In the end, we had five days. Perhaps the Viet Cong overlooked our little medical outpost out in the remote jungle, or they just had higher-priority targets further South as they stormed toward Saigon. But for five days, all we saw of them were the orange glow of artillery strikes out on the horizon. Command had abandoned us, and radio communication had become sporadic at best, while Hanoi Hannah's propaganda came through clearer than anything else.

Working flat-out, those five days were just enough time to equip every man on the base with their own áo dài and a pair of breasts to fill it with. The dress hid a multitude of sins - in the rush, the hasty grafts and implants weren't always the most elegant work. Some made damn ugly women, there's no denying that, and a few left the medical tents half-finished, dipping into the jungle with duct tape holding their surgical wounds closed and their manhoods tucked between their legs. But it was done.

Well, almost. I was one of the last remaining, determined to stay to shred and burn the last of the records. The thought of what they might do with our commandos if they uncovered them urged me on. The high-ranking surgeons and doctors had long gone and in the almost empty base, four junior members approached me. I was furious. I'd feminized them myself two days ago, yet here they still were.

"What the hell are you still doing here?! Get going!" I barked, waving a handful of shredded paper. "Do you realize what they'll do to you if they find you here? You want to be caught looking like that?" I shook my head, wishing now I hadn't done so good a job on them.

"We're not leaving without you, sir," said Franklin, a junior nurse. "Never leave a man behind."

"Women and children first," I shot back.

"Good job we're not women then, isn't it? And I'll pretend I didn't hear that," said Steven "Stretch" MacArthur, cracking a weak smile. He'd been one of our orderlies, accustomed to pinning wounded patients down on stretchers with his brawny arms - arms that were now rail-thin. "You're coming with us. That's final, so get on the bed.

I gawked. "You're not serious. I wouldn't trust you boys with a spoon, let alone a scalpel."

"You know the procedure. You've helped the surgeons with it hundreds of times," said Franklin, pulling a surgical gown over his feminine grame. "You can run us through it. We'll keep you on minimal sedation."

I knew there was no point arguing.

The next few hours -however hazy- are what I will always remember first from my time in 'Nam. As I drifted in and out of consciousness, each time I awoke to find a new body part altered, grafts clinging to my body. I directed them as best as I could in what turned out to be the first medical self-feminization. My chest bloated. My hips burned as the pelvic bone was forced wider. Blood loss and shock took its toll. The periods of blackout grew longer. And once they peeled the lower half of my face upwards to begin shaving the underlying jaw, directing them became so much harder without lips.

"Nughhh muhhh suhluhcone," I slurred up at that desperately.

"What was that?"

"I think he said 'use more silicone'," said 'Stretch', jabbing another syringe of US Military-Grade Silico-Gel into my already overinflated breast. The rest of my face was peeled up over my eyes, and I slipped into black unconsciousness.