Step Into The Light (Poetry and Prose Journal)

May 10 Entry

I might have known that for all of the beautiful things in the world- there is also a certain ugliness. Perhaps beauty can only exist and be appreciated when it is in stark contrast with something horrible. The witness to both can only react.

The girl's face was, simply put, quite beautiful. Even when frozen in that mask of a scream. Pretty white teeth apparent where lips were pulled back. She had green eyes, almost as pretty as another little girl I knew only from a handful of pictures. I take another second to ask myself how this happened while I hold her down on the casualty-mat to keep her from thrashing while our medical technician applies another tourniquet.

They tell us she had stepped on a landmine not too far out from wherever the hell we were operating out of in this rotation. Locals who heard the detonation found her and brought her to our outpost- hoping we would help.

From what I can tell looking at whats left of her legs, she might be lucky to keep anything below her knees. Series MC120 is a nasty little shit to step on- the concussive field alone had disintegrated most of the right leg to the knee and the shrapnel had torn into her left pretty bad. Fragments of shattered bone protrude from the strips of shredded flesh. We've stopped the bleeding but she will probably go into shock soon. If she wakes up at all it will probably be after treatment. What sort of life will she live now? Can anyone deserve this?

Guys in EOD call them "Foot poppers." They have just enough explosive to take off a foot or a leg- and by extension this makes a soldier who cannot effectively fight but who still needs the squad to look after him until medivac can hop to their grid.

I'm looking at this mess below me, covered in red soil and piss from when her bladder let go. I'm looking at her and all I can think to do is brush her hair away from her face while she looks up at the pretty blue sky that doesn't hold a cloud in sight. The rust colored dust that covers her face is wet where the trails of tears have run down.

I begin to ask myself what kind of a person, what kind of a man makes the conscious choice to set up a popper right next to the footpath that the locals use to get water from their little tributary. There isn't anywhere else. That little stream of untouched mountain water is the only drinkable thing in 50 kms before it goes into the recently renamed Ghehr river where local industry killed everything before the corrupt local officials were reassigned.

The rumble of something vaguely roaring reaches us in the wafting breeze. That would be the rotary lander coming in low and fast to stay under the sensors of any guided ground to air rockets. We still have no idea who is supplying them with the higher end munitions that have started rolling out since last month-cycle.

A tiny spec grows until it becomes a visible medivac lander, coming in to the hand carved landing pad that took all of a week to carve out of the hard packed and unfamiliar stone.

When the propwash of the two giant turbofans hits our dry mountain ridge the tepid air swirls into hurricane winds. Suddenly everything is filled with tiny fragments of chipped stone. Each one nips and stings exposed skin and its all we can do to carry this broken little girl to the side hatch where another medical tech stands ready to take one end of the cas-mat.

Just as soon as the mat slides into the magnetic locks, the hatch closes. We turn away as the fans start to whine as they push up and off into the wide open blue.

In fifteen minutes I've washed my face off as best I can and I walk back towards the squat little fortified rise inside the compound that reminds me of one of those ancient motte and bailey castles that they used to build in Europe. I was an architectural student. Now I'm here.

I scuff at a thin wisp of grass with my boot as I cross the small yard next to the perimeter wall that we keep open. I look up at that same blue, always cloudless sky. I cross over to where someone had left the telescoping observation unit pointed up at the sky from last night. I adjust it to face out towards the same red wasteland I have been stuck in for the last three years. I imagine the unit will be pointed up again tomorrow morning from the earth-gazers.