A Haunting Story

This is someone else's story.  I met Ron, a middle aged veteran, in a barroom in 2006.  I was 23 years old, in my fourth year of university, talking to strangers and listening to their stories. Not all of them caught my attention, but some of them really made me think.  Ron's was one of them, so much so that I wrote it down in a journal.
Ron got pretty emotional as he told me his story, and who could blame him?  I knew we were going into the darkness when he started calling me by my name - almost nobody does - and by the end of the night he was crying on my shoulder.  All he knew about me was that I wanted to write a war novel.  I never saw him again.  His story still haunts me.  So, from my old journal:

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"You'll never learn the truth about war from a textbook.  You listen to me, little girl.  There is nothing glorious about war.  You wanna know what goes through a soldier's head?  It's 'Get me the fuck out of here.'  And if it's a higher ranking officer, it's 'Get my men the fuck out of here.'  Glory?  It's fucking propaganda.  That's the truth.

"And you know something?  There is no worse feeling than bombing the shit out of a town, and then going into that town and seeing for yourself what you did.  I once had to see the damage I did to a town.  Our orders were to blow the town to smithereens, and we did.  Then they told us to go into the town and finish the job.  I followed my orders.  I went into the town, and saw all the buildings destroyed, bodies lying in the street with their skin burned off, blood everywhere.  And do you know what it was that made me cry?  A dog.  A dog, who had lost one of its legs.  In the army, they teach you only how to kill.  They train you not to care.  But here was a crippled dog in a destroyed city, and it was all my fault.  You know what I did?  I followed my orders and finished my job.

"Now, sweetheart, I never said I killed anyone.

"You want the truth, Natalie, I'll tell you the truth.  And you can spread the word.  I don't like talking about these things.  That war was thirty years ago, and I still get nightmares when I think about it.  You try to move on with your life, but how can you?

"You know something?  I was in a POW camp in Vietnam. I was in a POW camp, and I escaped.  I escaped on foot, with a razorblade.  How do you think I escaped with just a razorblade?  What do you think I had to do?  Natalie, not a day goes by when I don't think about it.  I remember each one of their faces.  It was one thing to shoot weapons from far away, but how do you kill a man face to face?  And I had to!  It was all I could do!  I watched as my friends had the shit shot out of them!  I saw what happened to the people in the POW camp, and all I could think was 'It's not happening to me,' and I got my hands on a razorblade and did what I had to do.

"They sent us out there to kill, and we killed.  I think about it everyday.  And when we got back, they didn't want us.  The only job I could get when I came back was as a cook!  They wouldn't let us into the Legions because we'd lost the war.  We didn't lose the war!  We shouldn't have been there!  They never wanted us there!  I don't want pity.  I was a soldier doing what I had to do to survive.  But you know, the circumstances don't matter.  The war doesn't matter, and the danger doesn't matter.  There's only one word for what happened, and it's Murder.

"At the Legion, we never talk about what we've been through.  We go there for a drink, for a laugh.  We ignore the rest of it.  Nobody wants to think about fighting in a war.  They know the truth.

"I look at what's going on these days in the Middle East.  All these kids they're sending out, sending home in coffins.  It's such a waste.  A buddy of mine asked me how long it would take me to take down a town out there, and I told him twenty minutes - and I'd flatten everything in the way.  They're sending kids out there who don't know what they're doing.  They should send us old guys.  I mean, I know I can't fit into a tank like I used to, but damnit, we've done it before!  We'd get the job done quicker!

"This world's a mess, and us old guys should clean up the mess for you young people.  You shouldn't be out there, learning how to kill from scratch.  People your age should be studying and partying and making love -"

"...And writing books," I interrupted.  For the first time in awhile, Ron smiled.  He cupped my face with his hands and then hugged me.

"God Bless you," he said.  "You put this in your book."


(2006)

"Fragile" (painting by Rick Hicks, Toronto, ON)

"The name of the painting is inspired by the Yes album of the same name. The colours I used are similar to those of the artist who did that cover, Roger Dean. My style is loosely based on Jackson Pollock and the French Canadian painter, Jean Paul Riopelle. Back in 2013, I did over 120 paintings on paper boards, which were inspired by them."
Rick Hicks
Toronto, ON