by: Marty Chrisman

Author’s note: The original idea for this story comes from the story Eye of the Storm by CandyLovin Fehrian. This is a terrific story. If you have not read it, please take the time to do so. This original idea and the characters named in a small section of that story are used with her gracious permission and I would like to thank her again for allowing me to expand on it. This is a relatively short story and deals mainly with Luke’s time in the prison camp.

          Luke Duke closed his eyes and tried to rest. He was exhausted. But it was useless. The sound of gunfire in the distance, a sound he should be used to by now, was keeping him awake. Not that he really slept in this place anyway. He hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in almost two years, not since he was sent to Viet Nam with the rest of his unit. But in a few more weeks it would all be over and he would be going home. His enlistment would be up. Finally, he gave up trying to sleep and sat up on his bedroll. Slapping at one of the endless bugs that seemed to fill the air, he barely noticed the sting on his arm when it bit him. Opening his knap sack, he dug out the picture of his family. Uncle Jesse and his cousins, Daisy and Bo. God, he missed them so much. Especially Bo. He couldn’t wait to go home for good. Sighing, he put the picture back in his knap sack for safe keeping.

Shoving himself to his feet, he shuffled over to the campfire and joined two other men from his unit who were sitting there. Luke poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down beside one of his best friends, Henry Lawson. Henry was only a few years older than Luke (who had just turned twenty-two a few weeks ago) He hailed from Tennessee and since the two young men had a lot in common, they had quickly became friends here in this jungle far away from their respective southern homes.

The young man sitting on the other side of Luke was relatively new. He had only been with the unit for the past two months. And he was only eighteen, one of the youngest soldiers there. His name was Micheal Guerin and he’d been born and raised in Roswell, New Mexico. Luke had talked to him a few times, offering him advice on how to stay alive in this awful place. It was a lesson that every new recruit had to learn pretty quick if they wanted to survive. One mistake in this jungle could cost you your life.

“Where are from, Luke?” Micheal asked. He knew from Luke’s accent that he was from the south but he’d never found out which state.

“Georgia.” Luke told him “A little place called Hazzard.”

“You got a girl back home?”

“No…nobody special.” Luke said with a faint smile. Back home he’d been popular with all the local girls and never had to worry about a date. With his rugged good looks and lean muscular build from his years of working on his uncle’s farm, the local girls thought that he was one of the hottest guys around.

“I got me a girl. Her name’s Mindy Anne.” Micheal said with a huge grin. He pulled a tiny snapshot out of his uniform pocket and handed it to Luke. It showed Micheal with his arms around a pretty little redhead with blue eyes. Luke handed him back the picture and he carefully slipped it back into his pocket “I’m gonna ask her to marry me when I get back home.” He said proudly.

“Good for you, Mike.” Luke said with a warm smile “She looks like a real nice girl.”

“She’s the best.” He replied with a huge grin. “We been going together since eighth grade.”

“Hey, Luke…” Henry said “Did you get a letter from home this morning?”

“Sure did. One from Uncle Jesse and one from Bo.”

“How are they doing?”

“About the same.” Luke said. It made him homesick to talk about his family and home. It was so lonely here in this place so far away from the states. Even with twenty other men in his unit, Luke still felt so alone.

Henry started to say something else when suddenly there was a whistling sound in the air and then a terrible explosion right in the center of their camp. The three men sitting around the fire, jumped to their feet and threw themselves down behind the relative safety of the sandbags piled up around the perimeter of the camp. The sound of shouts and gunfire quickly filled the air. Suddenly, there seemed to be Viet Cong everywhere. Somehow in the confusion and excitement of the fight, Luke got separated from Henry and Micheal.

A second explosion went off, so close to where Luke was standing that it stunned him momentarily and made his ears ring so badly he couldn’t even think straight for a minute. As he slowly regained his senses, he saw two Viet Cong soldiers grab Henry and start dragging him away. With a loud yell, Luke ran towards them intending to help his friend. Suddenly, Luke felt rough hands grab him from behind and a hood of some sort was pulled down over his head. He tried to struggle against the hands holding him captive and received a vicious punch in the stomach that took his breath away and sent him to his knees. He felt someone jerking his arms in front of him and then tying his wrists tightly together, so tightly that the braided rope cut painfully into his wrists. Hands jerked him roughly to his feet and then someone tied his ankles together just as tightly but with enough slack between his legs so that he could still walk. Luke felt his heart pounding with fear as he realized that he had just been taken prisoner by the enemy.

Hands pushed him from behind, forcing him to walk forward into the unknown. He could hear the voices all around him, speaking both in Vietnamese and English but in the confusion, he couldn’t make out more than a few words here and there. He felt the barrel of a gun in the middle of his back, nudging him to keep him moving forward as they began to walk into the jungle. Blinded by the hood over his head, Luke stumbled on the uneven terrain as the Viet Cong and their prisoners began the march towards their camp. Whenever Luke stumbled because he could not see what lay in front of him, he was roughly pulled back to his feet by the unseen hands of the men who had taken him prisoner. They walked for hours without stopping. When Luke fell again too exhausted to stand, someone grabbed the rope around his wrists and drug him across the rough uneven ground until Luke finally stumbled back to his feet.

They kept walking with no stops for the exhausted men to rest and the prisoners weren’t offered any water. Under the blazing sun all of the prisoners were soon panting for breath, their mouths parched and dry. Suddenly, Luke was jerked to a stop. From somewhere beside him, he heard a scream and then a gunshot. It was so close that for a minute, Luke thought he was the one who had been shot. He heard the sound of the bullet entering a body and then thump as the body hit the ground. The man who had been shot whimpered and cried out when he realized the bullet didn’t kill him. That was when Luke recognized the man’s voice. It was Micheal, the young eighteen year old recruit. There was so much fear evident in his voice that Luke felt his own fear paralyzing him. A second shot rang out seconds after the first one and then there was silence. A silence so heavy that Luke could hear his own heart pounding in his chest.

Then he heard Henry’s voice as he yelled at their captors to take off his blindfold. There was the sound of flesh hitting flesh and then Henry shut up. Luke felt hands shoving him from behind forcing him to start walking again. He stumbled on through the jungle, the sounds of the fighting in the distance slowly fading away until the only sound Luke heard was the ragged breathing of the men around him and the buzzing of the insects in the air.