I remember

I’m flying on a KC-130 tonight, on a training mission to refuel jets in flight. I’m at a school where grunts learn more about integration with air. I remember another C-130 flight several years ago.


I lay wounded on a stretcher, an IV in my arm, a bandaged arm and leg. Marines in various states of consciousness are strapped in above, below, fore, and aft of me. Many of them are in worse shape than me. An Air Force flight nurse is beside me. She asks me if I want something for the pain. I decline, feeling unworthy of taking it. Later, and for a long season I would take something for the pain, but from a bottle that never seemed to empty.


The IV fills my body with fluid and I must relieve myself. The nurse offers me a container of sorts which I refuse, trying to maintain some dignity. So, I climb out and stumble to the small urinal in front of the cargo area. The pain in my leg from the gunshot wound is throbbing. I steady myself with the arm that does not have shrapnel in it by holding onto the stretchers that cradle the broken and torn.


I must step over others seated in the front. They are awake, alert, and untouched. They did not come from the fight but ended up on the same flight as us. We are going to Germany, from Kuwait, before that Iraq. I don’t where they are going, or where they came from. They sheepishly look at me in wonder, then cast their eyes away. I look at them in contempt.


Much later I would regret that, and I would pity them, but not until the guilt became my companion. It was then that I understood why they cast their eyes down. Even now my eyes look backward and inward, and in unexpected moments like this one tonight…I remember.

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