SOLDIER

The darkness is so viscous, so profound that I am scared. I have a fully loaded AK-47, I have 4 grenades strapped two each to my right and left chest pockets, I have my service knife strapped to my left thigh and I am wearing a Kevlar vest but I am still scared. Scared to death! To death!

There is nothing particularly terrible about the house except that it has no roof, that it has one big gap in the place where there used to be a door in the not so remote past and that the house has, according to my last reconnaissance report, a total of four seriously pissed and seriously armed insurgents.
My mission as the captain of my four men squad is simple, comb the house and neutralize the enemy. Two of my men have already taken their positions along the doorway; they will remain their in case any unforeseen contingency arrives. I along with the remaining two men will conduct a floor to floor sweep and neutralize the enemy. Ain’t it simple?
I have to move.
It is the first thing they teach you in training school. Keep moving. Keep running. A stationary target is the easiest target. I can hear the voice of my staff sergeant loud and clear in my ears, "Move your asses you dumbo. MOVE it gents. Dance for me. Come on show me your moves!" My ears are ringing. Like Sarge is right behind me and poking my back. Like Sarge is right behind me and shouting right into my ears. I don’t like the idea of Sarge creepin’ behind me.
Fuck off Sarge. Fuck off and shut up! Shut UP!
I know I have to move.
But here is the problem. I have frozen! Somehow I have managed to dissolve my legs. My tongue seems to have met the same fate and my voice is muted. And most strange of all my gut! My friggin’ gut seems to have turned liquid. Melted maybe.
The thing about combat is that you never get used to it.
Where are they? Where? To my right? Behind me? Above me? Where? Where? Are they going to come out of the pot hole? What is that sound? Is that the sound of someone quietly trying to open a door?
I am moving. Through the door-gap. I can see some strange kinda graffiti along the wall. Something between a child’s innocent and scrawly handwriting and a man’s rage filled kick. Strange mix.
As I move in, the first thing I notice is that I am going to puke. The air is saturated with a mix of an arsenal of disgusting smells which shout in unison "DECAY". It’s like someone pissed in a one of those one-liter bottle of coca-cola, shut the cap, shook the bottle vigorously, stored it for about one month in some dark corner, shook it vigorously again and then spilled it all over the floor. It’s like someone killed a dog, packed it in a sack for a coupla weeks and pushed it through the central air conditioning system. Maybe the Devil’s lair smells like this. I don’t know.
In the dark I can make out a flight of stairs to my right. That’s where I am headed to right now.
As I close in on the stairs and attempt to climb I can feel its fragility. It is made of wood and looks centuries old. It can break any moment now. I hasten.
Wait!
Someone is running. I can hear this. I can hear this despite the racquet the frigging stair is making.
Here is a thing about combat. It is not so much the weapons that kill a man in combat as the uncertainty. I can feel the sudden rush of adrenaline down my abdomen. I can feel the fight or flight instinct creeping somewhere inside the corners of my head, somewhere along the tip of my tense fingers, somewhere along the dimensions of my alert toes. When I was a boy, eight maybe, I pushed my fingers into the holes of a power socket. I don’t know what happened exactly afterwards but I still remember the heavy tingle of 240 volts of live current passing through my body. That’s exactly what is happening to me right now.
I am running. I am past climbing the stairs and am running along a damp and dark corridor. Running feet. Short burst of breath. A vaguely whitish garment. That is as much as I can make of my man. A few paces ahead of me I hear a door being locked hastily. Slow down. I slow down. I can see the door. It is not locked. Through the slight gap between the door frame and the door itself I can hear my man. I can feel his fear.
Pounce. Suddenly I am inside and face to face with my Man.
The first thing I figure out, my Man is not a man. He is a boy. A kid of seventeen, eighteen at most.
Forgive me god for I am about to sin.
The boy is reaching for something in his trouser pocket. Shit! That’s a grenade. This is not happening. I can’t let this happen. If all these years of combat have done me any good, it’s that it has quickened my senses. As the boy is reaching for his grenade I curl my fingers into a fist, summon my strength, banish all my convictions of right and wrong and bang the boy in his head. I see what happens next as in a suspended animation state. As my fist makes contact with the boy’s skull the I hear a sick crunching sound, like that of glass breaking five blocks away. The boy’s eyes close. The boy is knocked out of breath. The boy has a bleeding nose. But. But the boy is still standing. In movies a man is knocked out cold with one bang on the head. This is not a movie. And the boy is not knocked out cold. BANG! I punch him in his abdomen. That does it. He is on the floor and unconscious but still breathing.
Thank you god.
WHAM!
