Morrelli

Staff sergeant Tony Morrelli glanced to his left toward the only window available to him as he sat strapped securely to the long fitted bench bolted to the floor and sides of the Huey attack helicopter. Through slitted eyes, he watched the jungle below flash past in a blur of green sameness which appeared, to his numbed senses, to reach out to infinity in all directions. A song, lodged in his memory since the previous night in the bars of Saigon, played over and over in his mind, refusing to leave his thoughts without a conscious effort at banishment. It returned again and again as his attention drifted between the ground below and the young crew in the helicopter. Paint it black, the latest offering by the newest British group to make it Stateside, the Rolling Stones. The one with the effeminate singer.
As the song played over inside his head it seemed to him that he had always been here, sitting, waiting, waiting for the inevitable order to disembark, to leave the comparative security of the flying bird and enter the chaos and the violence of the impenetrable green below.
The side gunner turned and smiled wolfishly at the young marine who was attempting to give a graphical description of the favours bestowed upon him (low cost) by the Saigon bar girl the night before. There was no way to hear the full story, he was firing randomly at some unseen target with the heavy calibre cannon mounted in the doorway of the aircraft. Barely eighteen years old, judged Morrelli, the equally young conscripts further down toward the cockpit end of the aircraft laughed and nodded encouragement. It didn’t seem to matter that it was impossible to hear a word over the un-silenced din of the Huey's exhaust and the staccato interruption of the side gunner,  the young gunner persisted for a while in his efforts. Even with heavy helmets removed to double as temporary armoured seats in an attempt to guard against incoming shrapnel from below, the noise was just too great, he gave up and continued to rain red hot death indiscriminately over the green landscape.

Morrelli turned his attention once more to the jungle below and tried hard not to think about the unfortunate of these young men, who might very soon be left sprawled on the jungle floor, screaming in terror as they lay, thrashing in deep red pools of their own life’s blood as the rest of the squad charged relentlessly onward, forsaking out of necessity the wretched, who for many seconds or even minutes would keep pace with the lucky ones, ropes of twisted purple and red and blue entrails, pulsing with seemingly independent life, trailing, only to become entangled about thrashing legs and arms stilling even these anguished death throes until the even yet innocent wide eyes finally glazed over with the glassy sheen of death before they'd glimpsed the real horror's of war. Perhaps it was better that way, who knows. He gripped the butt of his M16 automatic rifle just a little closer and tried to push the terrible but familiar images from his mind as he felt the unmistakable change of vibration from the engines which signalled the start of the rapid descent to the fast approaching drop off zone.

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