Editor’s note: This was sent to me via email by a reader who wishes to remain anonymous, in response to Sunday’s post, Back in One Piece. He said to me by way of introduction, “It started out as therapy writing. Putting it into a dream… there are others of us out here like your friend… it’s been twenty years, I still dream about this and other things. There isn’t a recovery really but, an acceptance of responsibility, then coping… maybe one day forgiveness…” And in a second email, “I forgot to add, we buried those bodies…the bone broke when we moved him…a dramatized version of a real event.” — amanda
“Dude!! Dude!! C’mon.” Tim looked around.
“What?? Who’s that?”
“Tim, let’s go dude… get down from there, time to find some trophies!” Tim took in his surroundings. Yeah, the cease fire, the prisoners, we had won but, we were just fighting??? “You alright man?” Cosmo asked. Tim looked around confused, the sun beating down on the back of his neck. He slowly got down from the turret.
“Cosmo, where are we?” Cosmo turned and gave Tim a look that said, “You’re joking, right?”
“Did you fall asleep dude?”
Tim looked around again,“No, no man. I must have been thinking about something else.”
“Over here Sgt. K, I found something!” One of the men shouted. Tim began to walk toward the bombed-out tank. The gun turret lay 30 yards away upside down; something inside the tank was still on fire. Tim walked around the edge of the ripped apart tank… bodies. The men of his squad stood around two bodies. Arms and legs drawn up, one was on his back the other looked as if he was crawling away. They were human as far as Tim could tell, but even that was a guess. Blackened, mouths open, lips pulled back as if in a final scream, the clothes completely burnt away. The one on his back was the worst. It looked as if the flesh had burnt away from his stomach leaving the exposed intestines cooked into place. Tim thought how much he looked like a bug in one of those glass cases; all he needed was a needle through the middle with a little flag that said ‘Homo Sapiens’.
Like a shovel to the face, the smell of the days-old bodies hit Tim full force and gripped him around the throat and began to tighten its grip ever so slowly. The burnt hair and flesh mixing into a sickly sweet and pungent odor that was almost alien but, in a strange way, familiar. Tim knew he’d never forget the sight… or the smell.
“Alright, start looking for anything that’s not completely destroyed for the 1st AD museum,” some roughneck full bird said. Tim looked around; his friends began to tug at the bodies.
“What are you guys doing?” Tim’s stomach started to churn. Sgt. Mark grabbed the nearest arm and gave it a yank, the cooked bone snapped like a chicken wing and the flesh pulled away leaving some dangling skin.
“Come on Tim, have some to take home and show your kid!” Tim grabbed his stomach, still looking at the mangled arm.
“You can’t… you can’t do that! Hey man… Stop, stop.” The first swing missed entirely. The second swing hit pay dirt.
“You sick son of a bitch I said STOP!” Tim swung wildly; once, twice, three times right in the face… his knuckles beginning to bleed once again from hitting the concrete building. One couple across the street stood and watched.
“What’s wrong with him?” the girl asked her male friend.
“Ah, probably just some wino coming down, he’ll get another bottle soon enough and be back to his old crazy self. Come on, we’re going to be late.”
Tim slowly realized he wasn’t in Iraq anymore. He saw the couple across the street. He was home, if you could call it that. He watched the couple stare at him for a minute before returning to their walk down the opposite side of the street. He checked his bloodied knuckles; only the middle right one seemed to be bleeding very badly. He wiped the blood on his pant leg and then sat on his hand to put some pressure on it to stop the bleeding. He sat there in the shadows, not too many people out tonight; then came the crying. He didn’t even try to hide it anymore.
He was never sure why he cried but, he did, frequently. He supposed he cried for himself and for the dead but, a part of him cried for the living. From his view the living seemed to be deader than anyone. They trampled over each other to get on a bus or an elevator. They had no real concern for anyone but themselves. Zombies were Tim’s favorite term for them but sometimes they looked more like cattle, being herded from one pen to the next by an unseen hand. They went along one behind the other, like that game he used to play… Lemmings he thought it was called. All of these little people following each other around no matter where they went, even if you sent the little suckers over a cliff. Blip, blip, blip, blip… not one of them smart enough to see the one in front of him fall.
Then there were the guys like him, the ones who could see the unseen hand directing the dumb bastards to their doom. Labeled as crazy, suffers from PTSD, lazy and doesn’t care about life. The VA telling him,
“We can’t find anything wrong so, it must just be in your head.”
