I pray for Gin every day

“It went on and on and a dark kind of reality started to set in: We're not going to get out of this. One thing I remembered sort of surprised me, because I wondered if I was going to be able to do it. When the insurgents broke the cease fire with mortars that night, I was sitting in an exhausted stupor on the ground near the vehicle where my captain was yelling at somebody who I think outranked him. When the firing started, I jumped up and ran straight toward it. I took aim across the wall and tried to give that mortar something to think about. I don't know if I did, but it felt good. Only later did I realize how instanteious it had been. While I was dropping the empty magazine, I thought: they can see my tracer rounds, I better switch spots. Too late. A mortar round landed about twenty feet in front of me. I thought I'd lost my hearing . . . That, guys, is what's called 'abandoning a city without firing a shot.'