Seven Steps to Hell

I was walking around town early in the morning the other day looking for breakfast, when a man stumbled out of Hal's Tavern, which apparently is open at 6 AM (?). He was wearing an army hat with a patch which said "Seven Steps to Hell". I learned that he was stationed in Hue after the Tet offensive as part of the effort to retake the city from the North Vietnamese.

I've only read about how hellish the all-out urban battle was- this man lived all 25 days of it. The once grand imperial city was virtually destroyed during that month, as shells rained on the old citadel, and intense, unprecedented house-to-house warfare made every building a potential target. As in the case of Fallujah in Iraq, Hue had to be destroyed in order to save it.

The man told me of the disorganization, the constant firefights, and the ineptitude of the commanding officers. He said they lost officers on an almost daily basis. Sometimes two a day. Nobody had a clue what they were doing and men were dying everywhere, adding to the confusion. You get a sense of the mess in Full Metal Jacket. The last third of the movie when they are searching for the sniper- that was Hue.

I asked what Seven Steps to Hell meant. He said that since the fighting was so heavy and the bodycount so high, once you were dropped off at the landing zone in Hue, you took no more than seven steps before being thrust headlong into hell.

I've since learned it means something altogether different, but if he believes it, I'll let that one lie.