The squad set up on a plateau, about half, way up in foot hills. It overlooked a large clearing with a wooded tree line to right. The clearing between the position and the tree line was narrow and fanned out to the right.
The Staff Sergeant, myself, and two others, chose to the dig in a large, but old, fox hole fighting position. Time had filled the hole in and washed away the old parapet. While we worked, digging the hole out, I wondered who the former tenants had been. The country was very old and was marked by many battles from long before.
The NCOIC, the Staff Sergeant, shouted “I’m done, I’ve had it.” He threw down his e-tool and began to rant about how the Army had screwed him over. He had been passed over for promotion the past two times. He resented how he had been treated after all that he had done for the Army and he was being held back because he couldn’t read. He had been a troubled youth from New Jersey and had moved back and forth from homes and reformatories.
He was going to show them, they weren’t going to cheat him out out of his retirement. All he had to do was re-up one more time, and change his MOS, and he could coast out the rest of his time as a fat old Motor Sergeant in the States. He threw down his steel pot, and helmet liner, and stormed off, stomping, and kicking at imaginary obstacles.
The rest of the day was spent filling sand bags and moving dead falls to reinforce our fighting hole. The finishing touches were put on the kill zone; trip flares and booby trips in the tree line, and claymores around the AO. The heat of the day had been harsh and the night would bring some relief from the heat. The night would also bring with it the mosquitos and unknown terror.
This is an ambush, there is no smoking, or talking. Sitting in the dark, moonless night, anxiety began to set in. Something more than butter flies in the pit of the stomach, more like some thing fighting to get out. The darkness of the night taking on it’s own life; did that shadow just move, or was it a trick of tired, blood shot eyes? Each sound becomes the step of someone in the forest, the rustle of tree branches, the noise of insects,with the whisper of the wind, voices.
Just as fatigue was about to take over, and much needed sleep began to set in, a trip flare went off in the tree line, followed by the explosion of a booby trap. Red tracer rounds flew into the tree line as green tracers made their reply. Ariel flares lit the kill zone with an unnatural light, creating a surrealistic scene, of dancing shadows, and human silhouettes across the field.
The gnawing sensation in the gut, and the fatigue departed. The senses became sharp and the weeks of combat training took over. The higher self somehow separated from the lower corporeal self and stood aback as an impartial, uninterested observer, looking down in vague recognition at the man firing short controlled bursts at the silhouettes emerging from the tree line.
An explosion went off near the fox hole, with a blinding flash, and a deafening crash.The vaguely familiar man, laying back in the fox hole, is regaining his night vision. He holds up his left hand to inspect the the skin and flesh hanging from it. Looking past the hand, standing outside of the hole, bare headed and without a flack jacket is the Staff Sergeant.
The man that had sounded so much like a disgruntled Teamster, and had went away swearing not to lift a finger, had gone insane. He stood with both feet planted in the ground, firing his weapon from the hip,swinging it wildly from side to side. Above the noise of battle he could be heard yelling, “Die you mother fuckers, die”, and then, “I will kill you mother fuckers, I’ll kill ya.”
The Staff Sergeant had ran off again, swearing, and talking out of his head, as artillery began to work the kill zone, and explode in the forest. The higher, disembodied self looked at the bleeding hand, making an objective, and impersonal, assessment, while the corporeal, self bandaged it.
The explosions, and small weapons fire began to subside. The enemy force had been a small one and were gone as quickly as they had came. Random shouts and machine gun bursts began to to fade and the night began to take over once more. The spirit world rejoined with the physical and the gnawing in the gut returned,waiting, in anticipation of the morning.
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An incredibly powerful piece of writing that packs its intended punch. The explosive atmosphere coupled with the explosive emotions of Staff Sergeant are expertly woven together. The vivid descriptions draw the reader right in to experience each moment, each sensory overload, right alongside you. And the analogy of the spirit departing from the material world and rejoining again was sheer brilliance. Great job.