Sacrifice

NOTE: This story alludes to some mental health issues, violence, sexual violence, etc. but not in a graphic or explicit way. It also has a "surprise twist" ending that some might find to be excessively sad. Those who are VERY easily triggered, or younger than 10, might want to skip this one or have a parent or other responsible person read it first to see if it is appropriate for you.

And without further ado, I give you...

"Sacrifice."

BOOM… BOOM… BOOM… I am tired of getting shot at, sick of having to shoot back. BOOM… BOOM… BOOM… I’m exhausted from mine sweeping every time we take the truck beyond the wire, and weary from being blown up every few days. I’m sick of the food they serve here, too. BOOM… BOOM… BOOM… I’m tired of the bombs and gunfire all through the night making it impossible to really sleep. I’m fed up with the frequent pranks my team likes to play – just yesterday some asshole thought it would be funny to tie my boots together in a knot so convoluted that I had to cut them apart with a knife and requisition a new set of laces. I’m sick and tired of going to work every day and trying to make a positive difference in people’s lives, only to have the people I’m supposed to be serving and protecting look at me like I just stole their neighbor’s baby. BOOM… BOOM… BOOM… I miss my family. I would literally kill someone if it meant I could have a bowl of my mother’s homemade minestrone right now. I miss my wife. And I want to hug my children again. I’m so over this place; I just want to go home. And it’s finally happening.

BOOM… BOOM… BOOM… It’s finally happening. I’m going home. God, I hate this place. I never even wanted to come here. It’s always 110 degrees in the shade, and there’s never any shade. The people here speak six different languages, none of them mine. The sand gets everywhere, even into the food. I can’t sleep, it’s always noisy; someone is always yelling orders, and there is always gunfire somewhere nearby. BOOM… BOOM… BOOM… The people here hate us, even though we’re trying to help them by freeing them from the warlords who murder their men, steal their food and land, and rape their daughters. Yet somehow they still see us as the enemy, thinking we intend to invade and conquer them. Our enemies spread baseless lies about us, painting us as evil devil-worshippers – all the while THEY are the ones bombing schools, kidnapping children, and mining their own roads. BOOM… BOOM… BOOM… Our allies are all scared for their lives and may turn on us at any moment, so any trust is a tenuous thing. This place is hell on earth and I have hated every second that I had to spend here. 

BOOM… BOOM… BOOM… But more than that, I hate what this place has turned me into, what I had to do to survive here. I can’t even say I did it to further the mission, because nobody in the chain of command seems to have any frigging clue what we’re really trying to accomplish here. It’s just an awful situation that they keep throwing bodies into, only to get more and more corpses as the only real result. BOOM… BOOM… BOOM… Our enemies bury explosives in the roads, not even caring whose vehicles set them off. So we are always on the lookout for those, and we don’t always succeed in finding them before it’s too late. I’ve sent more friends home in pieces than I’d care to count. BOOM… BOOM… BOOM… And when we go into the towns and villages, they ambush us at every turn. Sometimes they even strap suicide bomb belts to their women and children and force them to run at us under threat of being beheaded and then shot. How are we supposed to fight that? Most of them aren’t even our enemies – not really. They just believe that if they do as they’re told then perhaps their families will be spared. How are we supposed to face that kind of evil and stay sane? I’ve sent more children home in pieces than I’d care to remember. BOOM… BOOM… BOOM… How can I justify that to God? How can I look my creator and lord in the face and tell him that I shot innocent children to protect myself and my team? I don’t think I’ll be forgiven for that. This place has made me a killer, a murderer of children. And I know that my family will never understand just what I had to go through here. Perhaps that is for the best, because if they knew the extent of it then they would never forgive me for it all either. 

BOOM… BOOM… BOOM… I hate this place. I will not miss it when the transport carries me back to friendly territory. As far as I’m concerned, this place and everyone who chooses to live here can go straight to hell. And for what? There isn’t even anything here worth taking or protecting. They have no oil. They have no gold or diamonds. There are no mines for useful metals. There is no industrial production, barely any agriculture. Everyone here is either a goat farmer, or a warlord. All fighting over a bit of sand and a couple of goats. And it has been so for hundreds of years. Why? It makes no sense to me. I will be very glad when I have seen the last inch of this place disappearing behind the C-17 that has been tasked with carrying me home. I will not miss it. 

