Free Run Between the Raindrops by Dale A. Dye Page A

sickening thump. LAAW Man strips another rocket and sets up to fire again as a rifleman next to him pours half a magazine into the dead gook. It’s as good a break as we are likely to get and the lieutenant charges down the street waving for his grunts to follow.
    Pounding along behind a grunt carrying at least a thousand rounds of machinegun ammo draped all over his body, I glance right and then left trying to locate Steve. He’s nowhere in sight and I’m too nervous to conduct anything more than a cursory search. Something tells me if I stay tied in tight behind this hulking, ammo-festooned grunt, I just might make it all the way to the Treasury Building. If I can just stay right behind his broad butt I’ve got some sense of direction and purpose here, maybe a chance that he’ll catch the first rounds aimed at us and I might skate. It’s not very manly or heroic, but I’m going with it.
    In a couple of minutes that seem like hours, we make it to the wall and dive to find cover. I’m left all alone when Broad Butt crawls away to re-supply a machinegun firing on the flank of the new assault line. Plunging fire from the upper floors is cracking overhead but not doing much damage. There are maybe six or seven lying in the streets; some bleeding out while others crawl for cover. The lieutenant flops down next to me and peeks over the wall. He’s chewing on a lower lip and trying to decide how to get some of his people across the courtyard and into the building.
    He’s still thinking about it when a squad leader decides he’s had enough bullshit and leads his guys into the open screaming for covering fire. They are fully exposed, running and gunning at NVA shooters in spider holes dotted throughout the courtyard. There’s still deadly fire raining down from the building’s upper reaches, but more and more Marines are taking it on themselves to follow the first squad’s lead. Two by two or in single rushes, they close on the building and hug the structure which puts them in defilade and safe from shooters inside the objective.
    The lieutenant vaults the fence and sprays a magazine full of ball ammo toward the roof. By the time I find the guts to follow, a unit of maybe four or five guys have made it into the Treasury Building. I can hear them banging away in there. More Marines flood in through doors and lower level windows as I shove a dead NVA out of the way and take cover in his little fighting hole. On a side of the building, there are more grunts firing and fragging, forcing open a side entrance covered by one of those accordion-type security gates.
    The lieutenant maneuvers forward past me to join them with his radio operator in tow. He pauses at the entrance to radio a report on their progress and then inside the building. There’s a roar of rifle fire and detonating grenades blowing out of the building and over my position in the courtyard. There’s a serious fight going on inside that building, but there’s no telling from here who is winning and who is losing. In about ten minutes by my watch, a Corpsman comes forward to reclaim Stevens corpse and haul it away out of sight. The noise inside the building begins to taper off to an intermittent rattle of single shots.
    Hotel Company Gunny appears in the doorway with his shotgun dangling and a cigar clenched in his teeth. It’s a classic image and I record it on a couple of frames as he signals for the rest of the company to advance. The Treasury Building belongs to the Horrible Hogs of Hotel Company. Those not engaged in sweeping the building quickly arrive and fan out into defensive positions around the courtyard against an NVA counterattack.
    Before I head for the building to find out what happened in there beyond the obvious, I take a few minutes to strip the dead NVA from the spider-hole of anything that looks like valuable trading material. There’s not much of interest beyond a clutch of letters covered with stamps extolling the virtues and fighting