The Weapon Fires on it’s Own
In my attempt to understand the Military mind, I found this while wandering around the Milblogosphere . At first I was horrified - how could such a great writer…but then I read on.
It’s nights like this that I miss the war. Nights alone with too much time to think that I feel it calling to me. I miss the excitement of patrols and raids, especially the raids. Being the first man in the door, knowing you may die in the next few minutes, the next few seconds. Feeling that rush, every sense becomes sharper, vision tightens and becomes clearer like you are finally really seeing the world. Air passages open up, you no longer just breath the air you drink it in feeling your lungs turn it into energy for your body, the great machine that holds all that is you. The electricity that flows through your finger tips into your brain, touching your weapon, making it part of your arms and hands. One with your mind.
If I just look at something or someone and think die; they die. The weapon fires on it’s own sending the bullet to the target.
There were nights on patrol that I actually felt the city and it’s people inside of me…Or maybe I was inside if it. Injected into the living organism that was Baghdad, racing through it’s veins, feeling more than hearing the steady thump, thump, thump of the giant beasts heart beat. I was one with everything. All I had to do was close my eyes and feel the mood of the city. Tonight it wanted to kill us, kill me, tomorrow it was content to let us roam freely. Connected into The War, like a acolyte of Mars, the bloody remorseless god of war. Knowing when it was hungry for our blood, anybodies blood.
There was a time over there when I was completely in love with the War. With the killing and dying. The excitement, like a lover you know you shouldn’t be with, knowing the lover will hurt you sooner or later but you just can’t get enough, can’t stop. That feeling you get just before and accident happens, the brief moment of clarity that suddenly opens up the Universe to you seconds before the cars collide. You know whats going to happen, you can see it but you are powerless to stop it.
I loved that feeling.
I wanted to eat the War, I wanted it inside me, to roll in it, wallow in the moment between Life and Death. I never wanted it to end.
Then it bit me, hard. D was killed and it became Real. All my gods turned against me, or showed their real faces. The War, Iraq it’s self, and the master of them all Death. I was just one more sacrifice being lead up the temple steps where the priests with obsidian knives waited to cut out my still beating heart.
That’s when I began to fear the War. To see Death for what it really is, a deal with the Devil. There is no escape, no bargains to be made. It doesn’t care.
And yet, on nights like this I feel It calling to me through time and space. Wanting me back in it’s arms, a long lost lover. And I want to go back. Back where things make sense, where life is lived on the razors edge, where the only thing that matters is coming back alive, not bills or work or the future. Only Now. The next breath you draw.
Nights like this I know that I broke my promise with The War to die there and It’s angry with me over that. Sometimes i feel that the space I am supposed to occupy in the Universe has closed up but I’m still here. I escaped, somehow, a Cosmic mistake God over looked in the books only here, in The World, I am much harder to find, surrounded by the living.
Wondering why I lived and so many others did not.I had nothing to lose and I wanted to die while others that wanted so desperately to live did not. It seems like a cruel joke.
I imagine God, like a black and white movie from the Fifties, white robes, white beard and flowing hair, his desk covered with scrolls and heavy bound leather books, the spines guiled in gold, ink well and feather pen as He does His work.
An angel comes in from off screen,” It’s that guy, Mike D, again.”
“Him?” God says. “That’s it! Kill him this time! He’s way over due.”
The angel exits, then He realises something, remembers something He forgot.
“No, wait! Not him! Kill somebody else!”
Almost a year that I have been back and I’m still searching for answers, looking for a reason to still be breathing. It was easier over there and I miss it.
I miss the War.
I still love the War, somewhere deep inside of me and I know that no matter what I do with my life, get married again, have a child, write a book, nothing else will affect me as much. Nothing else will mean as much to me as twelve months in combat ever did. The missions, the patrols, the rush.
I still miss the War.
I still love it.
And I still hate it.
posted by red2alpha at 5:00 AM, Dec 23rd 2006
December 27th, 2006 at 12:48 pm
Don’t tell me, let me guess. A Marine?
December 27th, 2006 at 1:21 pm
Sounds like a crack-addict whose been hanging around too many MilBlog sites.
December 27th, 2006 at 1:38 pm
Such is the use and mission that our great country tasks its youth. These guys and gals are giving thier best. and quite possibly thier last years for the notion that thier sacrifice enables the rest of us to sit at our keyboards or behind the wheel, make babies, etc. and to a certain extent that may be so.
Where this becomes such a sad and crippling reality, is when crackpot pols and corporations conive the use of these young people to thier acquisitive, greedy, and, let’s face it, downright murderous ends.
All that energy, all that treasure, all that mind-power, all those body parts and blood, so that the likes of George, Dick, Donald, Henry, Richard, Saddam, et al, can score for thier retirement accounts and the accounts of thier friends. Soldiers and thier targets, be Damned.
December 27th, 2006 at 6:25 pm
What is missing from his narcissitic rant is the fate of his victims.
Simple as that.
Could have been an SS guard in a former age.
December 28th, 2006 at 8:59 am
You people are just so messed up. You haven’t a clue. Pitiful.
