I have a small green, standard issue government notebook, marked "Memorandum" on the front. It is bound at the top not the side. On one of the pages there is the terse entry, "pipeline fire", followed by a map coordinate. Whenever I stop and think about it I see, in my mind’s eye, a tall, narrow plume of yellow fire. In my memory I see it rising 100 feet into the air like a spume of water, just hot and yellow rather than white and cool. I see myself stopped on the main road in my Military Police jeep. I had been driving alone. I don’t remember if I was on my way back to the battalion compound or if I was on a mission going somewhere else. I saw the plume of fire and I stopped. Where I am sitting in my jeep, the entrance road to the village joins the main road at a right angle. It is about 100 meters from the main road to the village. There are rice paddies on either side of the raised path.  The pipeline runs parallel to the main road. It is just a few feet from the fence around the village. I see thatched roof huts and palm trees and I smell the pungent odor of nuóc mam. Later, I theorized that the villagers had found a way to tap into the pipeline to draw out some of its contents to use for themselves. We often have that problem with villagers. We have brought so much to their poor land and they see no reason not to take some of it. We are rich and they are poor. We run a war with it, they use it to sustain themselves. I wonder what freakish accident or unknowing mistake ignited the fuel. No matter now as I run from my jeep down the path to the village. I had used the radio mounted in my jeep to call for an ambulance and for pipeline personnel to shut off the flow of fuel. Now I am going to see if there is anything else I can do. As I approach the village I see a young child. She is burned. I don’t know how seriously, but I scoop her up, cradle her in my arms and turn and run back toward the main road. I try to run so she doesn’t jostle and so I don’t worsen the patches of burned, peeled flesh. I want to hold her tightly to my chest but I am afraid it will hurt her. She doesn’t make a sound. She is 4 or 5 years old, or that is what it seems. Vietnamese children are often much smaller than our children at the same ages. I get to the road and an ambulance is already there. I gently pass her to a medic. She disappears into the ambulance. I never see her again. She remains only a memory to this day. I have not forgotten.