me. The anxieties brought along with it were with me from the moment I landed at DaNang on that hot summer afternoon in June on my first tour of a war that I didn't know all too much about. Many told me I would beg to go home before I had been in country a week. And at that moment in time, when spoken to me, all I could recall were the nightly broadcast's of the peace movement back home; and the young flower children placing their dasies in my pockets as I waited to be conscripted outside the induction center. Those young long haired flower girls prancing around in bare feet and braless were beautiful creatures to me now, so far away from home and the civilization of law and order I had grown accustomed to.

The heat overwhelmed me first. I remember how I gulped down two canteens of water down my parched throat within the first hour, and then immediately began to melt in my own sweat and almost drown. Why I showered on a daily basis was beyond me; the foul smell that clothed my body followed me day and night no matter how hard I tried to keep clean; and the perspiration roll down my sides and limbs in streams twenty-four hours a day non-stop.

I was quickly indoctrinated, issued the basic essentials faster then a mess hall sergeant could slop his bland oatmeal on my tin tray, and whisked away from the only remnants of culture there was. When I opened my eyes at three thousand feet I was pleasantly surprised at the visual delight I encountered. Granted, it wasn't a beautiful flight attendant with azure blue eyes staring into mine and offering me refreshments; yet I was so keenly aware of a country so breath taking and overwhelming, that I knew I needed to take it all in; least I lose my only chance at the last remaining beauty that I was certain to see before the horrors of insanity swept me away into a vacuum of no return. And swiftly it came like a childs nightmare in vivid living color on a crisp black night.

Our door gunner, Steven Mazurkawitz, let off with a quick burst of the fifty caliber as our helicopter made a huge wide turn and then leveled out. His arms shook with each exploding round that the machine gun spat out at an uncountable pace. The pointed missiles impacted with geyser like eruptions in the rice paddies below. We watched in amazement at a single spray of water rise toward the heavens in a long even line several hundred yards long--minature volcanoes erupting briefly and then disappearing from our sight.

"Patented with the soul intent to kill gooks," Mazurkawitz said above the noise of the roters swooshing around and around in a hypnotic swirl above him. He spat out the door and his mucus flew back toward his face, but was abruptly pulled to the earth below by the roters downward draft. I sensed Mazurkawitz was a seasoned veteran by what he did on a daily basis. Especially so when he never flinched as he spat out the open door and the slobber came straight back at him. There wasn't a nerve in his body that was triggered to move out of the way. He was in such complete control that I wondered why he wasn't a general. He knew the do’s and don’t's of where he was in time. It was as if he sensed that someday soon someone would write about his exploits at war. His glory was war, and he would miss it until the next one came around so he could shine once more.

We made another wide turn and flew over a small group of rounded hills, nestled tightly together in an ugly clump, out of place among the flat rice paddies. A patriarchal farmer with stretched tight brown skin around his face saw our flying death machine approaching fast. He stopped in the middle of his business of guiding his water buffalo through the murky water of his rice paddy and placed a reed whip on his hip. He stared up into the bright sky and shaded his eyes with his arthritic hand above his graying eyebrows. He was sweating profusely and it soaked his thin gray T-shirt completely through. Quickly he splashed through the knee high dirty water to the front of his six hundred-pound buffalo and held onto the crude wooden yoke around the beasts’ thick neck. The animal licked its mouth and nose with its long wet gray tongue and stared at his master unsuspectingly. Defiantly, the old wrinkled man in his later years of life raised his muddy fist to our on coming machine and pounded it into the air vehemently, turning his skinny body completely around and following us through the cyan sky. He screamed his displeasure at us till he was out of breath. His vocabulary was very real to us by the expressions on his face and his wide open mouth and eyes. Mazurkawitz felt it his patriotic duty to answer the old farmers distaste with us with blasphemy of his own.

Our general raised his fist at the old man and checked his safety harness. Feeling secure, he edged closer to the fifty caliber near the aircrafts large open door and looked down at the landing skid whizzing over the fields below in a blur. He set his legs wide apart and placed both his hands on the machineguns handles and squeezed the handles securely. The wind smashed hard into his face and he felt the moisture in his eyes forced backward along the sides of his temples in tiny streams. At the same time he swung the gun around and aimed it back at the old farmers frail sunken-in chest. Feeling kind--for some unknown reason Mazurkawitz hated any man with black hair and black slanted eyes--he lowered the sight to the buffalo's head and pressed the trigger with an even pressure. The beasts’ head exploded into a thousand red fleshly fragments and the animal fell forward on his front legs. It then rolled over in one involuntary jerking movement before it fell dead in the water in a crimson pool of mauve.

