When I came home there was a short piece about me in the local black and white.  We weren’t seen as heroes, but the paper thought it would be nice to put in something about the war.  I was still proud, and just happy to be alive.  I never expected anything much of a welcome home because I was never sure if I would make it back.  Just home was enough…

It was the longest night of my life.  They had us move out under the cover of night.  Fifty of us crawled along a slow whisper of a river.  Crouching cramped my legs, but it didn’t matter, I was more scared of what would happen if I was seen.  We crept in silence.  I was somewhere in the middle.  All I knew to do was follow the guy in front of me and do what he did.  The guy in front of me was Viggs, the one behind me was Whitey.  That’s all I focused on. 

The longer we snuck along the embankment the more sweat dripped down my nose.  The heat there was straight from Hell’s furnace.  The humidity made it impossible to cool down.  At certain points we stopped and all I wanted to do was dive into the gentle river to my right.  It slithered slowly by not caring about time, or men, or war.  That river still flows into my thoughts now and again.  It reminds me of what it was like to be a young man.  To this day I can’t look at a stream without thinking about staying in formation.      

We stopped.  It was the location.  Their men were supposed to be moving through there at daybreak, an eternity away.  We were told to hold our positions, to keep quiet, to piss where we were, to shoot anything that marched through the jungle.  

Even though we were hidden behind a riverbank and had the element of surprise I didn’t feel like we had an advantage.  The physicality of the situation was scary enough, the hisses and moans from the relentless jungle.  The mentality was even worse, halfway around the world without family or love, hunting men like animals. 

We were all animals.  

The few nerves I had left me that night.  The tense hot air nearly suffocating me was nothing compared to the fear of an ambush from behind, across the river.  Only a few men were stationed as lookouts for anything back there, while the rest of us watched the black of the rainforest. 

I never blinked once.  My eyes unceasingly scanned the rotting logs, hanging leafs, and swaying treetops.  All I could do to keep from breaking was think about your mother, before she was your mother.  I was there to protect her and everyone like her.  The curls of her soft brown hair were what kept me sane.  I spent hours imagining and reimagining my fingers effortlessly running through the smooth silky strands.  Those thoughts jumped out of my mind in a heartbeat.  Shots fired down the line from me. 

Bap-bap!

Then again.

Bap-bap!

I waited.  My finger trembled in the trigger guard.  Hold your fire, hissed the officer.  We waited for the return fire.  There was none.  The men who shot were seeing things.  I don’t blame them.  That jungle could drive a man crazy.  I slouched back down behind the bank… 

No, I never shot.  Every instinct in me wanted to, but I didn’t.  My hands didn’t stop trembling.  A few more times other men shot into the darkness out of fear, and still I never did.  I don’t know why. 

I was trapped behind that bank, trapped by duty, trapped by order, and trapped in my mind.  I couldn’t move a muscle.  Eventually the stars started to fade.  One by one they disappeared as the sun began to brighten the sky.  My stomach tightened.  My finger stopped trembling and it rested against the trigger.  My eyes stopped scanning the jungle and focused down the sights of my rifle.  It shocked me how cold I felt at that moment.  My bones tried to jump out of my body, but I held my position.  For a moment I thought I was dead.  I felt as though I had been shot though the chest and was watching myself die as I drifted away.  

The sky started to fade away from black.  I looked to my left; Whitey had his eyes clenched tight as he whispered something to himself.  I turned to my right.  Viggs just looked back at me with my own eyes. 

We were all still boys.