Page 28 - Contrast1971Spring

I converged with my patrol at the scene. Once there I strolled over to the man I'd killed.
There he lay, the pipe by which he'd been resting bearing witness to the wound that killed him.
There was one thing I noticed, two rather: the first was that he'd been shot before, in the side,
the second was that he'd had no gun. I joined my companions. The rest of the day passed un-
eventfully.

Night, however, was a different matter. There was no action in the way of fighting, but
my mind was working overtime. I lay curled in a few rumpled blankets thinking of the morning's
patrol. Three men, two of them unarmed, lay dead in that town by my own hand. Three men!
I tried to convince myself that orders were orders. I was right, there was no use punishing my-
self. It was kill or be killed back there and I walked away from it and that was all that mattered
I figured I was getting soft and dismissed the matter altogether.

That day in April, however, it was not ~o easily put away. Suddenly leaving the past I
realized I was stretched out on my back on the floor, much the same as that night long ago.
This time I could not put things to rest as I had been doing for so many years. Things were
more vivid, more grotesque, more revolting. I was horrified as once again I saw those eyes,
those terrified, glaring eyes, crazed with the fear of death. I saw the flame leap from the end of
the rifle to obscure the face. I heard the thunder of the report and the sound the body made as
it struck the pavement. I relieved every moment of each killi~g of that day in December, I saw
it all, heard it, smelt it. I was sick of the horror, of the death, for the one who died with
Kamerad on his lips. Murder it was, nothing else. I shudde~ed. I sobbed, suffered spasms of
disgust. The war! I moaned, it was the war not I. To make the country safe. To make it safe.
Orders, Orders ... the Lieutenant, not me. The Lieutenant, not me. The Lieutenant. It's not
even like I was the one pulling the trigger. 'Not me. The Lieutenant, the orders ...

It was no use. Not this time. 'Not ever again. There was no excuse, none in my case, none
anywhere. No excuse. None. What excuse could there be ... for that? None, no reason, none
at all. I COUldn't hide behind the orders anymore, never should have in the first place. I should
have known, you can't hide from yourself, you spend too much time with you. The way I
phrased that, speaking to myself, would at any other time have struck me as funny. This time,
though, I was appalled at the realization of what I had really been doing to myself over those
years since the war. The fact that I'd explained away murder for so many years ... sickening.