Free Run Between the Raindrops by Dale A. Dye

dead Marine lying in a grotesque posture near the steps of the building. Autry tells me that it’s Stevens, a Hotel Company man that they couldn’t recover when they pulled back under intense fire. The Horrible Hogs are more concerned about retrieving their buddy than they are excited about a second shot at taking the Treasury Building. No one believes either task will be easy, but it’s aggravating to see Stevens’ body lying up there in a gook-controlled courtyard. Everyone seems a little embarrassed about that. No one says it in precisely textbook fashion, but everyone knows Marines don’t leave other Marines—living or dead—behind when they quit a battlefield. There’s no one to blame specifically and the situation yesterday was beyond their control, but a palpable level of anger is building up in Hotel Company. This second assault will be undertaken by a bunch of pissed off grunts, and there’s a certain reassurance in that anger. They won’t fail this time.
    Activity begins all along the assault line as officers brief the squad leaders. There is an uneasy stirring among the grunts in our ditch, the ones that will make the first rush of the day. A rooster crows in the distance and it’s almost like a bugle call. Firing starts immediately. There is a steady roar of rifle and machinegun fire from both ends of the long drainage ditch and concrete chips begin to fly in the distance. Six Marines near me break cover in a tidal wave of watery slime and pound toward the building, running zig-zag paths, streaming water from soaked trousers and boots.
    Before long the assault takes recognizable shape. It’s all about fire and maneuver as it always is in attacking a fortified position. One squad keeps gook gunners away from the windows with concentrated fire while another moves into defilade. Gooks are waiting for their time so there’s not as much return fire as everyone expected during the initial rush. It’s a mild shock when we realize the leading squad is safely tucked behind the wall surrounding the building. The lucky leaders signal for the rest of us to come on and we rush forward to join them, bounding from cover to cover on both sides of the street. We know the gooks are in there. We’ve seen them moving around. So? Where are they and what are are they waiting for?
    Through a telephoto lens, I watch as two grunts crawl under cover of the courtyard wall toward a hole blasted by a recoilless rifle crew during yesterday’s action. Autry tells me that 106 was taken out by a B-40 fired from an upper story, but the gunner is nowhere in sight today.
    One of the crawling grunts is carrying a Blooper, the short, shotgun-like 40mm grenade launcher that is proving to be a valuable weapon for infantrymen in Hue. Behind Blooper Man is another grunt hugging two green tubes containing LAAWs, Lightweight Antitank Assault Weapons. As LAAW Man sets up to fire, Blooper Man dashes across the open space in the wall and peeks to select a target. They are in position to rock and roll now, but before they can trigger the assault, the late-sleeper gooks inside the building decide it’s time to wake up and fight. AK rounds impact all around the assault team, tearing chunks of macadam up and down the street. Muzzle flashes light up windows all across the front of the building.
    A lieutenant off to my left is screaming for covering fire and Marines in hides all along the street begin burning through M-16 magazines and belts of linked M-60 ammo. Sparks and rocks are flying from the front of the building in a noisy shower. Blooper Man swings around the opening to fire two quick rounds into a second-story window. He’s good. He fires and reloads so quickly that the two reports sound almost like a burst of semi-auto fire.
    The upper left corner of the Treasury Building explodes in a dark blossom of high-explosive. Through the smoke, an RPD machinegun with gook gunner still attached tumbles slowly to the courtyard and impacts with a