Wreckage

I realize now I should not have asked him. At the time I was curious. I wanted to know what it was like, to understand something of what he had been through. I didn’t know that I could not understand because he could not tell, not in any meaningful way, not in a way I could comprehend.

Foolishly naively I asked him, “Was it worth it? You know, for the great good?”

He answered me, his words at times a torrent, at times a whisper, little by little I came to realize just how broken, a soldier can return healthy from war.

He said, “It is no good. There is no good, not in battle. I saw my friends die and thanked God it wasn’t me and then I drank away the guilt I felt because it wasn’t me. Some of them would have given up their lives for me. I watched them die. I couldn’t move. They were better men than me.

“It is not like the movies. It is life and death. There is no rhythm or reason to it, who lives, who dies. I live each day with the ghosts of those I killed. I see their faces in my dreams. I beg them, plead with them. I want them to know, I only killed them so they couldn’t kill me. But they have no mercy, no pity, the dead.

“You are asking me if I believe in what it was we went over there to fight for. I know having been their such a question is irrelevant. There are no politicians or political discussion on the front. It is kill or be killed, and sometimes both. The only thing upon your mind is staying alive, for your family, if you have one, or yourself if you don’t.

“I take no pride in what I have done. It is not about honor or glory. I have seen little children die, human shields, innocents wiped away by my own side, by my own hands. I have walked through smoldering wreckage, buildings destroyed, bodies fragmented.

“Was it worth it? Do my children sleep safer in their beds because of what our troops have done, because of what I’ve done? No, they don’t because of what it’s done to me.

“Others have asked me, what is it like to be home, to come back? I don’t know. It has been fourteen years and I am still there far more than I am here.”