Jake Cazalet was twenty-six years old when it happened, the incident that was to have such a profound effect on the rest of his life.

His family were Boston Brahmins, well respected, his mother hugely wealthy, his father a successful attorney and senator, which meant that the law seemed the natural way to go for young jake. Harvard and the privileged life, and as a college student, it was possible to avoid the draft and Vietnam seemed far away.

And jake did well, a brilliant student who got an excellent degree and moved on to Harvard Law School with enormous success. A great future was predicted, he started on a doctorate, and then a strange thing happened.

For some time, he had been disturbed by the scenes from Vietnam, the way he saw that brutal war portrayed on television each night. Sometimes it seemed like a vision from hell. A sea-change took place has he contrasted his comfortable life with what life seemed like over there. The ironic thing was that he could actually get by in Vietnam because at the age of thirteen, he had lived in Vietnam when his father had spent a year at the US embassy.

And then came the day in the cafeteria at College. People were lining up for the lunch counter, lots of new students, and amongst then one who was no more than twenty, dressed in white T-shirt and jeans like anyone else, books under one arm, the difference being that where his right arm had been there was now only a small stump. Most people ignored him, but one guy, a swaggering bully whose last name was Kimberley, turned to look at him.

'Hey, What’s your name?'

'Teddy Grant.'

'You lose that over there in Nam?'

'That’s about the size of it.'

'Serves you right.' Kimberley patted his face. 'How many kids did you butcher?'

It was the pain on Grant's face that got to Cazalet and he pulled Kimberley away. 'This man served his country.

What have you ever done?'

'So what about you, rich boy?' Kimberley sneered. 'I don’t see you over there. Only over here.' He turned and patted Grants face again. 'If I come in anywhere, you step out.'

Jake Cazalet's only sport was boxing and he was on the team. Kimberley had twenty pounds on him, but it didn’t matter. Spurred on by rage and deep shame, he gave Kimberley ley combination punch in the stomach that doubled him over. A boxing club he went to in downtown Boston was run by an old Englishman called Wally Short.

'If you’re ever in a real punch-up, here’s a useful extra.

In England, they call it nutting somebody. Over here it’s head-butting. So, use your skull, nine inches of movement, nice and short, right into his forehead.'

Which was exactly what Cazalet did as Kimberley came up to grapple with him, and the big man went crashing back over a table. Pandemonium followed, girls screaming and then security arrived and the paramedics.

Cazalet felt good, Better than he had in years. As he turned, Grant said, 'You damn fool, you don’t even know me.'

'Oh, yes, I do,' Jake Cazalet said.

Later,in the dean's office, he stood at the seat and listened to the lecture. The dean said, 'I've heard the fact and it would seem that Kimberley was out of line. However, I can’t tolerate violence, not on campus. I'll have to suspend you for a month.'

'Thank you,sir,but I'll make it easy for you. I’m dropping out.'

The dean was truly shocked. 'Dropping out? But why?

What will your father say? I mean, what are you going to do?'

I’m going right down to the recruiting office downtown and I’m going to join the army.'

The dean looked devastated. 'Jake, think about this, I beg you.'

'Goodbye, sir,' Jake Cazalet told him and went out.

So here he was eighteen years later, a lieutenant in special forces by way of the paratroops, his knowledge of Vietnamese had seen to that and half way through his second tour, decorated, twice wounded, a combat veteran who felt about a thousand years old.

The helicopter drifted across the delta at a thousands feet. Cazalet had hitched a lift because he was told that it was a fortified camp at Katum and they needed him there to interrogate a high-ranking Vietnamese regular officer.

Cazalat wa only five feet six or seven, with the kind of hair that had red highlights. His eyes were brown, his broken nose a legacy of his boxing days and, in spite of the of the tan, the bayonet scar that bisected his right cheek was white. It was to become his trademark for years ahead.

Sitting there now in his camouflaged uniform, sleeves rolled up, the special forces beret tilted forward, he looked like what war had made him, a thoroughly dangerous man. The young medic *** air gunner, Harvey, and Hedley, the black crew chief, watched him and approved.

'He’s been everywhere or so they say,' Hedley whispered, 'Paratroops, Airborne Rangers and now special forces. He’s old mans a senator.'

'Well excuse me,' Harvey said. 'So what do you get for the man who has everything?' He turned to toss his cigarette out of the door and stiffened. 'Hey, what gives down there?'

Hedley glanced out, then reached for the heavy machinegun. 'We go trouble, right here in River city, Lieutenant.'

Cazalet joined him. There were paddy fields below and banks of reeds stretching in to infinity. A cart was blocking the the causeway that crossed the area and what passed for a local bus had stopped, unable to continue.