December 28th, 2006 at 9:20 am
Re: sue’s comment…surely there’s some message contained therein, cain’t figure out what it is tho. More pitiful? Clues, like weapons of mass destruction, go only to the highest bidder.
December 28th, 2006 at 9:57 am
Caveat,
There is one pity running through this entire blog-battle. Nephi and Sue actually conversed quite well (maybe again some day). But for CJ and Cpl.M (both of whom Nephi has great respect), the thought that three individuals (all progressive anti-war types) could be posting from the same IP address was simply too confusing. Wireless networks appear to beyound their otherwise tech-savvy systems administration experience. The end result, Nephi got banned right along with MilMom, and so ended the discussion between Nephi and Sue. From Nephi’s perspective, ASP suffered the most - now they have Glenn spinning their minds with well-meaning but twisted and obfuscating logic. While sometimes rough and a little over the top, at least Nephi, Cliff and MilMom generally laid out thoughts and argument in some cogent fashion that warranted some thoughtful response. But then all hell broke loose following the wrong (but understandable) conclusion reached by MilDetectives CJ and Cpl.M. Indeed, had the detectives looked a little a little deeper, they would likely have found other IP addresses for Nephi, distinct from that proudly displayed yesterday on ASP.
Notwithstanding, Nephi remains respectful of these folks at ASP and admires their former and continuing service, even though perhaps misguided at the behest of war criminals occupying the white house and congress.
As to Sue’s comment, I sense frustration more than anything else. Sue is not one that generally resorts to name-calling or such other derogatory classifications.
December 28th, 2006 at 11:23 am
Thanks. Technichal question: Is the blurring of IP adresses a part of any one of us linking to the ASP site from here, as oppossed to just plugging it into the addy box and hitting ‘go’?
As for derogation, while I try to be pointed, snarky, and not manipulative I usually reserve it for my mythological betters, like U-know-who, and U-know-who. There’s no doubt that the Milblog folks are all invited over here for discussion, only they’ll have to be able to ‘take it’ as well as ‘dish it’ out.
Perhaps the next ? might be…short of bending all the way over to the ‘adversarys’ POV, and short of calling them all a bunch of mindless sheep, what can we say, and how many times do we have to say it for those committed to thier mind-set to begin to break out? They can’t really like what’s going on. Peace, and keep up the good work.
December 28th, 2006 at 12:43 pm
Nephi,
Or Cliff or who ever you are. I am not frustrated in the least. What I find pitiful is your blanket condemnation of this Soldier because he put his thoughts out there in an effort to heal his inner demons. And for Richard, he is NOT a Marine. He is a Soldier. And I didn’t call any one any names, I merely made an observation not unlike all YOUR quite mistaken “observations” about the people you are trying to crucify on this blog. It is an “opinion” which you say all the time how much you value over here at oneutah. Or am I not entitled to one which does not support YOUR agenda? Again, not frustrated, not angry or any other of your adjectives that you have assigned to me in the past. I am merely observing.
December 28th, 2006 at 3:34 pm
Yes twisted logic Neph, very fitting for the twisted situation over there. The story has so many twists and turns, from old history, to the recent involving saddam, the shia, and Iran, and our deposing of their democratically elected leader Mossadegh.
They don’t buy your logic, or mine. I am trying to bring out the realpolitik element of running foreign policy and winning wars, and having positive outcomes. I admire their passion to save Iraq, but just wanting to save it without good application of tried and true successful strategies is foolish. Almost no one would call the way we have handled Iraq a success.
The worm turns now, and we have allowed those we call our enemy (iran, shia) to rule the thing we coveted(iraq).
It is very Shakespearean really.
December 28th, 2006 at 4:14 pm
Glenn,
I can think of no better person for the job! You go, boy.
Best & Happy Holiday (round 2)!
Nephi
April 11th, 2007 at 5:56 am
Your a ass, dude. You’ll never get it.
April 11th, 2007 at 6:12 am
What is there to get red alpha? Blown up?
If you cannot see where our troops have been placed in error, it is to be a woeful summer, for you, and them.
April 11th, 2007 at 6:13 am
and BTW, it is, You’re an ASS.
July 3rd, 2007 at 9:21 am
Narcissistic? That is 1 thing Red2Alpha is not. you should really read his blog, he is amazing. none of you know what the hell you are talking about. it is YOU that is narcissistic, for not even trying to understand him and what he has been through, too stuck in your own little self-absorbed minds.
July 3rd, 2007 at 10:30 am
Feels like a blame the troops rally in here.
Red2Alpha’s post tracks with a lot of free form dialog from warriors returning from combat. Take an afternoon and read something like “The Heart of a Man” or Caputo’s “A Rumor of War” and I think you’ll, maybe, have some minuscule insight into what Red2Alpha was writing about.
It read as though most of you are judging his words from a life spent free of overwhelming violence and the “every-second-of-every-day” knowledge that you’re going to die in about five seconds.
It’s far too easy to judge a member of the military, especially a combat veteran, from a position of ignorance.
July 3rd, 2007 at 9:23 pm
I think I need to shit.