Unpublished & Draft: an essay from "Day after Day"

Together with the medical officer and paramedics we finish to prepare three critical wounded for evacuation. A pneumotorax and other two with serious wounds to the limbs. One of them will loose a leg for sure.
Cox, the sergeant major, gives us six soldiers to load the evacuees on the chopper.
While the turbines are getting hot, noisy and hissing, I can’t avoid to ask him.
“Sergeant! Why do you have your M16 ready to fire and all the others don’t? This one is a quiet LZ.”

The texan man smiles.
“Quiet my ass. For one fourth I am a native american, corporal. I sniff the Charlie from their stink. They’re all around here observing us. The moment they will be enough they will take their chance to mangle us into pieces.”
I look around to the wide clearing, surrounded by high trees and dense vegetation.
And my immagination suggests me the vision of hundreds of eyes that, in silence, are looking at us with hostility.
“Aboard!” the pilot shouts.
Cohen and I ensure that the wounded are secured to the stretchers. Then I give a pat to the co-pilot shoulder.
“Let’s go!”
When we take off I feel the fear catching my bowels and my throat with it’s cold hand.
We climb and fly over a tree line.
All of a sudden I hear the rythmic crackling of automatic weapons, three hundred meters below. And the tracers stream is wrapping the Huey.
The metallic impacts sounds like hail with huge pellets hitting a van body. But much stronger.
“Hold on!” the pilot screams.
The co-pilot has turned his head backward and screams indications to the pilot.
“It’s a fifty caliber! Incoming fire at our eight! Go! Go! Go!”
My first thought isn’t the one of strapping myself to the seat.
It’s to keep the wounded in their place.
We fly with the side doors open, usually. And it isn’t a problem, usually.
But now I am afraid that the straps could get loose, because the Huey is making a series of sharp turns to make Vietcong gunners life harder.
There is a choir of sound alarms setting off.
And I understand that things are turning from bad to worste.
“Autorotation! Everybody hang on! We’re going down!” the pilot screams.
Fear doesn't stop me thinking.
I still have few seconds.
I use them to check that wounded are still secured.
I give a look to lieutenant Cohen. He’s strapped to his seat, pale like a dead and his eyes are popping out because of terror.
I sit and strap myself to the seat made of fabric and tubes.
“Impact! Impact!” somebody yells.
For few seconds I don’t see and understand anything.
I don’t remember even the crashing.
I know only that when I open again the eyes I've lost my helmet and my back hurts.
The Huey lies on the side and there is an unreal silence.

(“Day by Day”, PJ Horten 2017)