We stepped into the blackness. One moment we were in country on a search and destroy mission and the next we all stepped into a void. I remember that the jungle wrapped around me and I figured I was dead. It was a VC trap. Sarge had Boyd on point and he hadn’t said anything, then Sarge stepped in and the rest of us sort of followed. At first I figured it was just super heavy brush. But in one step, I could no longer see even the low lights we had. There was a bit of moon light before we stepped over, but now nothing. Sarge whispered to Boyd. “Where the hell are you?” I heard Boyd’s muffled voice saying “Here Sarge”. I followed it, since really I had nothing to guide me. I knew I was dead and this was how it was. At least I didn’t feel anything.
A few steps ahead, I saw something. I saw Boyd and Sarge crouched by a wall. There ain’t no walls like this in country. Maybe in the cities… Sarge motioned us forward and we took up positions around Sarge. “Where are we? This is a city, there ain’t a village within 20 clicks of us let alone a city.” The night air smelled different. I looked around and saw that somehow we were in a depression in a city like Siagon. Behind us, somehow was a long wall. But we just came from there. Sarge told us to keep our heads down. He saw some bushes over to our right and told us to stay low and follow him. We did and headed towards the only cover we saw.
The grass under our boots was cut. The ground was soft. The air smelled of flowers and food. American food. I could smell hamburgers cooking, I swear. The temperature was about 70 degrees, something I haven’t felt since I was home. And I also smelled a small squad of dirty Americans. For the first time in a while, I realized we reeked of sweat and dirt. We had been in-country for a few days only. We checked our perimeter and saw no one.
Then Sawyer piped up. “Sarge, look over there”. We looked where he was pointed and we saw, well we somehow saw an illusion. There is no way that was in Viet Nam. I didn’t do the drugs of choice and so I knew it wasn’t a hallucination. I shook my head a few times and kept looking at it. What the hell was the Washington Monument doing here? Sawyer started to shake. “Sarge, I’m from DC. This is DC man. How the…” Just then we heard a car rev up. We got flat and Sarge and I went over the small hill to look. Sarge turned to me and said “I have never seen that kind of car before. It wasn’t built like anything I’ve ever known. It must be food poisoning or something turned on all of us. We need to get out of here.”
We crawled back and Sarge got with Specs and tried the radio. Nothing but static. He tried a few times to get a chopper in so we could get the hell back to base or where ever, but no luck.
Then we saw two people walking through the trees talking and holding hands. Sawyer brought up his weapon and Sarge grabbed him and told him to hold fire.
“Hang tight”.
“OK, the best thing to do is to try and go back the way we came. If we can find the LZ and hold up, we should be able to get this through our systems and we can go back to base. I figured something went wrong with our rations or the water and we got a weird bug.”
We crawled back along the open area and under the fence. And we came to the wall. It was black and long. “Sarge, we must have come over it, right? I don’t remember falling”. As we got closer we saw it up close. Sawyer said, “I remember this part of DC. The Lincoln Memorial is right over there. The Washington Monument is there. The Reflecting Pool is right there and I don’t remember this being here.”
Sarge and I got close and saw the wall had etched names. We could see where we came through because of the dirt and stuff from our boots and clothing as we dragged the jungle with us. The jungle bits and dirt start right at the edge of the wall. I looked up and said, “Sawyer, what’s your first name?” “Steve, why?” “Your name is here in this wall. And…so is mine”.
Sarge stepped up and put his hand on the wall. It passed right through it. “I don’t understand this but I think we got some weird Nam bug. I think this is the way back”. He then just stepped into the wall like it wasn’t there. “Let’s go guys, I think it is time to go home”.
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