The bullet had rushed through and ripped the top of my ear; the missile threw me in the air and discarded me like rubbish. I did not doubt that it was my faith; I was fighting a holy war, and my crucifix was the first thing I saw when I came round. The gold chain that the cross entwined with lay on the floor; I have no idea how it had strayed from my neck. The cheap gold of the metal chain glistened against the mud, and I picked it up and slipped it over my head.
Memories returned to the surface like a body poorly weighted in a lake. I remembered the bullet, and against all training instinct, I ran in the direction of my attacker. They had shot to kill but instead saved my life. Had I not broken protocol and run towards them, the missile hit would have killed me. The irony of my killer being my saviour. The proof of God’s work; it must have been.
But where were my attackers now? Had they seen me and thought me dead? The silence of the battlefield told me I was alone. I held the crucifix and thanked God for saving me and allowing me to fight on. My life had been spared, somehow. My hands slipped into the dark wet mud as I got to my feet and checked my pockets; empty! I had been looted when I lay unconscious. Was that why the crucifix had been removed and then discarded? It was just worthless metal to the heathens, but to me, it was everything.
I could see the horror of where the missile had impacted. Bodies were burnt and dismembered beyond any recognition. I walked to it in the hope of finding someone alive, of finding someone I could help. Yet all I found was carnage. It was impossible to tell friends from foes in this wasteland. This is the price of war; families without brothers or fathers, all because of a heathen god and its followers. These men are dead and now in heaven or hell, but their families will have to live with the blackness of the abyss until the end of their days.
I had the open field in one direction as far as the eye could see; in the other, I had woodland. I could do nothing for these poor souls, so I headed for the cover of the trees; I accessed the risks quickly in my head. Both choices carried jeopardy; I picked the lesser of two evils. I was alone, unarmed, and without a means to call or communicate with anyone. The contrast and change could not have been more different as I stepped under the cover. The field had been muddy, brown, wet, and dirty. The lushness of the trees and the greenery, coupled with the dampness in the air, made it feel like a different world. The field of death lay behind me, and I was now in a world of life.
Dew dropped from one of the trees and fell on my face; I had no idea how thirsty I was and used my finger to manoeuvre it to my mouth. I rushed to find some leaves with water and ran further into the woodlands without looking back. I needed to sleep; with my body somewhat hydrated, a sudden flood of tiredness rushed over me. My eyes felt heavy, and each and every limb ached every time I moved. I suddenly felt like a man who had been thrown through the air and survived a war zone. The adrenaline flowing through my veins must have exhausted itself, and now I was left with only aches and pains.
I found a large tree and decided to climb it and rest in its branches. Looking up and into the tree was tiring, but I would be safer up high; I would also be able to take in my surroundings. I pushed my foot into a crevice and grabbed the lowest branch. My body ached from head to toe, and the muscles screamed as I pulled and pushed myself upwards. Even my bones cried out as I worked my way up and into the embrace of the leaves.
Finding a sizeable out swinging branch next to the trunk and settled myself as dusk started to fall. The branch, more of a second trunk, held me close and far more comfortably than I’d ever imagined. Maybe it was the day catching up with me, but I fell asleep quickly. Still, I did not sleep well, and my night was far from dreamless.
The scratching of twigs and undergrowth broke me from my slumber. The noises of animals as they burrowed, explored and hunted snapped me from the torment of remembrance. I wanted to sleep but was glad to escape the nightmares of suffering. I held the cross that hung around my neck as I dozed from nightmare to wakemare and kept myself quiet in my makeshift bed.
Dreams and nightmares take hold, and you have no escape. You are their captive until they loosen the binds of memory that create them. The morning activities in the foliage below woke me from my dream. I should not have been able to sleep, yet here I was, awake with a start. Maybe my mind was protecting me; from what I can recall of the nightmares, I’d have rather stayed awake.
I made my way along a branch until the leaves cleared a little and I could view the area. I looked back at the route I had taken, but I could not see the field of death. The mud patch of misery. I must have travelled further away than I had thought. The driving forward of fear and survival, the fight or flight of my brain choosing flight and taking me as a blind man upon this journey. I turned and looked in the other direction. I could see an old shack in the distance, through the woods. It was all I had, so I climbed down the tree and headed towards it.
Usually, I find a forest or woodland calming, and I could walk in the one near my home and just relax and forget my worries. The environment’s sounds were like a ticking clock to someone with tinnitus. Just background noise helping to focus my mind and calm my thoughts. Instead, today, every little snap, crackle and plop made me dart for cover. I am an invader in an ungodly country, and they would neither blink nor smile at my death.
I saw them first; they looked as if standing by a tree, and thought that they were stalking me. It seems silly now. It seems silly because now I know that they are dead. Long gone from this world and leaving nothing behind but their rotting corpse. I found a long stick and, as quietly as was possible, fashioned it into a spear. I snapped the end and worked it into a point. It was not much of a weapon, but I would not be going down without fighting. I held my breath as I approached, looking in all directions but never once taking my eyes from them. I could only think that it was a trap. One team member stood there whilst others waited to pounce, but I had to know, I had to be sure.