Out of the corner of my eye I can see a huge man coming out of the closet, running towards me and banging me on my head. But I can not do anything. I have frozen once again and this time frozen for good.
It is black. A peculiar type of black. A black with a thousand and one bright spots embedded to it all over the place.
Is it time? Has my time come? Is this how I die? Is this where it all ends?
No it’s not.
As consciousness seeps into my being I can feel my ears ringing from the concussion. My head is a little heavy but everything else is all right. No everything is not all right. I can feel something heavy against my body. As I look out I see my Mate. I realize that in making haste to box me on my head he knocked himself off-balance and fell on me.
All of this culminates into a strange kind of rage.
All the time I was there boxing his comrade-in-arms; the boy, the man was there hiding in the closet. My prayers, my monologues and all the time he was there. While I kissed my family good-bye he was there waiting. While I was ready to kiss life goodbye he was there watching. Watching and waiting. Bidding his time.
I collect my self and stand up to face my Mate. I have my hands around his neck. He has his hands around mine. Our applied forces are in equilibrium. I can feel his grip tightening around my neck. It is a strange experience. He is pushing my Adam’s apple inside. I feel like I am swallowing something massive, something I shouldn’t have put in my mouth in the first place leave alone swallowed. I am weakening. But I can not give in. Not now.
I summon all my demons, all my courage and barely manage to tackle my Mate down to the floor.
It is only time and I know he will gain advantage. I have to act fast. His eyes. It is one of the standard techniques they teach you in hand to hand combat training. The theory is to straighten your index and middle finger and make them into a two-pronged fork and gauge the enemy’s eyes out of the socket. I do exactly this. The thing that blows me away, the thing that makes my head go into a three hundred and sixty degree somersault is that an eye ball is not actually a ball.
This is the first time I have ever gauged anybody’s eyes out of the socket. The eye ball is actually a jelly. As I somehow manage to spoon out the jelly from the man’s eye socket I feel sick. Real sick. The eye balls are suspended from a fiber like suspension tissue. I am going to puke. My Mate’s eye balls are hanging out of his socket and resting on his cheeks. I can feel my Mate’s fear. I can hear my Mate’s pain in his screams. He is screaming. He is crying. He is calling me names. He is calling his god to intervene. But there is no god, only me and all I can do now or maybe not do now is to hold my breakfast inside. I can’t help it. I vomit all over my jacket. I can’t help it.
My Mate is a fighter.
Despite all the pain, despite all the fear, despite a pair of eye balls hanging on his cheek my Mate doesn’t give up. He is a foot and a half taller than me and has an added advantage of about twenty five kilos over me. My Mate is pushing my. He is biting at my knuckles. His hands are tightening around my neck and his feet are aching to kick my balls.
It is only time and I know he will gain the upper hand.
My combat knife. That’s what I remember in this hour of despair.
In close combat all your automated weapons become meaningless. You can not use your AK-47, it is too long. You can’t use your side arm. Plainly, it takes too damn long to reach lock and load and in a situation like this it is the precious seconds that count. You can’t use your grenade, not unless you want to die holding hands with your enemy. So your only available weapon of choice is your combat knife.
Not ever having to use a knife in anything other than to open the bottle of beer I take out my knife and lunge blindly. The pain is extreme. My Mate has just managed to kick my balls. When a man’s balls are kicked it is not the balls that feel the pain, it is the part of his abdomen immediately below his belly button that feels the pain. And the pain. The pain is like nothing else. It simply can’t be described.
I think this is the end. I think I am about to die.
Not yet.
I finally find the opening that I am searching for. The spot under his neck bone.
I have no time for prayers this time around. If there is a god I know he will understand.
I do it. I thrust the knife under my Mate’s neck bone.
It is sick. What I am doing is sick, I know. I understand. I am aware. I am fully conscious of the choice I have just made.
Here’s a thing about life. Life is a matter of choices. It is as much about the choices you make as it is about the choices you don’t make. Maybe sometimes the right choice and the difficult choice are the same and sometimes it is only if you make the right choice, however difficult it maybe, that you will live another day to make another right choice.
My Mate is covered in blood. It is gushing in a steady stream from his chest.
I can feel his life quietly creeping away.
His hands are through my hair and as he is dying slowly they seem to be caressing me.
Quiet, indistinct words of prayer.
Here’s a thing about war. Bombs, bullets and everything else they throw at you, you can survive that all right. What about when your enemy cries for his life, what about when he desperately bites you for his survival and then scratches you begging for one more minute of life? What about that? Are you strong enough to survive that?
In war you loose your humanity and that will haunt you for the rest of your life.