There are no heroes in battle. You don’t fight alongside you fellow countrymen with swords in hand and armour on your back in the hopes of protecting your kingdom. You either sit in the base waiting for some stray artillery to hit you or you are the one launching that angel of death into the opposing side. It’s just men killing other men without the dignity to look them in the eyes.
I didn’t join the war because I wanted to kill. I wanted to be a hero for my country, fighting against some country that I had no idea about but was told was the enemy. Maybe not even anything as “noble” as that if you could even call war noble. I had no prospects coming out of high school. I was a young man who was average in every way, so when the recruiter told me that I could fight for my country in some far-off country in Asia, protecting the freedom of the world. I volunteered to travel across the entire world to fight the spread of communism! What a joke.
There is nothing noble in war. I have seen the jungle snatch away men’s lives in a second. Good men that I had spoken with about their families and what they wanted to do in life. Even the enemy, were people in the end. Not some inhuman monster that had to be slain to save the kingdom, just people who were fighting the same as us. War does not care about who you are or were, it is simply a violent struggle in the mud, clawing at each other without even knowing who the other is because you are afraid they would do the same to you.
My last mission during my time in Vietnam was where everything went strange. We had been informed of a village being used as a supply cache for a large number of enemy soldiers. So naturally, the squadron I belonged to was sent to take care of the soldiers and make sure the supply point couldn’t be used.
Traversing through the jungle was always terrifying. I imagine if I was on vacation, it may have appeared beautiful, but when traveling through the battlefield, any wrong step or noise could mean the end of your life before you even notice. There was another soldier, an older man, that I had looked up to for his seemingly stoic attitude. We had been traversing the jungle and he had fallen into a trap. It was a deep pit of sharp bamboo spears that pierced every part of his body. The stoic eyes that I had regarded with admiration were now stuck like a kebab that held no regard for how steadfast he might’ve been when alive. The jungle could take you as easily as that.
When we arrived at the village, it was obvious that our intel had been correct, but the entire village was completely empty. Silent. All the supplies and weapons were still here, and food lay warm around the tables, but it looked as if everywhere there had miraculously vanished into thin air. We cleared the place and burnt the buildings to make sure that another group couldn’t use this location. Even with all that though, I noticed that the jungle had gone completely silent around us. All the birds and bugs that could mask the sound of an approaching soldier breaking a tree branch were gone.
We were all walking together when suddenly a gunshot rang out. Aaron Collazo, one of the more skilled members of our squadron, fell to the ground as shrapnel and gunpowder exploded out of the ground where he had just stepped, shredding his leg into nothing but pulp. That was the moment it all went bad, it wasn’t the missing enemy or the silent jungle, it was when Aaron Collazo simply stepped in the wrong spot.
We all quickly went into a defensive position, raising our weapons. It was Walker who was next, he had taken a single step towards Collazo in hopes of providing aid when he was similarly eviscerated. His body didn’t fall for another couple of minutes, just standing there almost as if he had forgotten to die. When it did eventually fall, I could see that Walker was dead, his entire head had been shaved of everything that you could tell was him .
So, we stood there, completely frozen in fear that if any of us moved, it would mean our deaths. It was hours of sitting in that awful silence. Campbell the youngest member, and someone that I could call a friend, had broken the silence when they started sobbing. I guess the stress had simply gotten too much for them, and they went to sprint in the direction of the jungle.
I could see in his face that he was simply terrified and knew he wouldn’t make it. As soon as his foot hit the ground in that next step, he was dead. The shot rang out from the ground and pierced right through his skull, killing him instantly.
Then it was simply me and my lieutenant Mark Hayes, a man I had known to be unbreakable in the face of stress and war. He had always maintained a level-head whenever we went into battle, and it made sense to me that he and I were the last members of our team standing. So, we stood. We stood in the awful silence as the day turned into night. And it was as the sun started to set, that I started to hear a noise.
Wet breathing that sputtered as much as it attempted to speak. I looked towards Hayes to confirm if I was hallucinating due to the stress, but he seemed to also be hearing the same. I couldn’t see far, the nights were dark, and this was no exception, but I could tell where the sounds were coming from.
It was Walker that first started to speak. Or at least it came from where Walker had been lying. I heard his raspy sputtering breath choke out for me to help him. It pleaded for me to come over and help him before he died. Then they all started to beg.
And I almost moved. I was a second away from taking a step towards Campbell in hopes of helping when my eyes had finally adjusted to the dim amount of moonlight. I saw the outline of Campbell’s body lying perfectly still in the quiet jungle. Even as he begged me to take a single step, he laid completely still, not even showing the slightest indication of breathing or pain.
I was too late to tell this to Hayes, he had been convinced by their voices and had taken a step before I could warn him that they were already dead. I didn’t see him die but the explosive sound of the gunshot told me everything I needed to know. Even when he began to tell me that it was safe, and he had found a pathway that wasn’t trapped I didn’t move a single step.
That night was long. The fatigue almost made me move from my position, to adjust my footing ever so slightly so I could sit down, but I didn’t dare risk it. Even when the sun came back up and I saw that all the members of my squad’s bodies had disappeared, I didn’t dare take a single step. It wasn’t until another group of soldiers arrived and I was dragged back to the base that I moved from the spot.
And that’s my story. They never did recover the bodies of my squad mates, they belonged to the jungle now. So I’ve stayed away from tropical destinations ever since, nestled in the city far away from any traps or trees. Even now though, I’ll walk through my house and hear my floorboard creak and think it’s over. That I’ll finally listen to my squad and the jungle will have me.