Compilation of submissions

Since I've been sharing around some of the work I'm going to be submitting for class, here's one post that just links to the somewhat scattered submissions:

Non-fiction story:
http://mentiserrores.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-longest-night.html

Fiction short story:
http://mentiserrores.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-picture.html

Runner up short story:
http://mentiserrores.blogspot.com/2015/06/a-story-written-at-behest-of-certain.html

Also considered for submission:
http://mentiserrores.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-noisy-neighbors.html

3 Poems:
http://mentiserrores.blogspot.com/2015/01/smeester.html

http://mentiserrores.blogspot.com/2014/08/beyond-mirror.html

http://mentiserrores.blogspot.com/2014/05/to-start-with-how-about-nice-poem-about.html

The Longest Night

A true story from the war

            On that fateful night of 18 October 2003, I was standing in the motor pool of the FOB (Forward Operating Base) in Taza.  My friend John Hart was present, and both of us were taking in the Iraqi evening with its perpetually dusty smell, playing black jack on the hood of a Humvee.  We were both enjoying a Marlboro Red, and talking about nothing at all.  The evening was cool but not cold, quite pleasant for all involved, after a 110+ degree summer. 

Overall there was a relaxed mood, with neither of us worried about much.  We’d met shortly after Airborne School and had enjoyed some time together in the rear detachment of the 173^rd Airborne Brigade in Italy, being too new and green to join the unit until several months after the war began.  He was a good man, with a good heart, and everyone liked him.  Many thought he would become a psychologist one day, due to his kindness and empathy.  He was a good listener, and was easy to talk to.  We were alike in that we both seemed fish out of water.  Both of us seemed to have an odd disposition for being airborne infantry (paratroopers, to use another term), him being so empathetic, me being so aloof and nerdy.  Like me, he was also at the bottom of the totem pole, a fellow Private First Class.  His platoon would stop by my little FOB almost every night, either to go on patrol or to drop things off, or pick things up and take them back to the airbase at Kirkuk.

            It was about 6:30 pm or so when the platoon had to return to the airbase, and left those of us at the FOB behind for another night in the village of Taza.  Hart and I shook hands and said goodbye, sure we’d see each other with the resupply tomorrow night.  I noted that the company Executive Officer, David Bernstein, was going on the convoy.  He was the second in command, and him tagging along struck me as odd, since the commander and first sergeant were going as well (normally you don’t have all 3 top leaders in the company at the same place at the same time, just in case).  There was a coin toss in the mortar section as to who would be part of the escort back to the airbase (and back), and I won.  I would be staying and pulling guard, while Martin got stuck driving Bernstein and Hart back in Bernstein’s personal Humvee, Charlie 5.

 Relieved of the burden of having to sit through a roundabout convoy, I strolled back into my little room, happy once again that I was living in a confiscated building and not on the concrete foundation of an unbuilt home, the way I’d spent the previous two months.  I even had air conditioning!  Compared to the miserable, mosquito infested position we’d held for months on the Zab river, suffering through that infernal summer, I was living in the lap of luxury.

            My guard shift started in 10 minutes, and so me and Smithey, a fellow private in the mortar section, geared up and went to the roof.  We were just passing the time in talk, when suddenly we heard distant rumbling.  Somehow I knew it portended the worst, and my stomach clenched.  It was a few seconds later that I saw the soldier below on radio guard sprinting into the main building.  Smithey and I exchanged wide-eyed looks, and saw first platoon running to the remaining trucks, the first responders.

            Long minutes passed while first platoon got ready, and finally drove off into the direction of the rumbling.  The radio was handed up to Smithey and I, as one of the few people left back at the FOB.  Something in me changed then, as I listened to the commander’s voice asking where the FLA (Humvee ambulance) was.  Every 30 seconds to a minute he’d come on to ask the inbound reinforcements where the ambulance was and how soon it would be there.  The strain and concern in his voice become more and more evident, and it was then that I knew that it was really bad out there. 

            Smithey and I did our best to play relay between the attack site and the airbase, until a screaming lieutenant from first platoon told us to get off and find a sergeant.  We did so, and were relieved to be rid of the radio.  Smithey and I were relieved for guard, and I was shocked that it’d been 3 hours since it had all started.  It had seemed like 30 minutes.  We had somehow become very tired over those three hours, and climbed down. 

Inside our little room, Smithey and I took our gear off and began to get ready for bed, but we both stopped halfway through as if by some unheard command, and simply looked at each other for a moment.  The events of the night so far played out again in my mind, and I can only imagine what was going through his head.  After that silent minute, I got up and went outside and just sort of stared into space.

 I had been standing outside for a few minutes when Tuttle, my team leader at the time, came and asked me, “Did you know Hart?”  Did?  Past tense?  My heart sank, and I silently nodded.  He motioned for me to go up the ladder to the radio.

 I climbed back up to the roof, and stood dumbly in front of the sergeants collected up there.  My section sergeant, Pullen, was blunt: “Hart’s dead.”  Even now I’m not sure what I felt.  Mostly just numb shock.  I didn’t cry.  I wasn’t overcome with sorrow.  At first I simply I stood there silently and uselessly.  Then an unbelievable anger filled me, and something in my changed for life, just then.  The Iraqi scum had killed Hart.  My friend since Airborne School was dead.  Up until then I’d somehow half-heartedly believed in Hearts and Minds, and all that other politically correct nonsense about winning over the locals.  It was bullshit of course, but such had been our orders and the priority of the leadership.  After that night, though, I was filled with a singular hatred.  What had been a more general distaste for them had morphed into something very visceral and personal.  I wanted nothing more than to execute every man, woman, and child I found on street. 

