"Great. We've come this far and now we're stuck," spat Jonesie. It had happened--we'd gotten through the jungle only to find ourselves in front of what was obviously a minefield. It wasn't very wide across, but it we'd seen the telltale signs enough to know that it would be less-than-smart to traipse across the stretch of dirt in front of us--I could even see some of the treacherous green devices on the ground ahead of me. Despair was as thick as the humidity as we set our packs down and drank for a minute from our canteens. I looked around the group--a ragtag platoon out here in the hellish nightmare of Vietnam, stuck between impending Vietcong action on the other side of the jungle and a treacherous minefield in front of us. Talk about a rock and a hard place! It was me--Spendlove--, Jonesie, Smitty, Burt, and Cap'n (Captian Scott Buckman); we'd lost the other half of our little band in the jungle and to enemy gunfire. We were dirty, sore, almost out of ammo, and doing our best to not lose hope. I thought of home, my mother and father, my brothers and sister, my friends, the folks in our town who frequented our family store where I'd swept and stocked shelves and counted change before I was drafted. It all seemed so far away. I had gotten over the tears long ago, but I couldn't help wondering, once again, if I'd ever see those faces again. I leaned up against a tree and sighed heavily as Jonesie got up and began to pace.
"What're we gonna do? I mean, it's not like we have any metal detectors or anything!" He was right. It's not like we were equipped to make it through unharmed.
