Confession
Confession
Paul E. O'Connell
Published by Paul E. O'Connell at
Copyright 2011 Paul E. O'Connell
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You come to confess your sins?"
"Yes Father... I shot and killed a man."
Well, go on....................
Table of Contents
A Poem of Hope
Back Before Then
A Saturday Night Out
New as Shiny Boots
The Enemy Base Camp
Closed Casket
Out to Dry
Phu Nhan 3
Night Ambush
Young No More
Left Behind
The Moratorium
Before Midnight
A Consequence of War
John Wayne
Confession
A Poem of Hope
The children
no longer ask
mother
why dad screams
in his sleep.
They have grown,
have children of their own
who I hope will never be
frightened in the night
by the screams of their Dad
fighting with the past, fighting
for his life.
Back Before Then
Back
before
the frantic frenzy
the sun, glorified,
set softly.
Dusk faded
into twilight.
The moon
shared the sky
with the stars.
Tides crept upon
pearl white sand, rested,
then slipped away
as leaves turned
and the geese flew south.
Yes, my world once
revolved on its own
in peace, in time,
when things were right
when everything was perfect.
A Saturday Night Out
“Let’s go for a beer.”
“I’m game if you are.”
My friend, Jerome,
a few years older than my seventeen
topped off the car’s tank
and off we went.
In the morning
I called my Mother collect
from the Empire State Building.
She said, “Get! Home!! Now!!!”
“But Ma, I’m in New York City.”
“Now!!!”
Jerome and I got served,
threw up,
got lost in the subway,
drank again,
puked
and passed out.
Twelve hours late,
I arrived home to find my clothes
in brown paper bags
just inside the front door.
With nowhere to go,
one week later
I found myself standing
at the position of attention
on the yellow footprints
on Parris Island,
shivering, still hung over.
Eight months later,
my Mother kissed me good-bye,
as I left for Vietnam.
New as Shiny Boots
"Brother. Do you think we’ll get into a firefight today?
"What did you say?
Just wondering if we might get into a firefight.
Man, are you crazy?
Huh?
Do you understand what happens in a firefight?
I think…
Think shit, fool. I’ll tell you what. Guys get killed. Wasted. Dead forever. Do you understand. Forever!
The Enemy Base Camp
A few days after Christmas, high in the mountains, beneath a mosaic of greens, triple canopy thick, we came upon bamboo huts with thatched roofs, up on stilts, built along a beautiful mountain stream, fed by an underground spring. The ingenuity of those who had built such a camp held me in awe as my eyes followed the long lengths of bamboo split the long way, followed the flow of water within the carved out bamboo aqueducts which connected each hut with a constant supply of fresh running water.
Pigs, forty or more, miles from their natural habitat, roamed loose through the mountain camp. How and who had herded the pigs so far and so high into the mountains seeped into our brains.
The Kit Carson scout, a North Vietnamese defector, said we were in an enemy rest camp, large enough to sleep hundreds, and although the camp appeared empty, except for the pigs, he said, most likely, someone had been left behind.
A search of the huts exposed no one, but what was discovered, hanging inside most huts, were hand-crafted bird cages made from match-stick-thin slices of bamboo, held together by short lengths of tough, jungle vine. And yet there were no birds.
Caves were discovered; some natural, some tunneled, and our tunnel rats went to work.
Many caves had huge, oversized bamboo woven baskets filled to the brim with tons of uncooked rice. One cave had hundreds and hundreds of small cans, red in color, with Chinese writing imprinted upon them. Inside the cans was the worst smelling fish ever smelt. Another cave was filled with five hundred or more pairs of black pajamas and Ho Chi Minh sandals, and another with well seasoned caldrons and a few other metal pots. And the cave Tunnel Rat Dillon slithered into, on his hand and knees, had life inside. When it was all over, after the sunset, as we sipped hot instant coffee from our canteen cups, Dillon said, “Things moved fast.”
Told how he heard water. A drip of water. More water and then a sigh. Or someone catching their breath. Then drops of water until the infrared tinted beam from his hand-held light shined on two eyes, then two more, and the four eyes were mesmerized like animals in the dark, poached in the night. As it always seems, the world stopped, stared, then spun faster than ever, and as the eyes shined on a rifle, ah, just out of reach, the slightest distance between life and death, Dillon's raised forty-five exploded in fire nearly shattering his eardrums. To us outside being entertained by two monkeys swinging in the trees, the shots sounded like explosions coming from deep inside a West Virginia coal mine.
