and mike tells you that this guys eyes would get all red while he was telling them about whacking guys with shovels and how the viet cong or whoever would play these long speeches at night over speakers while the flares would shoot up and light up the rice paddies or whatever in this eerie glowing shadowy bright light and you would see the viet cong or whoever coming over the dikes shooting their aks with the tracers from the machine guns flying out over their heads and the mortars going whump and the spads [ 45 ] coming in off the carriers and lighting up the whole treeline with napalm white , white , white in the night .