Warfare (noun): The waging of conflict between two or more parties.

March 14th, 1968; Location: 11 clicks south of Saigon.

Night had previously fallen many hours ago, the sky pitch black, not a single cloud or star. The six of us were crowded together in a space no bigger than a small car; the humidity caused a seemingly sticky cocoon around our bodies.  We were all fearful of what was to come, yet we could not express that burden, for the reason that none of us were familiar with each other.  The rotating blades of the Bell Huey H1 were designed to be stealthy, yet, to us, it echoed the screams of our fallen brothers, we soon came to know that we were destined to the same fate. 

    From the position that I am writing this at the moment, on the pain of death, I cannot reveal the full details of the grave mission we were tasked with, however, we were told that this mission would be a simple search and destroy style mission, with extraction, but deep inside we sensed that there was a far more sinister secret looming beyond the reaches of our mind, none of us knew, in a few hours, we would soon confront that fear.

    00:21, our hearts were in freefall as the chopper rapidly descended to just above the murky, black canopy of forest, we knew this was it, our time had arrived, we departed the helicopter by rappelling down rope with our bare hands, which was, in practise, an agonising experience, however, to us, pain was a mere fragment in our mind, we didn’t feel much emotion, we were blank as paper, reminiscent of robots.

    However, as soon as our feet touched the damp, rough, unfamiliar terrain we were suddenly optimistic about the whole plan, we all had images of a hero’s welcome once we had completed this mission, yet this was a mere illusion clouding the dark reality from our senses. 

    We were only equipped with necessities; each man carried: a water canteen, canned food, a Ruger Mk II sidearm with sufficient extra ammunition, various grenades and a M7 Bayonet knife.  The only differences between our setup were our base- weapons; between us, we carried various assortments of rifles and launchers. We were also trained to carry a new type of explosive, we had unofficially named it ‘The device’, we didn’t know how it worked, but we knew its capabilities.