Hues of orange glow in the black night while bullets flow from barrels and screams rise up like the dancing flames. Singed flesh offends nostrils and haunts thoughts while women and children scatter—they close questioning eyes and hold inadequate tongues.

 Floods of memory rise into still, safe darkness where soldiers never stop fighting within themselves. But two of many veterans of the Viet Nam War have decided to fight back against their restless minds with the passion that bore them into this world and the zeal that plunged young bodies into vast jungles and thick rivers. Two have let rising waters spill onto pages, instead.

 Charlie Bryant, of Daphne, served in the U.S. Air Force from 1956-77, mostly as an avionics repairman; he spent 1967-68 in Viet Nam. Bryant has written a fictionalized version of his experience, along with many poems that hash out the harmful images.

 His fictionalized short story set the stage for memories he'd share.

 “No one would admit, even to themselves, that we had enlisted because we were persuaded by a lifetime of playing soldier (always on the winning side) and recruitment propaganda….We had built an image of the enemy in our minds as a race of brutish, subhuman, psychopathic killers who tortured their own people to force young villagers into their army….What we didn't fantasize about—what we ignored—was the horrible, disfiguring, disabling physical injuries that most casualties suffer, as well as the mental wounds that never heal but keep surfacing time after time until you just go mad.”

 He described more of those images from the realities of his experience.

 Bryant awoke in the wee hours of Jan. 31, 1968 to rocket fire—the Tet Offensive where the People's Army of Viet Nam fought against South Viet Nam and the United States starting on new year and holiday Tet Nguyen Dan.

 During the first rounds, he and fellow soldiers hid behind sand-bag bunkers in a ditch behind their barracks, he said. He remembered the C-130 gunships with mounted guns that had “a water hose effect, just swept everything.”

 The gorilla soldiers had chosen to attack that area, he explained, because of the aircraft parked near them.

 “They were scared of those planes and didn't want them to get off the ground,” he said with resolve.

 During the Tet Offensive, the Air Force launched a couple 837 planes that he worked on, Bryant said. He divulged that, contrary to popular belief, the army was not the only group to launch during that battle.

 “After that, the war stayed pretty hot for us,” he said.

 A portion of his free-verse poem, “Devolution”, describes the  frightful landscape:

“…Suddenly the treetops appeared to break free

 of the confining forest and float up

The ominously familiar sound of helicopter rotor blades broke my reverie.

 As I watched, the treetops floated closer

assuming the more familiar shape of great Chinook helicopters,

 each carrying the twisted, broken remains of a gunship or a slick

or Kiowa slung beneath.

As they passed overhead en-route to some distant helicopter graveyard,

 each represented the destruction of some other alluvial valley—

some other farmer's rice paddies or coffee plantation or rubber plantation.

 The only consequence of war is another war and the destruction of another

culture. I turned to look back at the valley.

    The beauty was gone.”

 Bryant is not alone in his memories, nor his method for helping them make sense.

 Gulf Shores resident and Ret. U.S. Army CW4 Pete Brice is writing his memoir to explain his birth and childhood, Korean and Viet Nam war experiences, all the way through his retirement to the Alabama Gulf Coast.

 He introduces readers to the personality required to stand war brushes with death during the first few lines of his memoir:

 “This whole thing got off and running on a cold, wet, icy March 20, 1934 from bits and pieces of information. I understand it wasn't easy to get from where my parents lived, to the hospital, in Birmingham, Alabama. Perhaps that was an omen of things to come. I was probably born, kicking and screaming already wanting to do it my way—being the third of three sons with no two alike, be it demeanor, behavior or personality.”

 Brice went on to explain a chilling tale from the Mekong River and that continues to challenge even such a strong spirit. He served as Master's Mate on a Y100 tanker that carried fuel to outlying areas.

 “The tanker went down in Mekong to 9th Infantry,” he spoke with a distant look in his eyes. “We wouldn't move vessels till we'd refilled the tanks with water because it's just like the gas tank in car—fumes come out even when it's empty; I  filled that empty tank with river water so there wouldn't be as many fumes in it, then I went to the next commitment.”

 “We took two rounds in that empty tank. If we hadn't taken the time to fill that empty tank, I wouldn't be sitting here. It was routine to fill empty tanks with water to try to evade issues. Well, you come under fire that was routine, but you try to evade any serious accidents.”

 Both men have used their pens to to ward off skirmishes left by the sword. While facing a variety of unpleasant circumstances, Brice and Bryant said that enemies sometimes came in the form of fellow Americans.

 “It was after my second tour when the uprisings were in the airports in the west coast,” he said.  “We were given extra money to wear civilian clothes instead of uniforms.”

 He said that blue jeans and T-shirts can't hide the poise and precision of years of military training.

 “You can still tell, no matter what they're wearing, by the way they (soldiers) walk and so on,” he said. “There were some undesirable episodes in West Coast airports and I saw some of the undesirable events occurring.”

 “I saw some… shoving military that were in uniform and being verbally abusive. It made the rest of us that weren't in uniform want to knock their heads off. We felt like telling them, 'You go over there and come back.'”

 Bryant also felt the sting of disrespect.

 He said that he was in Washington D.C. During the 1968 presidential election and that he was among soldiers chosen to drive in the inaugural parade. As convertibles lined Pennsylvania Avenue, himself, a marine and a military aide halted during the procession.

 He said a large man came out of the crowd to curse and spit on them. Bryant and the marine started to run after him, but the military aide had them stand down.

 Constant physical danger combined with an array of emotional turmoil, seem to create a mental environment only fellow soldiers can understand and one that only writing can ease. While outsiders often forget, the nature of military service and the sacrifice of individual thought for the greater good appears to be another tax on already troubled brows.

 Brice explained the difference between his actions and his beliefs.

 “During the tours I made in Vietnam, the first tour, I said we're doing something worthwhile—there's a reason for us to be over here,” he spoke with sincerity. “The second two times, I thought what in the world are we doing here?”

 “We're wasting lives, we're wasting money. The Vietnamese were unorganized, untrained. Many were shot in the back. I had a similar feeling about Iraq and Afghanistan. They were fighting long before this country was a country and will still be fighting long after we pull out.”

 Brice said that protestors might not have understood soldier's positions.

 “I support the troops, I don't support the war,” he said. “You'll find a bigger percentage felt like that.”