A Soldier, Left Behind
Tales From The Backwoods, Story #4
A Short Tale
Written by Backwoods
Copyright 2015 Backwoods
All Rights Reserved
License Notes:
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic, digital, photocopied or otherwise, without expressed, written permission from the author.
All names and characters are fictitious.
Any resemblance to an actual person or place is entirely coincidental.
“Greater love hath no man than this,
that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
John 15:13
Chapter One
The bullet thwacked through the soldier’s forehead, just above his left eyebrow. The pressure of the impact forcing his head to pop like a melon, stirring its contents and cleanly peeling the top, as if opened with a can opener, and bulging his eyes from their sockets like a scared cartoon character.
Private Tommy Sinclair heard the thwack and looked over to Johnny, as his helmet fell from his head. They had lived next door to each other since Tommy moved into a small house in the suburbs near Akron at the age of six. They had been best friends ever since. Their friendship, and Johnny’s brain, now rested in a bowl of brain stew upon Tommy’s lap.
They had raised hell together for a dozen years. From boys to men they had spent every step along the way side by side. They played football and video games, traded cards and fought for girls, most of which neither of them had ever held a conversation with. From building forts and acting out battles in the back yard, to signing up in the United States Army, they had always been brothers.
Tommy looked down, dazed in disbelief, and then tossed the helmet back to his lifeless friend with a startled jerk. Vomit bubbled from his mouth as he turned and let it loose, splattering the rooftop. He wiped his mouth and turned again toward Johnny, and then leaned forward and looked passed him to his left.
Just four days before, he had been called ‘green’ by a sergeant in his platoon. That sergeant now lay dead, just ten yards away. He could not recall the sergeant’s name, and likely never would, as the rocket propelled grenade left only burger and bone where his name tag had once been. The rest of his platoon lay dead among them. He was no longer green.
Looking back to Johnny once more, a gruesome image that embedded deep in his memory, Tommy stood. Letting rage replace training and common sense, he picked up the Saw, or squad automatic weapon, that Johnny had carried and screamed out.
“I’ll kill all you hodgie fucks!” he howled as he unleashed hell into the approaching combatants on the street below, firing until he had spent his ammunition.
Several of them dropped and several more ducked for cover against the wall below, then returned fire. There were at least twenty that morning when they were surrounded and ambushed once entering the building. Another ten or fifteen arrived shortly after in a small group of pickup trucks, one of which carried a fifty caliber machine gun mounted in the bed. The building was supposed to be uninhabited and they had been deployed to scout the area and interior for possible use as an operating base for future operations. A mission described as an in-and-out cakewalk.
Alone and surrounded, he quickly scurried from body to body collecting every weapon available. A doorway led from the rooftop down a stairway inside, however, several men had poked their head out. A quick cluster from an M-16 he gathered, and one of them dropped in place, while the others reached out with their weapons and fired blindly, refusing to leave the cover of the doorway.
Moments later several men attempted to run from the doorway in an attack, but found a quick death provided by Tommy’s readied rifle. As he fired, however, the fifty-cal lit up from the truck parked on the road. The four foot wall crumbled beside him, just inches to his right, as the large rounds smashed violently through. Grabbing his fallen brother, he dove to the ground, leaning against the wall and placing Johnny’s body between himself and the doorway. Johnny’s final act as a friend was providing a pair of spare clips and a shield against the fierce splattering of lead that came from the doorway and another wave of enemy soldiers.
Tommy exhausted the ammo in that rifle, then another, and another, then the pair of clips from Johnny, until he had no more. He found several extra magazines and a pair of grenades remaining on the vests and waists of his fallen platoon brothers and he began to burn through those as well. A pile of bodies had grown outside the doorway and continued to enlarge for some time as the men kept coming.
In the months prior to shipping out, his thoughts often turned to the possibilities that war could bring. He did not fear death, rather, he only hoped for a good one. If death were in his cards, he hoped to take at least one enemy soldier before falling. He hoped to do his part, pull his own weight, and die with honor.
He hoped for the usual things as well, a safe return, some action to tell stories about, and beautiful girls chasing after the freshly returned hero. As the bodies continued to pile up, at least one hope would be fulfilled. The pile grew into a short wall and the living took cover behind the dead on both sides of the shootout.
He soon ran out of extra clips and tossed the first grenade, then several moments later, the second. He saw at least two men continuing to fire at him as he sat alone, surrounded by spent shells and hollow weapons. Three more darted from the doorway, taking cover alongside the other two behind the bodies. Tommy pulled his knife from its sheath and prepared to make a final stand.