Minutes later, with ropes tied around the dead ankles, marines pulled two bodies out into the faint light of day.
On a worn flat rock, a slab, not too far from the stream, was the body of a girl with her mid-section, intestines everywhere, blown wide apart, and a North Vietnamese Colonel, possibly her lover, shot straight between the eyes.
The pigs were corralled the next morning and murdered. Later in the day, from the safety of our own camp, we watched while we ate and sipped coffee, our jets, bomb what hell was left in the enemy base camp.
Closed Casket
Flash… Booommm…!
Brown-gray cloud…
John!?!?!
Lifted…
Swallowed
before my eyes
like the mystical sleight of some
sorcerer’s hand.
How?
Foolish of me to yell out your name. No mouth… No face… No brain… No!
Heart, legs, arms, gone
beyond all help.
Left behind in the morning heat,
mute, angry, marines
carried in a green rubber poncho
a spine wet to touch.
I cried for you in the deaf world
As we carried only an assumpt
ion.
It had to be you,
the only one missing.
Wind and dust
left with your remains,
in a silence
which has never said,
good-bye.
Out to Dry
The first thing
I ever shot
looked no different
than a black pajama top
hung out to dry
on my Mother's clothes line
stretched between
a huge, half-dead oak
and the rear porch
where she would lift
dripping wet laundry
from a large aluminum
colander, water seeping,
and clothes pin the wash
to the line.
Something like one of my Father's
red handkerchiefs,
a bandanna maybe,
hung too.
A split second
after the trigger squeeze,
like the wind blew and through
the rifle sight
and the bluish gray tint
of gunpowder smoke,
there appeared three
more in black
wavering in the breeze.
I remember sparrows startled
scattered just as if
my Mother had shooed them away.
God forbid if they had
soiled the wash.
Then the line snapped
and the black pajamas
and red bandanna
dropped and disappeared
into the ankle deep weed,
and I knew my Mother
would be madder than hell
when she found her laundry,
on the ground,
covered with blood.
Phu Nhan 3
While Smith and I
watched peasants
work the flooded paddies
below our hill,
he took from his pack
a family snapshot of his
brothers and sisters.
The picture struck me as being
out of focus. The faces
seemed masked,
like they had nylon stocking
tight over their face,
like bank robbers in disguise,
but yet their hair
and clothing
and the fur of a collie
at their feet
was a clear, sharp, image.
Off in the distance,
towards the west,
a column of white
phosphorous smoke
filtered up through
the green mesh of trees
from Phu Nhan 3,
a village often sympathetic
towards the VC,
especially at night.
Overhead,
a prop-driven spotter plane
flew circles and lazy eights
while it waited for the next
flight of supersonic jets
to swoop down
upon the marked target.
Meanwhile,
atop of our hill,
Smith told me
as a child
he and his brothers and sisters
had been trapped
inside their burning house.
A real bad fire, he said.
The silence,
my loss of words,
what could I say
as I handed back the picture,
was broken by the scream
of a fighter with its nose high,
a steep spiral climb,
an escape from the inferno,
a deep red-orange ball of flame
an expanding glob of what I understood
to be like gasoline,
thickened with airplane glue,
a sticky mess,
all on fire,
known as Napalm.
And as the flames burnt out,
thick clouds,
black smoke billowed
like an afternoon thunderhead
on a hot summer day,
Smith told me how
they spent years in and out of hospitals,
how they faced as a family
hundreds of plastic surgeons.
He said he breathed through a hole,
indicated with his finger,
ran it lightly over the scar
over his throat,
but had an operation
so he could breathe like others,
through their nose and mouth,
so he could be a marine,
so he could join the fight
Again,
silence
broken by the next jet,
a nosedive through
heavy black smoke,
another shiny aluminum canister,
an end over end free fall,
another ball of flame,
while up close, Smith
points to his ear lobes,
lets me see how they end
in a point like icicles,
told me the fire was so hot
his ears actually dripped.
Another black cumulus cloud,
more smoke from Phu Nhan 3
rises to the heavens
as Smith grew silent
after he told me
his Mother and Father
died in the fire
trying to save their children.
