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barefoot_bardTitle: Blame
Rating: M (Suitable for ages 16 and above)
Disclaimers: Names given in this story are fictional and any relation to actual persons, living or dead, is purely incidental.
Story summary: An infantryman cannot cope with losing friends in combat. Fort Lewis, Washington, January, 2009.
Author's Note: Warning for graphic description of gunshot wounds and suicide. This story is based on several events and people I encountered while I was on active duty. There is no happy ending here but this is deliberate. I intend no disrespect with this work of fiction. Don't read this story if you're in a good mood.
My name is PFC James Antonelli. I'm an Army infantryman with the 4th BCT out of Fort Lewis. And today is the day I died.
I suppose that, if I wanted to be completely accurate, November 16th, 2007 was the day I died. Since then, I've only been an animated shell of a human being. My two best friends were killed that day, in that miserable shithole of a town called Tarmiyah. The Haji bastard who'd been sniping at us ever since we set up our outpost got them both. Simply because we'd gone on a dismounted patrol. I never forgot the look of absolute shock on Ben Grant's face when the first bullet hit him squarely in the middle of his IBA's chest plate. He squared up to sweep his rifle around the AO to try spotting the shooter when the second bullet went through the side of his face. The squad went for cover, because that's what you do when under fire, leaving Ben lying there in the street.
When Haji's shooting at you, you're lucky to have any idea where he's at. He's not the bravest kinda guy ever. The Tarmiyah sniper was a perfect example. Even though I guess snipers aren't much use if they're out in the open busting guns at you. We couldn't return fire anyway because everybody knew the sniper used the mosque as his hide. He could pop at us every day, as much as he wanted, and there wasn't fuck-all we could do about it. Like on that hot November day. After he'd dropped Ben, that Haji motherfucker kept our heads down. Or he tried. Everybody was told to stay put and keep his head down. Except for Matt Walker. He flipped off Sergeant Rogers and ran out into the street for Ben. I went with him, because we had done nothing against that fucking sniper for weeks and I wasn't going to let him get another one of us.
Matt got hit too. I caught him before he could fall. I remember seeing the blood spurt out of his leg when that 7.62 round burrowed into the fat of his thigh and passed out the other side, opening up a giant scarlet hole in his ACUs. I remember his weight seeming to get heavier as I tried to drag him to cover. Sergeant Rogers and Doc Lawrence took him off me. I remember watching Doc go straight to work, then I remember looking back into the street. Ben was still out there. The dull yellow sand around him was stained dark red. He still had his rifle in both hands. I remember shoving Rogers out of my way as I charged back into the open. Haji took a shot at me but missed. I remember flipping him off before grabbing Ben's pack straps and hauling him to cover. He was still breathing. Somehow. I remember that. I know I do. There were little bubbles in the blood that filled his open mouth. That meant he was breathing.
Doc didn't so much as look at him though. He kept working on Matt, even when I screamed him to do something for Ben. So I grabbed for Ben's IFAK to take care of his wound myself. It wasn't until I'd gotten his helmet off that I realised why Doc was disinterested. The bits of spongy grey splattered on the inside of Ben's helmet were plenty sign enough that nothing could be done. I remember throwing the helmet as hard as I could toward the mosque. We couldn't shoot back at that Haji cocksucker and that was why he was killing us. What I don't remember is getting back to the OP. Or what happened the day after. Nothing mattered, though. Ben and Matt were dead. Rogers brought the word to us three days later that Matt had died in the Air Force hospital at Balad. The rest of the deployment was Hell. I only slept after getting meds to make me sleep and I did a couple thirty-day stints of extra duty for mouthing off at First Sergeant.
I kept seeing the spurt of blood from Matt's leg and the shock on Ben's face. Every time I looked down at my gloves, I saw Ben's brains on them. Burning those gloves when I was on shit-burning detail didn't help. Every pair I wore ended up looking the same way. When I closed my eyes, I saw the bubbles in the blood in Ben's mouth as one by one they burst. I saw the gaping hole open up in the back of Matt's leg as he went down. I even saw the bullets as they struck, only in my recollections they were travelling so slowly that if only I could have moved fast enough, I could have swatted them aside. Deflected them somehow. Stopped them from destroying my buddies. But every time I tried to, my arms would not move. I was nothing more than a frozen observer to death.
