Holding him in my arms.
I don’t know his name.
He wasn’t in my unit.
He was just another face smeared with blood, sweat, dirt and god knows what else.
He would end up being another boy going back home to his mom, but not at her door step with flowers and balloons.
But at her door step in a brown box, followed by wilting flowers and cards, that she never wanted to get.
My ears have become numb to the screaming, piercing through the smoke, caused by the bombs dropping around me.
Now I’m focused on his brown eyes.
His eyes were the color of rich soil. The power of life surging through it, yet only if the sun shines on it perfectly.
But, by God, there is no sun shining today.
His brown eyes.
His brown eyes of determination.
The eyes that followed the stroke of his hand when he signed up for this.
The eyes that scanned his families face one last time before he boarded the plane.
The eyes that won’t be there for his mother in comfort when the sergeant comes knocking on her door.
The eyes that won’t see her collapse on the floor, cursing God for letting her son go. Were her prayers never heard?
I look down from his eyes, once full of warmth, now stone cold, like the Statue of Liberty on a January day in Manhattan.
He wears a gold cross around his neck. I’ve never been religious but I say a prayer to the Big Man in the clouds for him.
These green and brown colors that cover his body, like mine, are normal. Once they kick you off that helicopter, the day when you are hit with the fact that this is real, they seem to give you a pair of goggles that changed your vision to brown and green. To make you block out the real world.
As if you would forget it.
But you do.
I don’t know how long I’ve been here, but long enough to hear a booming voice screaming “Get the hell out of here!” I don’t know if it was God or my lieutenant, but I didn’t move a muscle.
I sat there continuing to hold this boy, this man. He seemed no more than 20 years old, yet he was driven to serve and his years were cut short. Too short.
All of the sudden an arm grabbed ahold of me and yanked me away. Screaming into my hear something I can’t comprehend. My legs follows but my eyes continue to be locked on the motionless body.
I didn’t even know his name.
