up country Laos, 1972*

I won't do it, I said. I won't.

It's a direct order, he said.

We stood a few yards apart,
in front of the blasted wire
where the screaming
enemy wounded
were caught like stuck flies.

It had been a long night
of attack and repulse;
the howling wounded
were all that remained.

He was maybe thirty,
an Ivy League ***** wannabe;
I was just a battle weary broken
20-year-old with no silver spoon.

You will get your *** out there
and tap those moaning *****
and you will do it now, another order.

I said, I'm a medic, not a murderer.
They are prisoners. There are lines,
even here. I will not cross this one.

**** lines. What you are, he said, is a *****.

In his hand, a lethal black 9mm Beretta;
in mine a 1911 model Colt 45 automatic.

Both loaded. Both ready to speak. Both angry.
Both anxious. Both with something to say.

You aren't my CO. You're not even an officer.
I refuse, I said. ******* and the Company.

My hand tensed on the 45. The Beretta quivered.

We looked at each other, working out the odds,

Death, for one of us, seemed only a few seconds away.

But he hesitated, lowered his weapon.

It's ******* like you who lost this war, he said.

And it's mad men like you who started it, I replied.

He turned and walked out to tap the wounded,
one by one, ****** after ******.

Delighting in revenge.

I walked back to the chopper, gun in hand,
and nodded to the pilot. We flew away,
at first to more war, but then back to the world,

the world that could never, ever be the same.

~mce