The farmer was thrown onto his back into the dirty water, unaware of what had taken place so swiftly. Shocked, he regained his composure slowly, and stood up confused and dazed, dripping from head to foot with brown water. He swashed through the flooded rice field to inspect his only means of survival that lay dead on its side. The beasts' head was a red pulp that was unidentifiable and quickly it blended into the red water, only inches below the surface. The farmer looked down at his chest, surprised that he too was alive. He was splattered with animal flesh from his head to his waist that clung to him like leaches sucking through his skin. He began to cry, and squatted down on his bony haunches next to his dead beast, and the only means of survival he had; pulling rice plants out by their roots and tossing them over his shoulder, one after the other, in a wail that his gods surely must have heard from a great distance. The old man lowered his head and covered his face with his mud stained hands, then stared through his fingers at the far horizon. Our death ship was disappearing swiftly from his sight and he would never forget its markings.

"Slopeheads don’t live long without their animals," Mazurkawitz said, stepping back into the chopper. Exhilarated, he snapped his head back and forth and ran his hands through his short cropped blond hair that bent with military precision and sprung back to attention. He stared out the opening with a look of desperation on his face, like one might see in a drug addicts eyes. "There’s got to be more out there somewhere. Just got to be," he said. "Whoo, baby, did you see that beast explode? Whooo baby! I want another piece of that action now!"

Our general stood gallantly with his back to us, his jungle pance slapping in the wind. He raised his muscular arms and steadied himself in the open door frame. His stone chiseled body was a reflection of a victorious roman warrior over his barbarian enemy; the fifty caliber gun being his short thrusting sword that he used unmercifully.

The insanity of it all slapped me in the face as I stared through his legs and out to the carpeted green earth below. I had no choice, I either accepted my position as to where I was, or I died. Even accepting my position as to where I was in time was no certified guarantee that I would walk out alive. But if I was to die here I was trapped forever in a place I knew nothing about. It would be a fate worse then burning forever as my priest had told me many times; and the thought of burning forever never had comforted me.

Mazurkawitz’s eyes seemed to pop out of their sockets. They were wide open with excitment. He stepped over to the young pilot fresh from the states and knelt down on one knee next to his seat. He placed his hand behind the pilots neck, on a steel reinforcement strut, and squeezed it tightly. The helicopter bumped through the air up and down in a small unstable air pocket. The noise was deafening.

"We've got contact down there," Mazurkawitz said pointing down to the deck of the aircraft with his index finger. "More slopes then I've seen in a long time! Of all the times to be on a stick'n mission by ourselves! I could have a field day down there." Mazurkawitz was yelling loudly above the noise of the rotors and kept glancing up as if he wanted to take the rotors in his hand and yank it from its shaft. "I haven’t seen that many slant eyes in quite awhile, sir. Might be part of a whole battalion down there." Mazurkawitz stood up and looked out the pilots side window. "You never know about these dinks, sir. They can hide anywhere. Their so dog-on small they could crawl under a paper plate and you’d never see’em." Annoyed, Mazurkawitz rolled his lips together and smacked his fist into the palm of his hand. He looked back at us briefly and turned his attention back to the pilot.

The young pilot smiled with a boyish grin and looked out his side window. The glare from the hot afternoon sun struck his red freckled face with a burning irritation that turned his cheek into a bright red blotch. He shielded his face instinctively from the glare. His eyes followed the curving trail of the enemy soldiers weaving in out of the jungle and high grass. The pilot was awe struck. It was the first time in his budding career that he had seen so many dinks at one time. Insecure, he checked his instrument panels and tapped the fuel gauge; it remained the same. The long irregular column reminded him of a centipede with a million tiny legs, all of them synchronized to move in succession. But this centipde was spread out over a mile and a half; with breaks in its twisting and curling body that were hidden by the dense jungle foliage.

The tall elephant grass blew with the wind like a kansas wheat field on the open prarie. It was so pleasant to view. Yet it was too surreal.