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Poem

By Gordon Perry

Dong Ha, 10 March 1968: 3rd Marine Division Information Office disclosed that a marine rifle company was involved in an all-day battle with a North Vietnamese regiment. On the 9th of March an under strength marine rifle company, proceeding in convoy along provincial route #9 south of Gio Linh, was ambushed by a North Vietnamese Army regiment. The marines dismounted and counter-attached, closing with the enemy force in a defensive complex of trences and camouflaged bunkers. Subsequently the company was assisted by the rest of its parent battalion. The engagement was terminated at dusk. Reliable sources characterized the company's casualties as "extremely heavy." They emphasized the most of the casualties were sustained during the assault on the entrenched NVA force, not during the ambush. The enemy regiment was reinforced with a heavy weapons battalion and supported by 127 mm and 152 mm artillery based north of the Ben Hai River in North Vietnam.

The major focus of activity was to the west at Khe Sanh in the Scotland II area of Operations where...

Disaster arrives
with the haughty elan of gathering storm clouds
blue-green spheres drift,
languidly elegant like dandelion
puffs riding gusting currents.
Fright's hyperkinetic ambience
masks, with fog-like haze,
thought's terrors
muting the metallic malevolence
of tracer's dawdling traipse.
Red-black and yellow-gold flowers
Sprout randomly,
Grow large,
Propagate vacuoles of rustling
Violence.
Erupting eternity contracts
Reduced to nexts:
Steps;
Sights;
Breaths.
We moved toward thorned coronation
With the high complacence of summer hitchhikers
Gaging high-crowned thunderstorms ahead.

Gordon A. Perry 2323394
M 3/9, 3rd Marines
RVN, 4/67—4/70