In irony, hours later,
Smith would lose his life,
in a cloud of smoke
at Phu Nhan 3
Night Ambush
Revenge came in the faint glow of stars,
a fingernail slither of moon
and the manmade light of distant flares
slowly burning out.
Down low, in damp weed,
tall enough to hide an elephant,
four tired, worn and hungry marines
hid alongside the muddy village trail,
waited for the enemy,
who more than likely, would not show.
There was this ungodly stench
of buffalo dung, each others sweat
rotted cartridge belts,
mixed with the chemical smell
of mosquito repellant smeared
on the back of their hands, their wrists,
face, neck and ears tuned to the sounds of the night.
sounds of mosquitoes in flight
biding their time as they waited
for the invisible barrier to dissipate,
and squeaky like, worn fan-belt sounding crickets,
ribbits from a bullfrog deep
down inside a nearby well,
the rumble of artillery harassing
the enemy in the next valley over,
and the loudest sound of all,
their own hearts.
Catman, the team-leader,
sniffed away at a letter
ten days old, one of those, "I miss you," letters
from his girl back home,
penned on paper once saturated
with inexpensive teenage perfume,
as if the aroma,
if in fact was still there,
was some strange exotic drug.
Dew, like perspiration,
formed on their black plastic rifle stocks,
glistened as if the night sky was afloat
on top of the protective film of gun-oil
wiped upon the metal parts of their weapons
to prevent rust, weapons
cradled in their arms
like newborn children.
Then the end began.
Shooting stars,
two of them, crisscrossed
the sky high overhead,
and before a wish could be made,
one pale white cheek
appeared to float, what seemed
to be about waist high
compared to a tall m
arines.
A cheek coming down the trail.
A pale white cheek
betrayed by the moon and the death
of the two falling stars.
Then as a flare, off in the distance,
burst into life, there appeared,
not one or two, but three
silhouettes,
conical shaped heads,
perfect targets.
And as the flare burnt itself out,
like we hear the sun will one day,
the three, clad in black,
caught in the open,
were never to know
what hit.
Aaaahhhhh...
Catman's love letter falls.
His finger to his lips. Ssssh.
Weapons in slow motion, shouldered.
He parts the weeds so slightly
like a nervous actor, peeks
through the break in the curtain
before the show begins.
With his index finger raised,
in their heads, the marines hear, "one,"
and the bullfrog croaks.
Index and middle finger, "two,"
and mosquitoes dare land.
And just before three,
just before the squeeze of the trigger,
a sound, like mud,
like potters clay,
oozed between the toes of the enemy.
And then,
surprise.
A flash and quick
snap-flash-crackle-crack-crackle,
like the crackle of one
pack of fireworks
exploding in the night
to celebrate the Fourth.
And then,
done.
And in the pitch, the black,
which followed,
the three laid dead in nature's
silence, in puddles of blood,
dark as crankcase oil, floating
on top of the mud.
Young No More
The young marine's right
thumb, forefinger and middle one,
in a pinch-grip,
pulled taught the dead
enemy's ear away from
blood matted hair while
the left hand, wrapped
white-knuckle tight
around the worn smooth
leather handle
of a less than sharp
K-bar, hacked the blade
back and forth
through hard rubber
like cartilage until
the ear was severed.
In the open palm
of the young marine's right
hand, the ear curled
in defense of itself,
fetal like, detached
from former life.
And in time, hanging
from the young marine's rucksack,
attached by a piece of thin wire
pierced through, the ear
shriveled and shrank,
a grape into a raisin,
never to be a glass of wine,
never to be sipped
by the young marine turned old.
Left Behind
We came upon a young girl, lying on a
woven bamboo mat, in this bone dry
ditch, naked from the waist down, except
for a swarm of flies and gnats which left us
with the image of staring through a screen door
at her blood stained legs, knees bent, drawn
into her stomach.
Glenn, our pointman, quick-like snapped
from his hip, his sixteen, aimed, but did not shoot,
then came to drop on one knee at the sight of her
long black hair and all the blood and called for Doc,
who broke from the column, ran up the trail, and too,
knelt beside her.
As the patrol slowed to a halt, as I came abreast of this scene,
I noticed what I was told later to be the after-birth at her feet.