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Confession

Paul O'Connell

Confession

  Paul E. O'Connell

  Published by Paul E. O'Connell at

  Copyright 2011 Paul E. O'Connell

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  Thank you for respecting

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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.