Yeah, it was in his head alright and his joints and his guts and liver and bones. The crying was easing up. He wiped his eyes on his dirty jacket arm. He thought he might be able to sleep again for another hour or two before he was forced to move. Maybe a walk through the park and a quick wash in the fountain before the kids and the parents came out to play.
He rechecked his knuckle, adjusted himself and leaned his head against the hard brick wall. “No more dreams tonight dude, no more dreams. Just some sleep…” He muttered to himself as he drifted into a fitful sleep.
I respect the impulse to serve — one’s country, one’s fellow citizens, one’s ideals.
The problem is when this impulse is directed (by our culture) toward being fodder for the battle to fill the coffers of arms manufacturers, construction contractors, mercenaries, politicians, and the like.
As long as people are willing to go to war, war will continue. As long as we think war will solve things, war will continue. As long as we fear that we aren’t/don’t have enough and that it’s because of “others”, war will continue. And as long as war continues, we’ll have stories like these.
I wish peace for this writer. I can’t imagine being tormented like this.
I don’t know if he has access to LENS (low energy neurofeedback system) therapy; I’ve heard that it can help some people with PTSD and other brain dysfunctions. Some LENS practitioners have worked with the VA in the past few years, but I don’t know the status of that work and what may be available.
So strange I’d have something in common with this young man, but I’ve been feeling it too now, for years, so many of us asleep and uncaring. In his words:
“From his view the living seemed to be deader than anyone. They trampled over each other to get on a bus or an elevator. They had no real concern for anyone but themselves. Zombies were Tim’s favorite term for them but sometimes they looked more like cattle, being herded from one pen to the next by an unseen hand. They went along one behind the other, like that game he used to play… Lemmings he thought it was called. All of these little people following each other around no matter where they went, even if you sent the little suckers over a cliff. Blip, blip, blip, blip… not one of them smart enough to see the one in front of him fall.”
How did we learn to be this way? How has it come to this? So few seem to actually think anymore. I know I feel like I’m looked at as some kind of a product by this American life. A consumer, not a person. A noun: one who consumes. A verb: my single purpose to consume, rather than be. Is it part of being marketed to death, propagandized to death, uneducated to death, dehumanized to death? And those sent to fight Madison Avenue’s war, Wall Street’s war, K Street’s war for nothing more than stuff? How will our service people walk away from all this? Will they come home hating the rest of us who are being taught to consider that they are only products too? Products sent out to fight for our ‘right’ to consume? I wonder how they can think their sacrifice is worth it. As a consumer, I don’t think their sacrifice is worth it. My ‘right’ to consume is not worth one single life. Is there any other way to look at it? I can’t think of any. From pictures of my son and fellow service members I know they give their all for love of each other. For love of each other. But any bigger purpose continues to be beyond my imagination.
To waste; squander. To destroy totally. Consumed with cancer. Consumed by fire. To absorb; engross: consumed with jealousy. To be destroyed, expended, or wasted. These alternate definitions all have something to say about how we are being used.
My son is a soldier. I think his service and the service of his fellow service members has been misused by our government. He has not been consumed to the degree of the young man in this story. But he may well be by the time his service is up. If I am lucky there will be something of my boy left in him by that time. But how many parents and loved ones will not, have not been so lucky?
Eric,
Thank you for mentioning that. Keeping that connection in mind all the time is difficult when we are constantly bombarded with stimulus designed to prevent the connection from being made or maintained. Thank you for being one of the few who are not vulnerable to “mind tricks”. You have pulled me back into consciousness more than once and i’m grateful.
We put people through this at the same time we create a “controversy” over a pop singer’s clothed breasts when she’s running around with a naked puppet. The two are related — they are part of the same values system.
How is it possible that we put people through this?
To the person who wrote this: thank you.
Amanda,
Perhaps it would be better if you asked Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
i said no. i lost my home and my education, but i said no.
you bet fe & len — i’ve shared the link with him.
these are voices people generally don’t want t hear.
and len — just which point do you mean?
Thank you, Amanda. Please thank your contributor as well. Such things are made to happen although one must say “no” before a certain point is reached.
Thank you for posting this piece, Amanda. A reminder that the work we do here at PW as psychic shelter, confessional, and shelter against the battering storms of the world is timely and important.
Whoever wrote this piece, thank you so much for sharing and for bringing us into your world.