The body hung from the tree, suspended and bound to the trunk by a rope around its neck. I stumbled backwards; I had seen dead bodies, but this one was something else. It was one of the heathens. The mouth dangled open, and I could see the gaping holes where teeth had been. The cracked little white tombstones that remained were scarred with the grips of pliers. My eyes travelled the corpse, my heart telling me to look away, but my brain demanded I observe.
The fingers were bent and distorted into shapes and directions that they should never have been. I initially thought the red tips of the fingers were nail polish but then realised it was where the nails had been ripped away. Torn from their host and discarded like trash. I could see the damage to the steel toe-capped boots without investigating; they had been hammered, and the steel amputated the toes as it collapsed. The groin was awash with the brownness of dried blood, and I could see he had been castrated. I only hoped he was dead when it happened. Heathen or not, nobody deserved this kind of treatment.
Heathens they may have been, but humans they still were. I was fighting for my God, but I would never condone torture. My stomach retched at what I was seeing; I did not want to believe it could be someone from my side that would do this, but why would the heathens? I fought the bile and vomit that wanted to escape me and turned from the poor tortured soul. May God, be it mine or theirs, have mercy upon them. I then did something that I could not explain. I turned, removed the crucifix from my neck and placed it into the poor victim’s pocket. It would have meant nothing to him, but it meant something to me.
I left him there and continued onwards towards the shack I had seen; I had considered burying him, but what would have been the point? I would have left myself open to any attackers, and dead is dead; it would make no difference to him. I know why I had thought about it; it was a ‘Hail Mary’ of sorts, a chance at saying, “we are not all like this”. Death is part of war; torture should never be.
I found others on my trek. Five, I found, not including the first, all in varying degrees of decomposition. Tortured and mutilated; some worse than others, but it all amounts to the same. Each and every one tore a little more from me. We are supposed to be the good guys; we are the ones who have come to save these people. And yet, here they are in this forest that seemed so alive with life, dead and tortured. I felt guilt with each step I took.
The shack was larger than I had thought. I made my way around in ramshackle exterior to peek through the window. The inside was sparse, but someone must have been staying here. It was far too tidy to have been derelict, but nobody seemed to be at home, and I had seen nobody on my approach. It was then that I was struck from behind.
“Wakey wakey, my friend,” the man said. His accent was thick but the same as mine. My eyes crept open slowly. The back of my head throbbed along with my heartbeat. “Ah, good morning,” he said as my vision began to focus. The man sat in uniform on a chair opposite me. I was tied to mine; thick ropes were wrapped around my chest and feet. “I am sorry for the bindings, but you can never be sure.” I struggled with the ropes; we may have been wearing the same uniform, but I felt in genuine danger for the first time since the field. “My friend, there is no need to struggle”, he said, “you and me, we are on the same side. I will cut you free when I am sure of your intent”.
He stunk of piss and shit, and his matted hair was stuck to his forehead. Was this what war does to humanity; drives them to the point of madness and then pushes them over? Was I seeing my future sat talking before me? His eyes are what I remember; dark and without a hint of emotion as he spoke. “I am on the same side as you”, I said as calmly as possible. I tried to steady my breathing and slow things down. I needed to control what I had power over. ”Who are you?” I asked.
“I am The Watcher”, he replied with a smile.
“The Watcher?”
“I watch, and I report”, he said and added nothing more than a smile that chilled me to my very core. I felt it down in the bottom of my spine, a coldness so unnatural that I shuddered.
“Was that you? The people outside?” I asked. It was the first time I saw any emotion in his eyes as they lit up,
“Yes, the heathens, my decorations! Do you like them?” he asked. I was about to ask why, but he answered for me. “Heathens, the lot of them. What is there to live for if you can’t enjoy your work?”
I was appalled, shocked, and disgusted, but I held back. We had been sent here to save, not to torture, mutilate, and humiliate. Is this what we had become? No, I would not believe it; this must be just one man and his actions. “It is impressive”, I lied. I wanted to loosen him up, hoping he would release me from my bindings.
“It is all part of the plan, my friend”, he said.
“The plan?”
“Take yourself. You should have died in that missile strike, but I watched you make your way here. That was not part of the plan, but it worked out well, no?”
“You watched?” I asked.
“Sure, my bullet, you turned and came to the treeline”.
He had seen me. I thought The Watcher was a nickname, “So why do you watch?”
“It is my job!” He exclaimed, “you are pawns; I am a, I suppose, a rook”. I looked around the room; I wanted to find a way out of this mess. I could see my makeshift spear against the door, but I had no way to get it as I was tied up. “They send you all in, you gather and fight, and then they send the missile”, The Watcher said as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “You got lucky; I missed you”, he said with a laugh.
