h Listeners. The following was written on the day of the podcast.
DrB.20230918.Soldier.Airplane.
Our prompts this week, include a protagonist, a soldier, a setting, an airplane (I’ve chosen a helicopter gunship) and an essential tactic, rationalization, (or, explaining it away).
Viet Nam.
First gunner Sally Brown was not quite shitting in her pants, as the copter was spiraling towards the ground.
They, her and the five other crew members in the gunship, A3325, had been covering for a platoon which had taken cover after being ambushed by a battalion of Viet Cong. The platoon had taking fire for over an hour and suffered two fatalities and three wounded. Sally had been firing into the bush surrounding the besieged soldiers until her guns got too hot to fire. They had just pulled out making room for the medical copter to pick up the wounded They are braver than I thought Sally, when a handheld bazooka type weapon wielded by the Cong, hit their tail rotors.
The pilot, and her war-time lover, Sgt. Tom Williams, bleeding from a wound to his head, shouted, “Get ready to jump, I can pull her up to give you guys’ space before we crash…” He did, not telling them that he would go down with his ship..
Sally picked herself up out of the bush into which she had fallen, in time to hear the copter explode, taking the Tom’s life with it.
She wasn’t hurt, much. As she was brushing herself off, she was grabbed from behind and thrown to the turf by a soldier from the platoon she had so recently been defending,
“Get down, they’re still out there firing on us,” was his forced whisper.
On their bellies he led her back to the main body. They had set up a perimeter and the copter retrieving their wounded was in the process of receiving them. Get on...he said….
h Listeners. The following was written on the day of the podcast.
DrB.20230918.Soldier.Airplane.
Our prompts this week, include a protagonist, a soldier, a setting, an airplane (I’ve chosen a helicopter gunship) and an essential tactic, rationalization, (or, explaining it away).
Viet Nam.
First gunner Sally Brown was not quite shitting in her pants, as the copter was spiraling towards the ground.
They, her and the five other crew members in the gunship, A3325, had been covering for a platoon which had taken cover after being ambushed by a battalion of Viet Cong. The platoon had taking fire for over an hour and suffered two fatalities and three wounded. Sally had been firing into the bush surrounding the besieged soldiers until her guns got too hot to fire. They had just pulled out making room for the medical copter to pick up the wounded They are braver than I thought Sally, when a handheld bazooka type weapon wielded by the Cong, hit their tail rotors.
The pilot, and her war-time lover, Sgt. Tom Williams, bleeding from a wound to his head, shouted, “Get ready to jump, I can pull her up to give you guys’ space before we crash…” He did, not telling them that he would go down with his ship..
Sally picked herself up out of the bush into which she had fallen, in time to hear the copter explode, taking the Tom’s life with it.
She wasn’t hurt, much. As she was brushing herself off, she was grabbed from behind and thrown to the turf by a soldier from the platoon she had so recently been defending,
“Get down, they’re still out there firing on us,” was his forced whisper.
On their bellies he led her back to the main body. They had set up a perimeter and the copter retrieving their wounded was in the process of receiving them. Get on...he said….
+++
… Okay readers, that’s ten minutes…. You can see the finished exercise on my Substack, Dr.Bob’s Head. Here is the link to my completed exercise on substack. https://open.substack.com/pub/drbobnewport/p/da-nang-highlands-vietnam-october?r=1sygsy&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web