4. The Cost of the Ridge

They lost two people on the ridge. Dung had told himself he was prepared for losses. Every commander tells themselves this. It is not true, but it is a lie that makes the work possible. Private Quoc was twenty-two. He had a photograph of his younger sister tucked inside his helmet, and he had been planning to open a mechanic's shop after his service ended. He died on the northeastern approach when an enemy position that should have been neutralized turned out not to be. It was quick. That was what Dung held onto afterward: it was quick. Corporal Viet was thirty-one. He had been in the army for nine years. He knew the risks with a clarity that younger soldiers did not, and he had chosen to stay in anyway, for reasons he kept to himself. He was hit covering the withdrawal from the ridge crest and made it back to the tree line before he stopped moving. Dr. Phuong worked on him for eleven minutes. It was not enough. When it was over, Dung sat apart for five minutes. This was his practice—not long enough to be weakness, long enough to let the weight settle into the part of him that carried these things. Then he stood up and rejoined his soldiers. Twenty-one now. Hieu had come through the eastern route with nine of his twelve—the other three were separated and moving toward the secondary extraction point, or so the last radio contact had suggested before the signal died. Dung was counting them as alive until he had reason not to. "We're three kilometers from the extraction point," Hieu reported. "Terrain is open from the ridge base down. They'll see us coming." "They've seen us all morning," Dung said. "It hasn't stopped us yet." He looked at his soldiers. Twenty-one people, various injuries, one stretcher case from the medic's count. Ammunition running lower than he liked. Maybe two hours of workable light remaining. He thought about Quoc's photograph and Viet's nine years and pushed both thoughts back. "Form up," he said. "We're not stopping on this hill." They formed up. They moved. The valley below was wide and golden in the afternoon light, and somewhere at its far end was the extraction point, and beyond that was something that resembled safety, and beyond that was everything that came after—the accounting, the letters, the weight that does not leave but can be carried. Dung walked at the front, as he always did, and did not look back.