Moonlit sky,
Roads are dry,
My mind is runnin' free.
The mountain shapes and leafless trees
Remind me of another time,
In a place across the sea.
With poc marked hills,
and confirmed kills,
and bombers in the night;
Of wakin' up in a fox hole
to the sound of a firefight
Mortar tubes start poppin',
shooting straight up in the air.
Voices shouting in Vietnamese.
Confusion everywhere.
"Puff the Magic Dragon" arrives upon the scene.
We hear his guns start to hummmm
as they spit their deadly red stream.
Eight inch rounds come screaming in
Like banshees from the sky.
They explode their lethal load
And it's someone's turn to die.
The fight goes on
All night long,
As they try to take our hill.
And here's where we'd stay,
Trapped for two more days,
As they move in for the kill
Cut off from the water,
Supplies were gettin' low,
One thing was for certain -
It was time to go
How many were wounded?
I couldn't even guess;
But some of those guys
Were really a mess.
Medevac choppers, under fire, came in;
We loaded the wounded
And they were gone again.
But the zone was too hot
To make another pass,
So the dead wouldn't fly out
Until next to last.
When the time finally came to leave,
fifteen body bags lined the LZ.
Inside of each, a guy, who was once like me;
But who's now free from this insanity.
And if you think you'd never envy the dead,
Just run this scene through your head:
Tired and thirsty,
our bodies were beat.
Dust in our canteens
And nothing to eat.
"It's a beautiful morning"
Playin' on the radio;
Gear all staged in nets,
Ready to go.
The birds were comin to get us out,
When an incoming round started a fire
That almost turned the LZ into a funeral pyre
We dragged the bodies away from that hell,
But our ammo didn't do so well.
The heat set a couple boxes burnin',
And some small arms rounds started churnin';
But they weren't the only things burning in the net,
the grenades just didn't start blowing yet.
We had to do something,
And do it quick,
'Cause the choppers were coming,
and they could never land
With those things burning outta' hand
Had to get rid of 'em, before they blew;
And that was my job, but what could I do?
About that time the colonel appeared.
He was a gutsy old guy,
who had a determined look in his eye.
He pulled a burning box away from the Z
Then he looked over and motioned to me
He said he wasn't sure we be leaving that day,
So we couldn't throw too much ammo away.
So we opened the box, and man what a thrill,
throwing hot hand grenades off the side of a hill.
Well we lucked up and didn't get blown away;
The birds got in, so we didn't have to stay -
Maybe we'll get to do this again some day.