When Heroes Cry

As a private contractor of a different nationality hired to compliment a small military force performing unique operations, I witnessed and experienced the harsh and cruel realities of a hidden conflict. Some of the atrocities are fleeting, others are somewhat more lingering. The extended torment that I speak of is that soldiers must survive or live in unimaginable conditions. I imagine that if your life what threatened daily by incoming mortar rounds or RPGs or an accurate shot by a sniper, and the soldiers live there.

Then, my thoughts wandered to the criminals that are housed in the confines of a prison walls back home. The prisoners may say that life in prison is rough, but I don’t think it can even compare or come close.

Then I wondered why don’t they make criminals come out here and fight for their country like these soldiers are.

I soon realized that combat is for the finest of men, best of the best, the truly brave. Why? Because in battle, you must know when to pull the trigger and when to stop. And maintain your personal integrity for as long as you possibly can if you’re captured.

This I know because no convict will have the guts to be a real soldier.

My boss who was not American, of course, knew more about America and American culture than anybody I knew, including myself. He had a special extensive knowledge about the US military. He knew of its strength and its weaknesses and its history. Practically all of it. Of course the strength of the US military lies in its technological forte and its production capabilities. And he said that its weakness was not in the military itself, but the society in which it lives.

One of his favorite stories was when America’s first ever special operations missions ended in the capture of all the US men simply because the US navy refused to go pick them up.

He also used to say to us there are some sort of corruption in every type of government.

There are those who suffer from megalomania who literally hamper progress. It’s bad enough that people have to fight corruption but it really demoralizes one’s soul when you have to fight each other. So, during training he taught us to help each other and one of the ways  he did this was by instilling us with respect for the enemy who are in uniform. They train as hard as I do, and maybe even more, because they have to do with less than what I have. Even today I carry more of my respect for my enemies than for half the people I’ve worked for or with.

I guess it’s easier to fight an enemy who is clearly visible then to have to fight one of you own.

It was a beautiful day. We were heading up river to go check out a village in a 32-foot outboard hot rod of a boat. The water was calm and the skipper was taking it easy, just trotting along. I was relaxing on the starboard side, my feet up, and my right hand dangling in the water. I couldn’t help but to think about the movie with Marlin Brando and Mr. Sheen. I reached over and scooped up some water with both of my hands and splashed it at my face. It felt good.

Then all of a sudden, just after a bend in the river, the skipper stops the boat and picked up his binoculars. He looked at something like a trio of brown beach balls. He sets his “eyes” down on a chair and gun the engine towards the three brown balls floating in the river. In no time we reached the brown balls and I realized the balls were once humans. The bodies bloated up like balloons because of the gases the bacteria had produced and the skin got tanned from being out in the sun. The three were obviously hanged. They ropes were still around their necks.

It was not only one of the most gruesome sights I’ve ever seen but I also realized then that my face, hair, and hands were still wet from the water.

One day, we were helping out the regulars with a Hotel-Kilo patrol mission. We used to call it “ill will patrol”.

We received coordinance over the radio to go visit a five boat fishing village near a mountain about two, three hours from where we were.

They said the satellite indicated unknown activity in the area.

We got there a little after noon. The village was still smoldering. The village was DOA, it seemed. We secured the perimeter and looked for survivors. We found one. She was barely breathing and she was in bad shape.

Our boss arrived on the scene, he flew in. The satellite image was disturbing enough to raise concerns. He came over to see for himself.

We couldn’t find a vein. Our boss hit it the first time. He said she’s not going to make it. He gave her five milligrams morphine over two minutes. Told us not to give her IV bolus, she’ll bleed to death too soon. He then turned to the interpreter to ask her who did this. She managed to tell us, bandits, several of them with dogs. Young guys from some place else, she said. They killed everyone – and she started to scream about her baby. They took the baby and fed it to their dogs. When the interpreter told us this, my boss looked at me. I nodded and turned to the sergeant. I knew what he was going to do next. To find any evidence we can catalog. As the sergeant got up to turn around, I heard one of the guys throw up and gag. He found the baby, at least parts of him.

My boss who was a surgeon and a kernel of a combat battalion, told me not to file a report. He said that he was personally going to take care of this one.

The woman died just before the chopper landed, we were told.

She about five feet tall, between 80 and 90 pounds, she was in her early twenties, dark hair and eyes, and she did have a baby. That’s about we knew of her. We didn’t even know her name.

The sales pitch wasn’t exactly a sales pitch. It was more like a story that needed to be told only to a certain type of people. I guess it was for people like me.

The story was comprehensive and thorough. Detailed and complete.

He told me what was happening, where it was happening, how it was happening, who were doing it, and why.

And I didn’t like the story one bit. So I signed up.

Then I saw the story for myself. The story that was told to me wasn’t even close to what I saw. They forgot to mention the vile stench arose from the rotting corpses of those who were murdered just for being alive.