“Why did you shoot me?”
“I didn’t; I missed”, The Watcher said with a chuckle, “no, I did not mean to miss. You got lucky. And, Why not? You were all going to die anyway”, he finished.
I had often wondered what evil was; I had been told it was the others we were sent to fight, but no. I was looking at it. You were all going to die anyway. It was not the line, per se; it was the coldness and ice-like delivery. There was not a hint of empathy in his words or mannerisms. “But, we were sent to free them!” I protested. “We were sent to wipe out the heathens and bring freedom”.
The Watcher burst into laughter and then asked, “Have you seen any devil worshipping here?”
I had not. I had seen many things; many I would never want to see again, nor wish upon another soul, but devil worship and what we accused them of doing? No, I had seen none of it. What concerned me the most was that it was one-sided. I had seen and learned many things in the previous days and weeks, but it was all from my side. I had witnessed no torture or terror being inflicted upon us. I had seen people die, people, I had grown to care about, but that is war, as tasteless as that may sound. “No”, I answered.
“Exactly”, The Watcher said with enthusiasm, “I have been here since the start. We are here on a land-grabbing mission and regime change”. I wanted to argue back, but I did not have the will to do so. I had seen so much and learned much; how could I argue against something when I did not believe I would have been being truthful? I had seen the truth, and the truth was that I was fighting a lie.
“But why?” I repeated; asking why again in a slightly different way; It was all I had; it seems such a pointless question to have posed now. I thought I was fighting for my country, fighting for my faith, but now I had discovered the truth, that we were the invaders and the ones causing this war.
Evil is ghastly and horrific, but it can also tell you truths. They can be hard truths, they may be truths that you do not want to hear, but they are truths nonetheless. I knew this was the truth; I had always known it deep down. We had been conned by our faith; they had used that to deploy and deceive us. But, once here, we knew. How could we not? We kept our eyes closed, and rifles pointed forwards, but knowing that we were pawns, I was just cannon fodder. The anger cleared the wilful blindness. It opens your eyes to the truths and evils you have been spreading. Was I any better than The Watcher? I suppose. I had killed, but I had not taken enjoyment from it.
“We’re on the same side. Can you untie me?” I asked. I did not expect him to say yes, but if you don’t ask, you don’t get. His answer surprised me.
“You are not going to run?” I had not expected his willingness to unbind me. Had I misjudged him? No. He was still a stone-cold killer and sadist.
“Where would I go?”
“We are on the same side, you and I, and besides, if you run, I will kill you”, The Watcher said with the coolness of a cat playing with a mouse. He made his way over to me and cut the ropes quickly with a knife from his belt; I let the ropes fall to the floor by my feet and rose slowly. My limbs ached once again as I stood up, and the pounding in my head returned with a vengeance. The Watcher stood and waited, still as a board, to see what I would do. I suspect he was waiting to see if I would attack; I did nothing and just shook the rustiness from my body. I smiled a smile that I hoped would be disarming and friendly. “I had to be sure, you know”, The Watcher said as he placed his knife down and on a table. I was surprised at the ease at which he accepted me. Was he waiting for someone to come? Someone to befriend him and keep him company?
The Watcher took a step toward me and embraced me. We hugged like old friends who had become reacquainted after years apart, “it is good”, he said as he held me. We broke apart after the hugging finished, and his stench infected my nostrils. Sitting together we talked for hours about the mundane and what was important. I will never forget his absolute lack of empathy and how he spoke of death as if it were his obligation to bring it upon as many as possible. He spoke as if it were his duty or his destiny. I will remember everyone I have killed until the day I die; he treated it as nothing more than sport.
Once we had spoken and dusk was starting to set, he lit a candle and placed it between us. I excused myself to go to the toilet and left him alone. I needed to empty myself, but I also wanted to see if I had earned The Watcher’s trust. If he had followed me, I would have taken more time; as it happens, he did not.
He left me alone to complete my business, and I returned to the shack. I stood with my back to The Watcher and was about to say a prayer, but then I realised that I no longer cared. My faith, which had always been strong, had been stolen from me. As I placed my hand down on my spear, I had already decided my course of action. I looked first and then pounced. I think The Watcher knew my plan as his hand moved toward his knife, but I was too fast. The wood sank through the saggy skin of his neck and cut through the other side. I had killed before, but this was the most satisfying of deaths. Watching him struggle as the blood released itself was fulfilling, and I had done the world a favour.
So I leave this for you. It is not a justification. I am just writing about what has happened to me. I offer nothing other than my words, and hopefully, you can give me your understanding. I came here; no, I was sent here on the justification of faith and have learned that we are the intruders. We are the evil in this country. I can only apologise and say I will make amends as best I can. I plan to travel back home, and on my way, I will spread the word.
I will do all that needs to be done.
—
The Soldiers Journey was originally published by Cinnabar Moth – ( https://cinnabarmoth.com ) in 2023, it was a part of their eZine –