Creative Writing

*It was 19h30 on that hot, balmy night in February 1959 when the controversial war in Vietnam*began. Our personnel carrier stealthily glided to a halt on the sandy shores of unfamiliar Vietnamese coastline. I was one of the thousands of soldiers who arrived there that hot, windless night. I thought it was just some peacekeeping operation, but I did not know the true, dark reason behind all this. This was to be a bloody war. The quiet, moonlit night exposed the naked fear on the faces of the boatload of 18-year olds. They had no idea what was waiting for them in the jungles of *Vietnam* but there is no turning back. We were at war now.
The stuttering of machine gun fire shattered the stillness of the night. We were being fired upon from all sides. We dived for cover but there was none. Charlie was waiting for us. In a matter of minutes, half our regiment was wiped out without us firing a shot. We were at their mercy and waiting for reinforcements was agonizingly long. The faint drone of the fighter helicopters grew louder as they approached. The night lit up like the fourth of July as the rockets were launched, blowing the camouflaged enemy out into the open. It became clear to me right there and then that this was going to be a long and protracted war.  
*Later that night we set up camp but no one slept. The uncertainty of when Charlie might strike was too strong a preventative. You could hear the young soldiers whimper with fear in the stillness of the night. Morning broke much later than we anticipated, even though it was only 06h00. The night was long and agonizing. We were moving camp and moving further into enemy terrain. The dense tropical jungle revealed nothing. The sweat on our brows was not from the heat, it was from fear. We were not sure where the next bullet would come from and who would fall next. The staccato of gunfire could be heard in the distance as the skirmishes continued. The birds suddenly stopped chirping and the forest was set in...