Today it is raining in Moscow, Russia and as I was drinking that cup of coffee, I was thinking of my past. So I jotted down a remembrance of a long time ago. Remembrances never go away and no matter how in touch with them you get and no matter how you think time will make them fade/heal. They never do and the best you hope for is to reach that happy balance with the past…
You remember crawling in the mud, that mud of an endless rain and all around you, it runs in rivulets as you slip and slide, trying to get to where you can see the enemy and still be safe. Or maybe that is not a good way to look at it. You are never safe, for you are in someone else’s home and territory. You are invading in their land and they have every right to shoot your ass…
Then you stop sliding and listen. Something inside of you tells you to stop. At first all you hear is the drops of rain as they fall from leaves all around you and after you almost think it is safe, you hear the sizzle of a cigarette as it goes out in a puddle of water. You realize that someone is less than 10 feet from you and you only pray that it is a someone, not someones, as in many of them…
You look around and realize that you are possibly lucky enough to be alone in this strange world that belongs to others, except for who tossed that cigarette away. Then your world of being alone is broken by a FNG (F***ing New Guy) and he stumbles into the way of what you find out in a few seconds, is 5 Gooks. That is what we called them and now it is a terrible thing to say Gook…
So instead we will just say for the record, North Vietnamese…
Your first thought is FNG = dead meat and then your next thought is, who the hell did not keep the FNG down on the ground and then it was to “rock and roll time” as you part the jungle plants to see who the FNG was and while 5 North Vietnamese shot a whole bunch of holes in a FNG, you took advantage of their distraction and sent them to hell in a hand basket, along with the FNG! Then you crawled to the FNG and looked at such a young kid, that same thing you have done for what seemed like a hundred times before. The tears stopped many moons ago and all that you have are words to pronounce as you ask God to forgive their souls. All of their souls, even the Gooks…
You still to this day ask God to remember them all, even as you remember that you wished that the FNG’s would stop coming from America and being killed, as they were scared to death, as you once was and still are also…
The reason why men commit suicide years after they have stopped killing people that never should have been killed in the first place, are these remembrances that never go away…
I am lucky! I have reached a balance with my remembrances and drugs, alcohol and other crutches did not play a role in the balance…
Shear determination on my part, won in the end…
Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…
This work, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.