and when it finally hit me,
when I was face-to-face with it,
when I learned that it was real,
it was not just words on a tv news program,
but it was very fucking real...
was when I got on the bus...
and old bus - it looked like any school bus
that I had ever ridden in back when life was not like this...
and all the windows had chicken wire over them —
you had to have the windows open,
as the heat was totally unreal,
but you also had to be as safe as you were able to be,
inside,
in that old school bus with the chicken wire over the windows...
that way,
if someone out there tried to throw something into the bus,
the chicken wire,
hopefully,
would keep whatever it was
out there.
A grenade could do a hell of a lot of damage
in an old school bus full of GIs.
Brand new GIs - brand new to the war,
wishing to hell they were back in The World,
and mentally going over every damn thing from high school
to now...
that had led them to this moment,
when they were riding through a small town
in and old school bus with chicken wired windows,
at speeds unsafe for the pedestrians out there.
'Cause that bus was not stopping or slowing down
unless it was stopped by Mister Charles.
Then an old sergeant, an SFC, stood up,
and said that we were at "the Point,"
and to lock and load our weapons
and be ready to un-ass the bus if we were were told to.
I slammed a full magazine of 7.62mm into my M14,
and chambered the first round,
then put the safety on.
I looked to make sure I knew where the safety was,
and that my thumb could reach it blind.
I looked at the window next to me again,
and wondered if the chicken wire was strong enough...
and wondered what the hell I was doing there,
in that seat, on that old school bus with the chicken wired windows,
and I made my first promise to God then,
that if I made it out of there safely,
then I would do this or that,
forever,
but please, please, let me make it out of here safely.

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