Deployed Into Sand

My commanding officers told me they were bad,
    and I believed them.
Ten years ago, at a time when I was so young,
    so impressionable,    
I saw them crash planes into buildings
    so close to home,

and though they didn’t take the lives
of anyone that meant anything to me,
on t.v I saw our soldiers
marching into the desert
and my father looked at me and said
“You know, freedom isn’t free..”

And so when the time came,
when I could finally smoke
I signed over my name.
I had nowhere else to go,
and I was full of vengeance,
    still from that September day.
So while my friends sat at home
still eating from their mothers hands,
I was jumping through the sky,
with a gun on my back
    not afraid to die.


We shot at cardboard cutouts,
complete with turbans on their heads,
I believed what I was told
like a good soldier should,
and when they knew I was ready,
they put me to bed and shipped me off
to a far away, unknown land
where the people live like savages
    and the mountains are made of sand.

By day we walked with our safeties off,
and by night we crept through sleeping villages
    with our fingers on the triggers--
ready to strike at any moment,
    like a hungry fox.

It was a cool December evening
when I took my first life;
in the village of Hadzral-Sa’id--
a father running with a child in his arms,
he had no weapons, no desire to fight,
yet without thought, my finger tightened,
I heard his wife scream,
I never heard anyone so frightened.
We got the hell out as quickly as we came,
and back in the barracks the room was filled
    with pride and glory,
    laughs and stories--
“You see that one monkey try to flee?
S**t, that was a riot,
his wife was all ‘No no, please not me!”

It felt like the bullet ricocheted
off the mans skull and hit me
    in the chest,
I wish it hit me in the chest.
I wish it were my skull
lying in pieces on that maroon dirt-floor.

The guys around here wonder
why it is we’re hated so much.
They wonder why in city squares
the bodies of our brothers are lit
with tattered bibles found in smoking foxholes.
They think that if we continue
    to beat, torture, maim and kill,
that they will become our friends.

The man in the bunk below rambles on:
“I’ll burn their beloved pages,
while I piss on their fallen brothers
So that ours will be
    at peace.
That's why we’re here, boys
To bring peace to this fucked up country
    the only way we know how.”
and he holds up his M-16
with a s**t-eating grin.

Only two years left,
until I can go home,
but even when the day comes,
there's no going back.
Never again will I be the same,
all thanks to the army,
with only myself to blame.

Reviews

[Samuel Dickens]

This is some very tough stuff. If based on fact or not, I can't tell, but it seems authentic--very authentic and real. I truly believe war produces no winners.