CAUTION This story is for mature audiences, contains semi-graphic detail on war violence and may be intense for some readers. Not that you shouldn't read it, I just wanted a disclaimer.
--------------------------------------------------
July 12, 1969
Dear James,
I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get around to writing you. Leisure time out here is something that we have frequently, but can never get enough of; we cling selfishly to ever minute and use it press our inner demons into the farthest confines of our minds, sort of a childish attempt to forget our sins and pretend, even for a short while, that we are still human. I wrote to Mom and Dad several months back, a ten page letter, actually, but it was false, plastic, conserved. I talked about missing them, about the countryside, about the guys, but it wasn’t a real letter, wasn’t really the truth of it all. They wouldn’t have been able to handle it all, of course, that’s why I finally gotten myself to go ahead and write you; you can tell a brother things you could never really bring yourself to tell a parent. Like how while your patrol is humping through a field you turn your head to the left to watch the sun set and you see your friend step on a landmine, sending his ass up into his skull. Or how after an ambush of blurred, surreal images you just stand and stare dumbly as your friends, blind with rage, tie a Charlie up to a tree, a confused and whimpering man, and you just stare as they cut off each of his fingers and then remove his head, and you want them to stop, you have to speak out. But you just don’t.
Oh, how rude of me. How are the wife and kids? I remember you were working a 9 to 5 up in Chicago, with a dog and a white picket fence. Count your blessings, James; all my American Dream holds is a gun and toilet paper to wipe my ass, a few grenades, one or two magazines for a lonely afternoon, the odd candy bar and a good-luck necklace given to me by an old mama-san in one of the villages we stopped in. Funny, I can’t seem to remember the name as I write; every village, shrine, temple, road, path, campsite and foxhole blends together after a while, even the faces of the men I’ve killed and the friends I’ve lost. I want you to do something for me, James, I want you to try and never let your life blend together. I want you to try to wake up each morning and look at your wife and kids, your dog, your house, your car, your white picket fence and smile, James, smile because you are blessed with the possessions and the life that younger men are dreaming of as they die; they die and they lose their face and their name and become just another body, their face and name join thousands of others and mesh together to become just one face and just one name: the KIA soldier.
A couple months back I lost a friend, Eddie Bauer. He and I went to high school together; you may have met him once or twice. Eddie was always high spirits and sunshine, always telling a joke or slapping somebody on the back, and always whistling a tune, sometimes even when we were under fire. The kind of guy who’s too good to make it long in a war. He got shot in the stomach and chest, pumping blood out in steady rhythm. He could have gotten dosed up with morphine, numb some pain, but the medic had been shot in the throat and lay too far to run to. So Eddie just sat there and took it, just took the pain in silence, a grimace on his face but a smile in his eyes. I sat their holding him, cradling his head as the gunfire died down around us, sat and murmured and whimpered that he was going to be fine, that we would put him on a chopper and they would get him away from all this, take him to a hospital and fix him up, a couple of drinks with the little straw hats, maybe a handjob from one of the nurses and he’d be back in the game. As I was saying it he managed a gurgled laugh; he knew it was all bull****. He knew he was dying, and yet, he was okay with it. As he began to stiffen he looked me in the eyes and I knew just what he would say. He would say I didn’t need to lie, he knew it was bull**** and that I didn’t have to try and make him feel alright because he was
there, in an ecstasy of no cares or worries or responsibilities, and he opens up his mouth to say it all, I see his mouth open and he’s a split second away from saying it to me, but he never does, because suddenly he’s gone, he’s dead, and suddenly I’m not holding Eddie Bauer anymore, just another damn corpse. As I’m writing this, James, I keep trying to remember his face. I know he had brown eyes and hair, and I’m trying to make that face appear in my head and it just won’t come. No pictures to help me, either. I can remember his jokes, his laugh, that he was always good at baseball and that he and I both dated Sally Fields back in high school, but I can’t remember a face to go with it all.
These are the things I can tell you that I could never say to Mom or Dad, about how friends die in your arms and then you forget their faces, how you can sit and say and do nothing as you watch a poor, tired, confused little man have his head cut off, and how sometimes you wake up in the middle of the night whimpering and shaking uncontrollably because you feel so lost inside, so utterly lost. Take what I’ve said here, James, and keep it, don’t just read it and feel bad for me and then place it on your shelf. Keep it. Use it. Embrace everything you have with a fiery passion and don’t let go; enjoy every moment you are given with family and friends. And though I want you to cherish what I’ve said to you, please, don’t remember me this way. Remember me by that time we saw each other just before I went off: a happy-go-lucky kid rearing for adventure with the world before him. Do it for me, even if it’s a lie; it’ll take away any worry you feel for me. Take care of yourself and your family, and I’ll try to write again sometime. I guess it’s back to formalities now. I’ve got to keep my face straight and my eyes unmoving.
Your brother,
Simon Howell
