The soldiers fired directly into the crowd.  The street erupted in chaos of sound: gunshots, screams and cries filled the air.  Like those around us, Yefu and I flung ourselves to the ground instinctively whirling around as we fell to present our backs to the bullets.  We buried our heads under our arms.  We could see nothing, were afraid to look up.

When the gunfire paused it was suddenly very quiet.  We lifted our heads and looked around.  Not far from us a burly young man lunged to his feet and charged the truck, like a bull that had lost its temper. "Go fuck your mother!" he bellowed, and hurled a brick at the soldiers.  They shot him.

Between Yefu and me lay an old man groaning with pain.  He had been shot in the foot.  When the shooting stopped, Yefu and I managed to carry him to the side of the road and lay him on a flatbed tricycle.  The driver knew what to do: he pedaled away quickly, heading for the nearest hospital.

We ran back to the crowd.  Everyone had risen to their feet, and the soldiers held their fire.  The people stood there in shock, watching the soldiers. 

 A young bespectacled man, probably a student, appeared to have been driven mad by what he had seen.  He stepped forward and confronted a soldier in the truck.  Tearing open his shirt and baring his chest he cried out, "Shoot me!  Shoot me here!  Let me die, let me die!" 

The crowd behind him burst into applause for his bravery.  The soldier showed no reaction at all.  

How it happened, I don't know, but I found myself stepping forward too.  I faced the soldiers and shouted, "I'm telling you!  This is not Laoshan Front!  This is not Vietnam!  This is Beijing, the Capital!  These people here, they are not Vietnamese soldiers, they are Chinese, your people!  They love life as much as you do!  Please put down your guns!  Stop this massacre!"

Behind me the crowd was very silent and still, as if holding its breath.  The soldiers seemed to be listening to me.  

I continued my plea, "We understand military orders must be obeyed.  You are only carrying out orders, doing your duty.  But think: who gave you the order?  What kind of order is it?

When you first tried to enter the people blocked your way.  They stopped you in the suburbs.  They didn't understand why you had come.  While the students fasted in the Square, the people offered you food and water.  They were willing to take responsibility for stopping you, even if it meant being punished.  The people took care of you and yet this is how you pay them back?

All we are doing now is standing here.  We aren't trying to block your trucks.  We have no weapons.  We are only trying to protest.  

Listen!  Please don't hurt the students in Tiananmen Square!  Please don't open fire..." 

Even as I spoke these last words someone pulled my legs out from under me and I fell.  Bullets whizzed over my head and struck the woman who had been standing behind me.  She screamed and collapsed to the pavement.

Yefu had saved my life.  Once an army brat, he knows the look of a soldier about to shoot.  The woman did not.  She had been shot three times: in both arms and in the stomach.  Her blouse bloomed crimson with blood.

As she was carried away the crowd faced the soldiers again, crying out, "Butchers!  Murderers!"  A hail of stones descended on the truck.  Where before the people had sought to maintain a non-violent protest, now some could not refrain from striking back. 

The truck's driver responded by pulling tothe right and driving along the line of trucks and tanks.  We were then facing the next truck in line, this one also filled with soldiers.  They kept their guns lowered.

One of them shouted into a megaphone, "Keep your distance!  Don't come any closer!"  We obeyed and the guns stayed down.

The crowd had dwindled to about one hundred people.  Many had been wounded or killed, and many had fled.  We continued following the truck as it crept toward Tiananmen Square.  We felt certain the soldiers were going to kill the students there.

As we passed the intersection of Xidan and Chang'an we saw the remains of burning barricades.  Guardrails had been wrenched from the roadside and hauled to the middle of the street.  Some had been covered with mattresses and set afire.  We saw the charred husks of a tank, a bus and some trucks which had also been burned in an attempt to block the road.

To no avail: the wreckage had been ploughed aside.  More bloodstain dotted the pavement.  Clearly many people died here.  More murders had been committed.

We looked for the bodies, but could not see beyond the feeble glow of the guttering flames.  Many of the streetlights had been shot out.  As the military convoy neared the entrance to Tiananmen most of us tried to walk in front of the trucks to block them.  

More soldiers on foot waited ahead, however, and they began firing at us.  When we drew back we found our way blocked by club-wielding police who had emerged from a station house across the street from the entrance to Zhongnanhai government compound.