It seemed foolish to stand up there any longer, so I wordlessly climbed back down in an angry daze, and returned to the room.  I climbed into the sleeping bag on my cot, and managed to pass into a dreamless sleep, shock overcome by exhaustion.

I was awoken by Tuttle, here again to tell me we had some cleanup to do.  The worst was not over yet.  The whole convoy had come back, everyone looking haggard and dejected.  I followed Tuttle through the motor pool and there it stood: Charlie 5, the truck that both Hart and Bernstein had been on.

The air reeked of sweat and dried blood.  The sun was just starting to come up, and some birds were chirping, adding a morbid quality to the air.  The passenger’s side of the Humvee had a deep puddle of blood pooled below the seat.  Seeing the raw volume of blood, doubt began to fester in me as to whether Bernstein could possibly have survived.  There were unidentifiable bits of organic matter on the seat, which was also soaked in blood.  The whole truck was riddled with holes, hinting at what the passengers must have gone through.  In the back, there was still more blood, everywhere.  Spent shell casings practically covered the truck bed. 

I felt somehow detached from the whole scene as I took a green scrub pad and got to work.  Some of the other guys with me started to tear up, but choked it down.  Others began dry heaving.  I think only one actually vomited into the slit trench nearby.  There was something grisly and ghastly about the whole affair, yet we carried it out, working for at least 4 hours on that truck.  I didn't know what to feel, and I recall feeling only numbness.  I simply shut out the situation and cleaned a Humvee.  I had a job to do, and as a lowly Private First Class, I was being paid to follow orders, not speak or think.  As we finished the job, someone came up and told me it was a shame Bernstein hadn’t survived the flight.  His femoral artery had been hit, and he’d bled out on the medical evacuation helicopter.

Late at night, when I’m deep in my drinks, as usual, sometimes I think about that night.  A coin toss kept me off of that truck.  I think about what good, promising men Hart and Bernstein both were.  The former was my friend, and the latter was truly an exceptional soldier.  I look at my life and wonder – should it have been me instead?

The Picture

He finished blousing his trousers in his tall jack boots.  He adjusted the last few items on his uniform, looking somewhat the way an  SS-Obersturmführer was supposed to.  His temples were gray now, no longer the Party approved shade of blonde.  His once chiseled face was now aged with stress.  Deep lines sliced into his skin, and crows feet danced around the edges of his eyes.  He was 28, yet looked 50, and felt 70.  The gray of his uniform, once so dashing, now seemed to merely reflect the bland, care-worn apathy and numbness that seemed to permeate him.

Behind him, the young woman sat on the edge of the bed, absentmindedly getting dressed.  She looked at him briefly, caught his eye in the mirror.  She turned away quickly, but not before her eyes briefly came to life and shone with the hatred she had for him and his kind.  He stepped over to her in a few long, quick strides, and raised his hand.  She began to cry, and cringed in anticipation of the blow.  It would simply be the latest in a long line of them, yet she cried every time.  He stood over her, and this time was reminded of the girls in the picture, which led to thoughts of the past, of his family, of who and what he used to be. 

He took out the picture from his pocket, and looked at it.  As he examined the picture for the umpteenth time, his brow became furrowed with thought, his eyes not even seeing the picture as introspection took over.  He felt the anger return then, directed at everything and nothing.  Grabbing his cap and sidearm, he quickly left the apartment and climbed down the stairs, completely forgetting that the girl existed, lost in his new purpose.

The street felt lifeless and empty to him, knowing that they had once been so much more lively and bustling, packed with people of all types going about their little lives.  Now there was just the occasional group of soldiers striding purposefully to and fro, sometimes marching in formation.  Occasionally one of the locals could be spotted, shuffling along in a hurry, trying hard not to be seen or noticed, especially if they were young and pretty, like the girl he had just left upstairs.  He strode over to a Daimler-Benz staff car and turned it on, proceeding to drive out of the city, taking sips from the flask of Schnapps he had come to rely on more and more.

It was noon when he reached his destination, a clearing in the forest outside of the city.  Standing before the mound where they had dumped the bodies, he stared blankly at nothing, collecting his thoughts.  There were birds singing, oblivious to man's upheavals and worries.

He reached into his pocket and took out the picture again.  Emotion washed through him once more as he went over it yet again.  The look of contentment in the handsome little family, so much like his own. There were three lovely daughters, appearing to be in their teens.  He himself had only two sisters, and imagined what a third would have been like.  His eyes then narrowed on the boy in the picture, a young lad of perhaps nine or ten.  The boy was standing in the front, holding a toy train, just as the man himself used to.  

When he had been a boy, he had loved trains.  He would watch them come and go at the tracks near his family's house.  The conductors would see him on the fence, and would blow the horn for him while he squealed in joy.  Those times were so long ago now, a bygone era of zest and life.

There was no returning to innocence. He could not go back now, and knew that though he still breathed air, and blood still pumped through his veins, he was a casualty of this war.  He had been swept up in it, and now the destroyer was destroyed, yet only belatedly realizing it.

He noticed that there were birds singing, oblivious to man's upheavals and worries.  There hadn't been any birds on that day when they'd shot this batch, when he had claimed this picture from the clenched hands of the boy's naked corpse.  He reflected on that day, and how it had ended him.  Everything he had been raised to believe was evil, was what he now saw himself as.  He had lost his mental defense, his power to numb himself to his crimes and simply not think about it too much.  There was no longer any room to pretend that he was doing right, building a shining future, the promised racial utopia.  

He sighed as he glanced from the picture to the mound of dirt, his face tensing with emotion.  The birds continued singing, ignoring him as he pulled out his Luger P-08.  Placing the barrel under his chin, he thought of the time before all this, when he'd still been truly alive.

The noise frightened the birds, and it was some time before they resumed their singing.