A Moment
in Time that last Forever
Walking in peace under the clouds of heaven, my mind was
rudely interrupted by the sound of a spinning single pair of bladed evilness connected to an ugly bird above
my head. Common to all who served in Nam, the twin-bladed whirling sound of the UH-1H helicopter can quickly bring the
devil inside your head without trying.
Although the sound of the helicopter often meant the arrival
of angels who come to rescue you, it is also the sound that brings back the
evil and horror hidden deep inside the skull and that creeps into the conscious
like lava runs to the sea, as it intrudes the peace of the mind with a single
stroke of flashbacks and memories that cannot be ignored.
It is a sound that a soldier will not ever forget. It immediately
clears the mind of present tense and brings the mind back to the past where it lives forever. The transformation is
instant, the peace is gone and the war is on. A war between being sane and
insane, chilled and hot-headed and crazy versus
pure craziness. It was the worst of times and it binds you to the present or
future, whether you like it or not. It controls
you better than you can control it.
So as the faint sight of the ugly 'helo' above you streams away like a drifting cloud that makes an
earth shuddering noise to your ears, your head goes back in time and already
alerted your senses as you can hear the gunfire, the mortar explosions, smell the smoke and fire and the
spells of horror that filled your heart with
more than the years since it happened for reals.
It is beyond logic or common sense what the eyes have seen as these images are engrained into the mind incessantly
and played back repeatedly whenever the sounds of hell are detected or heard
above me in the clouds of the open sky. Time and space – it was the worst and
best of friends and foe but it was the
one binding material in a tapestry of a war of many pieces.
Mostly mental since the war has gone, these dreadful remnants seem to live forever. This Huey was
both a bird of a blessing and a companion of pain and sorrow. What was laden on
this ugly bird were images of war never taken for granted. Its shape endured
all kinds of rain, terrain or weather but its arrival was usually associated
with pain, death, and sorrow.
So as the mind travels at the speed of light, you become the
unavoidable magnet to the connection between the days of the past and the present.
Without any intentions voluntary or involuntary, step into the haze of
yesterday’s smoke and fire and stepped into the dirty bird or stepped off the
vibrating skids of the ugly bird, devil or angel,
to do what you are hired to do – be a soldier.
Your mind breaks into a sweat, your heart is pounding and your
fingers seek to hold onto something solid as your knees get weak. Your rifle
slung over your shoulder, and your helmet strapped as you jump off the bird
onto the ground only to see it drift away into the sky and leaving you behind
with others knowing they won’t be back for you for a very long time.
A time that is constant as the smell of the hydraulic fluid while
you were sitting on the floor inside the
bird moments ago, is replaced by the sulphuric
smoke of gunfire and mortar shell around you.
The smoke screen is lifting; your
hasty steps are hammering the soft muddy
ground as you make for cover the best you can under conditions known only to
those who stand or crawl there with you. The weight on your back is only
compounded by the role you have – a medic - tied to a unit that is engaged in
the horrors of war with an invisible enemy
that moves around the jungles and nighttime
like ghosts in the sky.
Trying hard to blot out the constant sound of the rotating blade as it eats the air that keep it up there
in the sky, you struggle, momentarily falling to the past and all its horrors. You
know that there is no scientific way to
overcome this dilemma, there is no cure for the past and the momentary physics
attached to your memories that will last into eternity.
So you try to divert the anxiety, the stress and the soldier’s
decision of ‘fight or flight’ as well as the thoughts
of never coming home again. The order is clear to ‘advance the enemy’ and any
ideas of turning around were negated by the footsteps of the motion forward.
Reflection in your loneliness this peaceful day takes a toll day after day and when you
finally arrive, it wasn’t at all like you pictured it would be. For some reason,
your stay with your buddies in uniform as their comforts and companionship gave
you more calmness and was emotionally helpful. So it is experienced to be a
moment in time that last forever.