They blamed me for it. I know that. Who wouldn't? I could have certainly saved Ben if I'd reacted quicker. If I'd been pointman instead of him, like I should have been. He had never led off in a patrol before so I'd let him have it. And Matt... I could've saved him as well if I'd gotten the tourniquet onto his leg before getting him to cover. Doc tried to tell me there was nothing anybody could have done for Ben. I told him to go fuck himself. He reported me to First Sergeant and I ended up with another thirty days of extra duty. That was the last time I had anything to say to Doc. Or to anybody else, for that matter. Even my roommate started leaving me alone after I cussed him out for cracking a joke about Haji's ability to shoot. Going home after thirteen months was no relief either. Not for me. Everybody else was happy as fuck to be leaving but I didn't care. What was there to be happy about anyway? Not a Goddamn thing, that's what.
The months between our June homecoming and this cold January afternoon have been a tangled-up blur. A haze of medication, beer, and a couple mandatory sessions at CMHS. I got lumped with those after I'd punched a hole in the wall of the barracks CQ office, when the CQ sergeant told me to take my twelve-pack up to my room because drinking in the common room was against the rules. The MPs were called after I trieid to punch a hole in him as well. I didn't sleep a wink afterward that weekend, because two days in the stockade meant I was not allowed to have my usual meds. Those bastards enjoyed refusing to get my pills too. I could not close my eyes without seeing Ben and Matt, or those snail-paced bullets, or the scarlet-heavy air as each wound was sustained fresh right there in front of me. My gloves still had Ben's brains on them. Matt's blood was fresh and dark on my ACUs and boots. And they both still blamed me. They said so. Often.
That weekend was the worst, easily. Not that the weeks after were any less shitty. Everybody knew what had gone down but nobody cared. No surprise, though. Everybody had gotten over losing Ben and Matt a long time ago. I was the only one still hung up on it. Which only made me feel that much more pathetic. I drank the remnants of a jumbo bottle of Stoli after getting cut loose from the stockade and managed to get a couple hours of nightmare-free sleep before Greg Davis hammered at the door long enough to rouse me. Just to tell me there was a formation at Battalion in half an hour. I probably should not have rolled up to that formation in a rumpled uniform, unshaven, and stinking of vodka, but I no longer gave a fuck. I got hauled straight before the battalion commander and given the gigging of a lifetime, which if I could remember any of it, would probably have been something worth remembering. Nobody thought to ask why I was so ate up either, because nobody gave a fuck. Which was really why I didn't give one either, I guess.
Sixty days extra duty and loss of rank was the price for that. I'm not even halfway through those sixty days. But I won't get to the end of it. Right now, my room is spotless. I'm sitting on my bed, having a last look around to be sure nothing's out of place. I spent all day cleaning up in here. It's the first time I've made any real effort to do so in a while. I'm wearing a fresh uniform and I've even shaved. Ever since showing up to formation drunk, I've been thinking. Ben and Matt blame me for letting them die. I blame myself too. Why, in the name of God, did I make it through those thirteen months without even a bruise and yet, on the same day, were they shot dead? I look down at my bare hands and see my coyote tan gloves, with Ben's blood and brains all over them. My boots are brand new but they have Matt's blood splattered across them. I curl my hands into fists and close my eyes, and see that slow-moving bullet as it enters Ben's left cheek and arrows its way through his head to lodge itself into the back of his helmet.
I open my eyes and reach for my bottle of Percocet. I've already taken four of them today but two more are needed. I swallow them down dry and set the empty bottle onto the dresser near the foot of the bed. In the mirror, I see myself. I look like Hell. I've lost weight since coming back here. There are dark bags beneath my bloodshot eyes. But I've shaved and gotten a hair cut, so nobody cares. And now, neither do I. I reach for my beret and carefully put it on, making sure the fold hangs just right over my ear. This is the most squared away I've looked in a long time. Which means it's time. I breath out a long sigh and pick up the Glock that I borrowed from a guy who lives off-post. It's funny, I think, that I haven't had a drink at all today. I'm completely sober. The Percocet is kicking in again too. It's always worked fast for me. Which is just as well. I look at my desk, where I've lined up four sealed envelopes. Two are letters to Ben and Matt. One is to my family. And one is to Colonel Broward, since I figure that he deserves a little bit of the blame for that November day too.
I look at the photo of the three of us, taken when we took a pre-deployment surfing trip. It hangs on the wall next to my desk. Then I look away. Where their smiles used to be, there are now only frowns of hate. The Percocet has made me feel tingly and number. I let out another long breath, then settle the Glock's muzzle against the underside of my chin. Matt's blood is still on my boots. Ben's brains are still on my gloves. The bullets are travelling slowly through the air. They're telling me that it's my fault. I agree with them. I am not going to live with this blame anymore though. I can't. Little bubbles of air float in the blood in Ben's mouth as he tries to breathe. I close my eyes.
