Fang Song: Never So Few

The earth around us trembled as gun after gun barked out its required twenty-one round steel encased packages. The display of fireworks lasted less than five minutes. Some of the young Marines stared with open mouths, others tried to stop the blasting noises by clamping hands over both ears but to no avail as the concussion of the salvo’s roared down upon them! The youthful Marines seeing action in Vietnam for the first time may have been asking themselves the flaming question, Am I afraid of death…damn straight, I am afraid, especially at night, darkness is the worst and I don’t want to die alone. And then the young Marine remembered the words of Forbes the poet, As for men, his days are as grass. As the flowers of the field, so he flourisheth. And the wind passes over, and he is gone, and the place thereof shall know him no more.