Napalm Sunsets

aces over eights

Napalm Sunsets (608 Words)

     Somewhere in Southeast Asia some forty-odd years ago, a young round-eyed and dedicated wonder-boy found himself and his comrades, waist deep amongst rice paddies and leech infested waters. He walks through villages filled with sounds of barking dogs and children scrambling away from giant soldiers with muddy boots. He wonders how anyone can live in homes made of bamboo, mud walls, and thatched roofs. He pities the villagers their living conditions, while in reality, it is he, who should be pitied.  

 

     He was a stranger in a strange land blinded with a patriotic fervor that drives men and women to join hands with the devil. He was possessed with a red, white, and blue mindset that the American way was the only way, and that he and his fellow countrymen were here to liberate the land from the tyranny of the communist regime. He was part of an elite group of other dedicated fools, whose mission was to find the enemy from within, and to convince the natives that Ho Chi Minh and his cohorts were not saviors, or liberators, as many believed, but evil tyrants bent on warping their minds to the cruel and soulless dictates of communism.

 

     But the ghost of Ho Chi Minh and the leadership that carried on his policies were not the enemy of the common people, but were instead their heroes. The real enemy in the eyes of the farmers, fisherman, and common folk was the American Military and the puppet government it controlled with its golden strings. But that was of no consequence to those round-eyed wunderkinds. It was the mission that mattered, not what was right or wrong, but the mission, no matter the cost, and the cost turned out to be our souls.

 

     Just minutes before, a little girl tugged at the solder’s leg. She wanted some candy; he smiled, and threw her a piece.

 

     We called in an airstrike to fire bomb the area outside the perimeter of the village. We believed the enemy encamped themselves there.

 

     The jets arrived at dusk. They lit up the area, the jungle burned and some of the flames reached the village as well. He heard the screams from the jungle and the wails from the village. Collateral damage, it couldn’t be helped. God was on our side.

 

     We surveyed the village, it was in ruins, burnt and broken. It smelled of gasoline and cleaning detergent. The village was awash in a Napalm Sunset.  

 

     The little girl that the soldier gave candy too was now a charred up bundle of bones. Only then did the soldier realize that it was the devil, not God, who was on their side.

 

     That soldier is no longer a round-eyed wunderkind but an old man who is forever haunted by the innocent faces of the dead and those sins he committed against them.

 

In My Waking Dreams

 

Blood stained memories,

a killer’s tears-

 

For country honor duty home

 

That vacant stare so hard to bear,

in my dreams forever

 

round eyed wonder boys

shiny boots weapons ready

death before dishonor

 

As the fog lifts,

the rain falls on the long ago dead-

Their shadows stir beneath the earth,

haunting melodies forever in my dreams

 

For country honor duty home

 

thatched huts and sunsets

napalm tea and misery

what honor in this

 

A child’s cry ~

a mothers tears~

No remorse; are they not the enemy?

Dead meat-clean sweep- no retreat-

 

For country honor duty home

 

Blood stained memories,

a killer’s tears…

 

It was the first time in that soldier’s life that he truly saw the world for what is was: A Playground for the Devil...

 

RC

05-29-2016