Willy Peter Archives - James Strauss

THE THIRTEENTH DAY, 30 Days Has September

I was wrong and I knew it by the time the company had proceeded less than an hour into its rain-flushed mud-slogging move into an impossibly dark night of trying to break through abusive jungle bracken while attempting to be careful not to set off any booby-traps.

THE EIGHTH NIGHT SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September

by James Strauss | 103 comments

Relief flooded through me. It was over. I’d survived another of what my team called ‘fire fights’. There was no way to adjust to the change from combat to whatever this was. It was still dark. My ears still rang. But with my night vision returning, I could vaguely see...

THE EIGHTH NIGHT, 30 Days has September

by James Strauss | 73 comments

The move was a long hard one. In training I’d literally run twenty miles with a forty-pound pack on my back carrying an M-14 and wearing a full helmet and liner. I had none of those things going down the ridge, in hopes of coming in behind whatever units were set up to ambush

THE SECOND NIGHT, 30 days Has September

by James Strauss | 22 comments

Night didn’t come easily in the Nam. The day had been a blessing compared to my first night. Moving seventeen clicks through muddy rice paddies wearing a fifty-pound pack was its own form of misery, but the brutality of Marine training had kicked in and setting one...