Harvey peered over his shoulder. 'Look, sir, it’s pajamas night at the Ritz again.'

There were Viet Cong down there, at least twenty, in their conical straw hats and black pajamas. A man got out of the bus, there was the distinctive crack of an AK47 and he fell. Two or three women emerged and ran, screaming, until the rifle fire cut them down.

Cazalet went to the pilot and leaned over. 'Take is down and I will drop out and see what I can do.'

'You must be crazy,' the pilot said.

'Just do it. Go down, drop me off and then get the hell outta here and fetch the cavalry, just like good old John Wayne.'

He turned, found himself an M16 and several pouches of magazines and slung them around his neck. He clipped half a dozen grenades to his belt and stuck some signalling flares in the pocket of his camouflage jacket. They where going down fast and the VC were shooting at them, Hedley returning the fire with the heavy machine-gun.

He turned, grinning, 'You got a death wish or something?'

Cazalet said, and as the helicopter hovered just above the ground, he jumped.

There was a call, 'wait for me.' When he turned, Harvey was following him, his medical bag over one shoulder.

'Crazy man,' Cazalet said.

'Aren’t we all?' Harvey replied, and they ran through the paddy field to the causeway, as the helicopter lifted and turned away.

There were more bodies now and the bus was under heavy rifle fire, windows shattering. Screams came from inside, and then several more women emerged, two of them running for the reeds the three Viet cong appeared on the road further along, rifles ready.

Cazalet raised his gun and fired several short burst, knocking two of them down. There was silence for a moment and Harvey knelt beside one of the women and tried for a pulse.

'She’s has it, for a start,' he said, turning to Cazalet, and then his eyes widened. 'Behind you.'

In the same moment, a bullet took Harvey in the heart, lifting him on his back. Cazalet swung, shooting from the hip of the two VC who had emerged on the cause way behind him. He caught one and the other slipped back into the reeds. Now, there was only silence.

NEXT EPISODE TOMORROW.

There were five people left alive in the bus, three Vietnamese women, an old man traviling to the next village, and a dark-haired, pretty young women who looked badly frightened. She wore a khaki shirt and pants and the shirt was stained with blood, someone else’s, not hers.

She’d been speaking in French to the old man earlier, and now he turned to her as a single bullet hit the fuel tank of the bus and flame erupted.

'Not good to stay here, we must hide in the reeds.' He repeated the same message in Vietnamese to the women.

They shouted something back at him and he shrugged and said to the young woman. 'They are afraid. You come with me now.'

She responded instantly to the urgency in his voice, sliding out of the door after him, crouching, then starting to move. A bullet took him in the back and she ran for her life down the side of the causeway and plunged into the great banks of reeds. Cazalet, who was in their shelter a little further along the causeway, saw her go.

The forced her way through the water and mud, pushing the reeds aside, ploughing straight out into a dark pool to find two Viet Cong confronting her on the other side, AKs at the ready. Barely fifteen yards away, she could see every feature of the young faces: mere boys, not much more.

They raised their weapons, she braced herself for death, and then there was a terrible cry and cazalet erupted from the reeds on her left, firing from the hip, blasting both soldiers into the water.

Voices called nearby and he said, 'No talking.' He stepped back into the reeds(tall grass) and she followed.

They seemed to move several hundred yards before he said, 'this will do.' They were on the edge of the paddy fields, protected by a final curtain of reeds. A small knoll rose above the water. He pulled her down beside him.

'That’s a lot of blood. Where are you hit?'

'It’s not mine. I was trying to help the woman sitting next to me.'

'You’re french.'

'That’s right. Jacqueline de Brissac(in french),' she said.

'Jake Cazalet, and I wish I could say it was a pleasure to meet you,' he replied in French.

'That’s good,' 'You didn’t learn that at school.'

'No, a year in Paris when I was sixteen. My dad was.' He grinned. ‘ I learned all my languages that way. He moved around a lot.'

Her was spotted with mud, hair tangled as she tried to straighten it. 'I must look a mess,' she said, and smiled.

Jake Cazalet fell instantly and gloriously in love. What it was the French called it: the thunderclap? It was everything he’d ever heard. What the poets wrote about.

'Have we had it?' she said, aware of voices calling nearby.

'No, the Medevac helicopter I was going to Katum In has gone to calm the cavalry. If we keep our heads down, the we stand a good chance.'

'But that’s strange, I’ve just been to Katum,' she said.

'Good God, what for? That really is the war zone.'

She was silent for a moment. 'I was searching for my husband.'

NEXT EPISODE TOMORROW