"Alright! Be ready to run in men. There will be an opening, but there's no telling how long it will last." The Lieutenant, a first Sargent, and I stood at a stifling two yards from the blaze. The steady stream of water dampening the once blazing ground in front of us.

The water cut off abruptly, our signal to run. We bounded into the city. The fear of being burned alive quickening our paces. Once inside I fell to the ground gasping for air. The city was much hotter than the space outside of it. The wall of fire was trapping in the heat and almost literally cooking the people inside. Many yelled for our assistance. For water. Something we didn't have to give them. As the civilians approached us with seat and burns covering their skins we asked them to find the water tanks we'd brought into the town just two months earlier. We had been anticipating an attack like this from the enemy.

They all would run from us, some tripping from exhaustion as the left. Some so weak they never recovered from falling. Someone grabbed me from behind, and as I turned I expected an injured citizen to beg me for water or assistance. But in the fiery chaos a calm face met mine.

The Lieutenant stood there before me with a smug look on his face.

"Go," He said. "I know you're wondering why volunteered you to come in here with me, now go!"

I was confused. Go? Go where? Then I remembered why I'd been so anxious to get here in the first place. Keanu. I nodded before taking off to the trash houses. Surly she wouldn't still be inside her house. Surely in the chaos she'd left, but where? The only place I knew to look was her home.

I ran through the streets informing civilians to get to the water tanks as soon as possible. Some understood and obeyed. The ones who didn't asked the ones who did, and they together ran to the outposts in town.

The trash houses had all been destroyed. Not one remained standing. The blasts had shaken the ropes that held them together, off. The orphanage. That's the next place. I saw her while I was still several blocks away. She was huddled in the rubble of what used to be the orphanage. I could hear her sobbing over all the other noise polluting the night.

My feet could not fly fast enough. It seemed to take ages to reach her. But as I slid to her side I grabbed her to me and soothed her. She wailed and cried into my torso.

"I'm here. I'm here." I said, trying to calm her. But ultimately calming myself. I'd been so frightened I wouldn't find her!

"Con Trai?" I asked her in earnest. "Did he get out?!" I demanded an answer from her.

"I—I don't know." She said in shock of what had taken place around her. She had stopped crying but was entering a dazed, surreal state.

"Did he get out? What happened?" I asked intently.

"They uh, they were leaving when the uh, the uh, um..." Keanu closed her eyes, struggling to find the word to describe the bombers.

"Planes?" I asked.

"Yes. They come and drop fire from the sky and I don't know if the orphans made it." She leaned back into me and commenced to crying once more. This time I held her close without a word and rocked her back and forth. I kissed her forehead to comfort her and myself. Our eyes stung with tears and sweat. A pain that both of us found trivial compared to our heart ache.

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After a few moments I checked her for injuries, but after finding only minor ones I suggested that we help with extinguishing the blaze. The many civilians had found the water tanks and were using them to tackle the blaze from within the city. Other water trucks had gathered around outside the city and were spraying their hoses in.

Keanu and I found ourselves to be of more use tending to people within the city who had wounds which needed treatment soon. We went around and prepped as many people as we could to be taken out of the city and to the nearest hospital once the fire was out.

Citizen and soldier alike fought the blaze fearlessly for hours. The heat from the rising sun making the heat from the blaze that much more unbearable. We now had men passing out for the hot air. One elderly man we found in a home later had boiled from the inside out.

It was a miracle any of us survived.

I haven't seen so many naked men and women since Woodstock. I hadn't attended, but I had a cousin who did. She took lots and lots of pictures which she insisted on sharing with me and my sister.

When the blaze was out the entire city gave a roar. From the youngest to the oldest of people. A battle cry of victory as if to say, 'Yes, you did win the battle, but we will win the war!!!'

I helped my fellow soldiers to load up the sick and injured people onto the trucks to be taken to the hospital. I tried to get Keanu to go, but she wouldn't. She argued that she wasn't as in need of service as some others in the town. I would have admired her courage to do this if it was the true reason she didn't want to leave. By the way she clung to my side and kept asking if she could come with me, I knew her true reason for staying was that she wanted to stay with me. Which I didn't mind. I was more than happy to have her in my sights at all time. I could make sure she was alright.

We've helped many people in Chi over the months but the death and injured toll were the largest by far of any raid on Chi so far. The North was getting desperate to take Chi over.

They wanted and needed this small, seemingly insignificant village because it was the only thing standing between them and the South Vietnamese Capital. As long as The South Owned Chi, the South was in control. If Chi fell, the South fell.

0]g