BOOM… BOOM… BOOM… But I will miss my team. The men and women who served by my side. The ones who protected each other, trusted each other, went out there and did the dirty work together day in and day out. Closer than family, we were, even with all the stupid pranks and macho competitiveness between us. I hope they stay that close once this is over, back in civilian life. And I hope they’re still able to function as people, back in civilian life. BOOM… BOOM… BOOM… The things we’ve seen and done… it burrows into a person’s mind and it eats away at the soul. We’ve all known people who got out after this, only to have some real problems readjusting to civilian life. I think we’re all secretly afraid the same thing will happen to us, when our enlistment is up. The doctors call it “post-traumatic stress disorder.” What it really is though is the guilt, and the realization that we will never again be able to see the world with innocent eyes. Coming to terms with that, more than anything, causes a lot of us to fail as we attempt to reintegrate back into our old lives. Because we know that we’ve changed too much, we don’t fit there anymore. BOOM… BOOM… BOOM… Our friends and family still remember us as we were when we left home. They still have those memories, and so they expect us to step off this plane and pick right up where we left off. But it doesn’t work like that. It’s a bit like trying to slide a badly bent sword back into its scabbard. Even if you work it back into shape, you’ve introduced new elements and new weak points into the metal and so it is far more fragile now. It turns out that the human mind is similar in that respect. Bend it too far, work it too hard, and it will break. 

BOOM… BOOM… BOOM…

So now I sit in a windowless room, one I’ve never been in before, looking very fine in my dress uniform with my meager possessions packed into a duffel bag at my feet. I can see my name and address written in bold letters on the ID tag, which some administrator was kind enough to tie onto the bag so it won’t get lost in transit. I can hear footsteps passing in the hall outside the door every now and then; otherwise the only sound is the clock on the wall over the door. The room is so quiet, the ticking of the clock seems louder than it should be, like the beating of some great war-drum. Every second it hammers away again, BOOM… BOOM… BOOM… as I wait for someone to come and guide me out to the tarmac. Alone with my thoughts. And so I think again how much I hate this place, and how glad I am that I will never need to set foot here again after today.  And I think of my family, and how much I miss them, and the tears they will shed upon my return. 

BOOM… BOOM… BOOM… Well, it looks like it’s time. The door opens. A very young soldier walks in, checks the tag on my duffel bag against a note in a file, then walks around behind me and starts to push me towards the door. One of the wheels jams and tries to swing me sideways, but he is paying attention and catches it in time. He flicks the brake lever on the offending wheel with his toe and then we start again, properly this time. 

BOOM… BOOM… BOOM… Goodbye, for the last time, clock. As we reach the tarmac I see it’s another scorcher outside. Bright sunshine, not a cloud in the sky. Usually around this time of day we’d all be hiding under some canopy or another trying to avoid the heat. But today the entire company is here, lined up at attention to see me off. Wow, look at them… not a button undone, not a speck of dirt on anyone’s boots, everyone’s toes lined up perfectly straight. That is an impressive sight; I’ve never seen it from this side before. It’s a sign of respect, one I’ve shown several friends during my time here. It makes me sad, knowing that they all must stay here and continue on, while I get to go home. And for a fleeting moment I almost wish that I could stay and continue to guide and protect them as I had done for this tour of duty and three previous tours as well. But even more than that, I want to see my family again. I want to go home. I am glad to be finished with this place, after all.

Three good, strong men line up to my left, three more to my right. I know them well. Two of them fight back tears. Similar groups are forming around the other 12 soldiers going home today, too. What a grand sendoff this is! The six men turn as one to face me, give a sharp salute, bend at the knees, then lift me up on their shoulders like Arabian royalty. This whole thing would be utterly ridiculous, if it wasn’t such a solemn occasion. BOOM… BOOM… BOOM… Their steps are slow, measured, and deliberate as we approach the aircraft and ascend the ramp. No one speaks, the onlookers stand at attention, silently saluting us as we pass. Look at us, we thirteen kings of Arabia, being carried upon the backs of our compatriots towards the vessel that will carry us home! I will not miss this place. But I will miss these men and women, and they will miss me, too, for a time. We are placed with the utmost care upon the floor of the aircraft, buckled in, and they smooth the wrinkles out of the flags that lay over us. Then we are alone in the dark of that cargo plane. None of us gets a window seat, but I suppose that sort of thing doesn’t really matter anymore. All that matters is we’re going home. The work isn’t finished, but then it never really is. And now we must leave it to those with abler hands and better luck to carry on in our stead. For our time has passed, and we are going home for the last time.

To all who have served, thank you for your service.

To all who have lost someone in the line of duty, thank you for your sacrifice.