A story. A true story. A story worth telling. A boy joins the army to do his part for Queen and country. He learns to shoot a rifle and rely on his mates and goes overseas to fight against an enemy he knows little about. Then his friends are killed and his rifle is taken from him. A man returns home, but he is not the same. He gets a job but wonders, what is the point? He has a wife at home, but he sleeps with his ghosts. He still wears a uniform but it's not the same. Nothing is the same…
***
Blaring sun reflects off of scarlet sand. Drops of sweat mix with tears. The taste of salt mixing with the coppery tang of the blood in my mouth. Ears ringing, I sit in the sand and blood trying to help as her father cradles her in his arms. “Medic!” I scream, desperate for help, “Somebody get me a f**king medic!” A man is cradling his leg, blood pouring from the stump where it had once been attached. Why is blood so bright? “Let her go,” someone said from a distance. Their voice seemed to echo, like the explosion of the IED off of the valley walls. They pull the body of the little girl from her fathers arms. I knew she was dead, killed in the explosion, like Sargeant Davies and Jacko, but I still find myself looking for signs of life in the dream-like eyes. I jump up looking for a target to shoot. Some enemy to fight. Someone to pay back for what had happened here, but there was no one in sight. Just the shattered remains of my Section. And the scarlet sands.
***
Eyes snap open. Heart pounding, I hurl the empty scotch bottle at the figure in the corner of my room. Sweat snakes down my forehead as I leap from the couch and continue the attack. I don’t make a move to wipe it from my eyes. Sergeant Davies used to say, “a distracted man is a dead man and you wanna live dontcha?” Maybe he was distracted by something that day. Distracted as he drove the Hummer over 25 kilograms of homemade explosive. They never found his legs. They disappeared with Jacko’s head and the front end of the Hummer.
***
Bits of flesh and metal were scattered across those scarlet sands. Scarlet like the blood on my hands as they pulled her body away. It wasn’t even her blood. It was Jacko’s and the Sarge’s. She didn’t have a single mark on her and yet she died. I scrubbed my hands raw when we got back but I could still feel it. A spot of blood in the middle of my palm that no amount of water could remove. The damn spot a reminder of everything that I had lost. A reminder that it was my fault. Jacko was my best friend. Quick to laugh and quicker to forgive. I carried the coffin at his funeral. I handed his mother the folded flag and pounded my Rising Sun into the head of his coffin. 'Mates til death' we used to say. His mother's screaming is interrupted by the sharp crack of the M-16 21 gun salute as we place him in the ground.
***
The smashed remnants of the mirror and the bottle of scotch cut into my knees. My own flickering face swoons in the scattered shards. But there’s no crisp uniform. No burnished badges. No admiring glances fall upon the medals on my chest. I can’t linger here, with the dread, the guilt, the memories. I swipe the splinters away, knowing it’s all just sand in the end. Slowly, the room transforms around me, the crumpled sheets and overturned chair my only cover.
“Incoming enemy fire. Troops in contact,” I scream. The sound of machine gun fire outside my window has me throwing myself to the ground and yelling the words that were burned into my memory during Afghanistan. I’m painfully aware of the lack of a rifle in my hands. I can still hear the rounds coming in but none of them are hitting my building so I chance a quick look out the window. I’ve seen men die doing just that. One second they’re looking for the shooter, the next they fall back with a bullet through the head. If they’re lucky it hits their helmet. More often than not it passes through their throat, their last words lost as they drown in their own blood. I can’t see anything from where I lay taking cover on the floor. I need to find the shooter. I slowly raise myself up onto my elbows and, gradually, I raise my head slightly over the window sill and peer out. A bird swoops down onto the sill next to my shaking hands and continues chirping its morning song. The window shatters as I slam it. The bird flies away and the firing starts again.
***
“Keep ya head on a swivel,” was what Lieutenant Covey had always demanded of me. I naively boasted about my sight back at basic training at Kapooka; never knowing what truly awaited my eyes. The glaring Afghani summer. Shimmering sands that could be easily mistaken for sniper sights. Or more tragically the reverse. Nothing prepares you for the dust and dry. Each blink felt like sandpaper on my parched pupils. The little bit of moisture that I was able to maintain often served as a beacon to Afghani flies. I remember how the stock of the Mag58 would burn my cheek as I would slowly turn around, scanning the ridge line and roads for snipers and IEDs. Late in the day it was easy to lose focus. That was when I saw her. A little girl, no older than eight, walking down the side of the road with her father. One second she was laughing and running along the side of the road, arms outstretched like she was trying to fly and the next she was thrown into the air as the vehicle behind mine exploded in a blinding flash of light. Years later I can still hear the screaming of her father as he knelt over her unmoving body. The look of hatred and grief burnt permanently into the back of my eyelids. I see it every time I close my eyes. Even as I pulled the bodies of my mates from the burning wreckage the screams of grief and fury continued, mixing with our desperate shouts for the medic.
***
I can still hear the sounds of fighting through the broken window but I can do nothing to get away from it but hug the ground with my hands clasped firmly around my head. Silk night clothes and soft sheets rub against my cheek as I lay shaking on the ground. I can hear someone at the door but I can’t move. I know I should get up so I can defend myself but my arms feel weak as I try to raise myself to my feet. Suddenly there are hands grabbing my shoulders and pulling me up. I push against the assailant with shaking hands and as they crash into the wall. I try to run for the open door. “Steve,” a quiet voice says from behind me with a whimper. I look back at the sound of my name to the women on the ground, surrounded by the shattered remains of bottles and wedding photos. The white silk night clothes are stained red as she holds them up against the gash on her cheek. As my vision slowly becomes clear, I look around the ravaged room taking in the destruction. The sounds of war have faded from my ears, replaced with the morning song of a sparrow. Sobs rack my body as I kneel beside the woman and rest my hands on her blood stained cheek, grief written on her face as she looks up at me. Oh god, what have I done? What have I done?
***
A story. A true story. A story we cannot ignore. A boy joins the army to do his part for Queen and country. He learns to shoot a rifle and rely on his mates and goes overseas to fight against an enemy he knows little about. Then his friends are killed and his rifle is taken from him. A man returns home but he is not the same. He is fighting a war that has killed more Australian soldiers than Saddam Hussein and the Taliban combined and yet goes unnoticed by society. A soldier fires a rifle for many years and returns home. Instead of peace he finds himself fighting a much more subtle war. A war he fights alone.
THE END