And then I pull the trigger.
Rating: M (Suitable for ages 16 and above)
Disclaimers: Names given in this story are fictional and any relation to actual persons, living or dead, is purely incidental.
Story summary: An infantryman cannot cope with losing friends in combat. Fort Lewis, Washington, January, 2009.
Author's Note: Warning for graphic description of gunshot wounds and suicide. This story is based on several events and people I encountered while I was on active duty. There is no happy ending here but this is deliberate. I intend no disrespect with this work of fiction. Don't read this story if you're in a good mood.
My name is PFC James Antonelli. I'm an Army infantryman with the 4th BCT out of Fort Lewis. And today is the day I died.
I suppose that, if I wanted to be completely accurate, November 16th, 2007 was the day I died. Since then, I've only been an animated shell of a human being. My two best friends were killed that day, in that miserable shithole of a town called Tarmiyah. The Haji bastard who'd been sniping at us ever since we set up our outpost got them both. Simply because we'd gone on a dismounted patrol. I never forgot the look of absolute shock on Ben Grant's face when the first bullet hit him squarely in the middle of his IBA's chest plate. He squared up to sweep his rifle around the AO to try spotting the shooter when the second bullet went through the side of his face. The squad went for cover, because that's what you do when under fire, leaving Ben lying there in the street.
When Haji's shooting at you, you're lucky to have any idea where he's at. He's not the bravest kinda guy ever. The Tarmiyah sniper was a perfect example. Even though I guess snipers aren't much use if they're out in the open busting guns at you. We couldn't return fire anyway because everybody knew the sniper used the mosque as his hide. He could pop at us every day, as much as he wanted, and there wasn't fuck-all we could do about it. Like on that hot November day. After he'd dropped Ben, that Haji motherfucker kept our heads down. Or he tried. Everybody was told to stay put and keep his head down. Except for Matt Walker. He flipped off Sergeant Rogers and ran out into the street for Ben. I went with him, because we had done nothing against that fucking sniper for weeks and I wasn't going to let him get another one of us.
Matt got hit too. I caught him before he could fall. I remember seeing the blood spurt out of his leg when that 7.62 round burrowed into the fat of his thigh and passed out the other side, opening up a giant scarlet hole in his ACUs. I remember his weight seeming to get heavier as I tried to drag him to cover. Sergeant Rogers and Doc Lawrence took him off me. I remember watching Doc go straight to work, then I remember looking back into the street. Ben was still out there. The dull yellow sand around him was stained dark red. He still had his rifle in both hands. I remember shoving Rogers out of my way as I charged back into the open. Haji took a shot at me but missed. I remember flipping him off before grabbing Ben's pack straps and hauling him to cover. He was still breathing. Somehow. I remember that. I know I do. There were little bubbles in the blood that filled his open mouth. That meant he was breathing.
Doc didn't so much as look at him though. He kept working on Matt, even when I screamed him to do something for Ben. So I grabbed for Ben's IFAK to take care of his wound myself. It wasn't until I'd gotten his helmet off that I realised why Doc was disinterested. The bits of spongy grey splattered on the inside of Ben's helmet were plenty sign enough that nothing could be done. I remember throwing the helmet as hard as I could toward the mosque. We couldn't shoot back at that Haji cocksucker and that was why he was killing us. What I don't remember is getting back to the OP. Or what happened the day after. Nothing mattered, though. Ben and Matt were dead. Rogers brought the word to us three days later that Matt had died in the Air Force hospital at Balad. The rest of the deployment was Hell. I only slept after getting meds to make me sleep and I did a couple thirty-day stints of extra duty for mouthing off at First Sergeant.
I kept seeing the spurt of blood from Matt's leg and the shock on Ben's face. Every time I looked down at my gloves, I saw Ben's brains on them. Burning those gloves when I was on shit-burning detail didn't help. Every pair I wore ended up looking the same way. When I closed my eyes, I saw the bubbles in the blood in Ben's mouth as one by one they burst. I saw the gaping hole open up in the back of Matt's leg as he went down. I even saw the bullets as they struck, only in my recollections they were travelling so slowly that if only I could have moved fast enough, I could have swatted them aside. Deflected them somehow. Stopped them from destroying my buddies. But every time I tried to, my arms would not move. I was nothing more than a frozen observer to death.
