Classy Cherry #4
His eyes are grey and mysterious. He often looks right through people as if he can’t see them at all. He hasn’t had young eyes since before he was shipped off to war. When he first arrived in the South Pacific, he couldn’t stop laughing. Here he was in a postcard paradise -- palm trees, warm ocean waters, and friendly brown women. They sent him here to this beautiful place and told him to kill. Kill enemy soldiers. Eradicate dangerous civilians. Extinguish all threats to America’s freedom.
He’d seen with those eyes a naked child screaming while still clutching the bloody hand of his mother that’d been blasted off. He’d seen mosquitoes so thick on a dead soldier’s body that it looked like he was asleep under a thick black blanket. He’d seen an abandoned baby so skinny he could count her backbones and she ate feces with her dirty fingers.
He’d seen so much worse -- inhumane things beyond even your darkest nightmares. Things he never told anyone because he didn’t want them to have old eyes too. So he told his family he’d been a member of the supply crew. They’d believed he’d only transported weapons and never suspected that he’d used them to kill hundreds of people.
His memories and the secret made him an old man for many years. But now he was an old man because his body was all used up. He knew death was near, he could feel it hovering around his doorstep, but he wasn’t afraid. The war had scared all fear from his body so that nothing ever made him afraid.
One afternoon, like a flash of lighting, he decided that before he died he wanted the Combat Action Ribbon he’d earned. The Marines decorate soldiers to celebrate their honor and courage including those who’d fought in combat. He hadn’t ever asked anyone for the ribbon because he’d lied to his family about his war experience. But in that moment, the old man decided that he wanted to be buried in his uniform. And he wanted the uniform to be complete.
He told his wife that evening. At first, she didn’t believe him. She thought it was a delirious memory of an old dying man but was too polite to put it that way. So she tried to correct him, “you were in supply.” But he was persistent. He told her his commander’s name and the place he’d been fighting. He needed her to find someone or something to confirm his combat experience so the military would give him the ribbon. She listened and wrote down all the details. She made many phone calls to locate his superiors or some information.
But forty years after the war, most of the officers had died and the records had disappeared. It was a tedious process and sometimes she felt like she was on an impossible chase but finally she was able to prove he was a combat solider. The military held a fancy ceremony to honor his service with hundreds of soldiers watching. He wheeled his chair up the ramp and bowed his head slightly when an officer saluted him before pining the ribbon to his chest.
Stop.
That’s not what happened. It’s only how I wanted it to happen but I died before my wife could prove I was in combat.
My wife kept searching for months but never found anyone that remembered me. The government documents about the war were sparse and too difficult to locate anyway. The night I died I knew she had already lost hope in finding anything. I wasn’t ever really sure she believed my story from the beginning. But I know by the end, she thought I was crazy. She was just so frustrated and she couldn’t understand why it mattered to me even if it was true.
But how could I tell her, the woman who believed the father of her children was a supply manager, that I had been a killer? I couldn’t make her understand that without a ribbon, my memories would never be shared with anyone. At least with the award, a secretary would read my letter requesting the award and for an instant think of me and perhaps what I’d seen. Now, nobody will remember. Nobody knows. Instead, when I was buried, all the memories floating in my head about the people I’d killed for democracy were locked in the fancy casket with me. We hadn’t even buried those that we killed. We’d just piled their bodies in tall mounds in the middle of their towns and burned them then the stench got too strong.
He’d seen with those eyes a naked child screaming while still clutching the bloody hand of his mother that’d been blasted off. He’d seen mosquitoes so thick on a dead soldier’s body that it looked like he was asleep under a thick black blanket. He’d seen an abandoned baby so skinny he could count her backbones and she ate feces with her dirty fingers.
He’d seen so much worse -- inhumane things beyond even your darkest nightmares. Things he never told anyone because he didn’t want them to have old eyes too. So he told his family he’d been a member of the supply crew. They’d believed he’d only transported weapons and never suspected that he’d used them to kill hundreds of people.
His memories and the secret made him an old man for many years. But now he was an old man because his body was all used up. He knew death was near, he could feel it hovering around his doorstep, but he wasn’t afraid. The war had scared all fear from his body so that nothing ever made him afraid.
One afternoon, like a flash of lighting, he decided that before he died he wanted the Combat Action Ribbon he’d earned. The Marines decorate soldiers to celebrate their honor and courage including those who’d fought in combat. He hadn’t ever asked anyone for the ribbon because he’d lied to his family about his war experience. But in that moment, the old man decided that he wanted to be buried in his uniform. And he wanted the uniform to be complete.
He told his wife that evening. At first, she didn’t believe him. She thought it was a delirious memory of an old dying man but was too polite to put it that way. So she tried to correct him, “you were in supply.” But he was persistent. He told her his commander’s name and the place he’d been fighting. He needed her to find someone or something to confirm his combat experience so the military would give him the ribbon. She listened and wrote down all the details. She made many phone calls to locate his superiors or some information.
But forty years after the war, most of the officers had died and the records had disappeared. It was a tedious process and sometimes she felt like she was on an impossible chase but finally she was able to prove he was a combat solider. The military held a fancy ceremony to honor his service with hundreds of soldiers watching. He wheeled his chair up the ramp and bowed his head slightly when an officer saluted him before pining the ribbon to his chest.
Stop.
That’s not what happened. It’s only how I wanted it to happen but I died before my wife could prove I was in combat.
My wife kept searching for months but never found anyone that remembered me. The government documents about the war were sparse and too difficult to locate anyway. The night I died I knew she had already lost hope in finding anything. I wasn’t ever really sure she believed my story from the beginning. But I know by the end, she thought I was crazy. She was just so frustrated and she couldn’t understand why it mattered to me even if it was true.
But how could I tell her, the woman who believed the father of her children was a supply manager, that I had been a killer? I couldn’t make her understand that without a ribbon, my memories would never be shared with anyone. At least with the award, a secretary would read my letter requesting the award and for an instant think of me and perhaps what I’d seen. Now, nobody will remember. Nobody knows. Instead, when I was buried, all the memories floating in my head about the people I’d killed for democracy were locked in the fancy casket with me. We hadn’t even buried those that we killed. We’d just piled their bodies in tall mounds in the middle of their towns and burned them then the stench got too strong.
posted by Anonymous at 3:40 PM
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