They blamed me for it. I know that. Who wouldn't? I could have certainly saved Ben if I'd reacted quicker. If I'd been pointman instead of him, like I should have been. He had never led off in a patrol before so I'd let him have it. And Matt... I could've saved him as well if I'd gotten the tourniquet onto his leg before getting him to cover. Doc tried to tell me there was nothing anybody could have done for Ben. I told him to go fuck himself. He reported me to First Sergeant and I ended up with another thirty days of extra duty. That was the last time I had anything to say to Doc. Or to anybody else, for that matter. Even my roommate started leaving me alone after I cussed him out for cracking a joke about Haji's ability to shoot. Going home after thirteen months was no relief either. Not for me. Everybody else was happy as fuck to be leaving but I didn't care. What was there to be happy about anyway? Not a Goddamn thing, that's what.
The months between our June homecoming and this cold January afternoon have been a tangled-up blur. A haze of medication, beer, and a couple mandatory sessions at CMHS. I got lumped with those after I'd punched a hole in the wall of the barracks CQ office, when the CQ sergeant told me to take my twelve-pack up to my room because drinking in the common room was against the rules. The MPs were called after I trieid to punch a hole in him as well. I didn't sleep a wink afterward that weekend, because two days in the stockade meant I was not allowed to have my usual meds. Those bastards enjoyed refusing to get my pills too. I could not close my eyes without seeing Ben and Matt, or those snail-paced bullets, or the scarlet-heavy air as each wound was sustained fresh right there in front of me. My gloves still had Ben's brains on them. Matt's blood was fresh and dark on my ACUs and boots. And they both still blamed me. They said so. Often.
That weekend was the worst, easily. Not that the weeks after were any less shitty. Everybody knew what had gone down but nobody cared. No surprise, though. Everybody had gotten over losing Ben and Matt a long time ago. I was the only one still hung up on it. Which only made me feel that much more pathetic. I drank the remnants of a jumbo bottle of Stoli after getting cut loose from the stockade and managed to get a couple hours of nightmare-free sleep before Greg Davis hammered at the door long enough to rouse me. Just to tell me there was a formation at Battalion in half an hour. I probably should not have rolled up to that formation in a rumpled uniform, unshaven, and stinking of vodka, but I no longer gave a fuck. I got hauled straight before the battalion commander and given the gigging of a lifetime, which if I could remember any of it, would probably have been something worth remembering. Nobody thought to ask why I was so ate up either, because nobody gave a fuck. Which was really why I didn't give one either, I guess.
Sixty days extra duty and loss of rank was the price for that. I'm not even halfway through those sixty days. But I won't get to the end of it. Right now, my room is spotless. I'm sitting on my bed, having a last look around to be sure nothing's out of place. I spent all day cleaning up in here. It's the first time I've made any real effort to do so in a while. I'm wearing a fresh uniform and I've even shaved. Ever since showing up to formation drunk, I've been thinking. Ben and Matt blame me for letting them die. I blame myself too. Why, in the name of God, did I make it through those thirteen months without even a bruise and yet, on the same day, were they shot dead? I look down at my bare hands and see my coyote tan gloves, with Ben's blood and brains all over them. My boots are brand new but they have Matt's blood splattered across them. I curl my hands into fists and close my eyes, and see that slow-moving bullet as it enters Ben's left cheek and arrows its way through his head to lodge itself into the back of his helmet.
I open my eyes and reach for my bottle of Percocet. I've already taken four of them today but two more are needed. I swallow them down dry and set the empty bottle onto the dresser near the foot of the bed. In the mirror, I see myself. I look like Hell. I've lost weight since coming back here. There are dark bags beneath my bloodshot eyes. But I've shaved and gotten a hair cut, so nobody cares. And now, neither do I. I reach for my beret and carefully put it on, making sure the fold hangs just right over my ear. This is the most squared away I've looked in a long time. Which means it's time. I breath out a long sigh and pick up the Glock that I borrowed from a guy who lives off-post. It's funny, I think, that I haven't had a drink at all today. I'm completely sober. The Percocet is kicking in again too. It's always worked fast for me. Which is just as well. I look at my desk, where I've lined up four sealed envelopes. Two are letters to Ben and Matt. One is to my family. And one is to Colonel Broward, since I figure that he deserves a little bit of the blame for that November day too.
I look at the photo of the three of us, taken when we took a pre-deployment surfing trip. It hangs on the wall next to my desk. Then I look away. Where their smiles used to be, there are now only frowns of hate. The Percocet has made me feel tingly and number. I let out another long breath, then settle the Glock's muzzle against the underside of my chin. Matt's blood is still on my boots. Ben's brains are still on my gloves. The bullets are travelling slowly through the air. They're telling me that it's my fault. I agree with them. I am not going to live with this blame anymore though. I can't. Little bubbles of air float in the blood in Ben's mouth as he tries to breathe. I close my eyes.
And then I pull the trigger.