Soldier

Not the way men fight, but the way animals do. He stabbed me low in the thigh; I aimed higher and took him in the gut, not fatal. Not yet. I grabbed his face and tore at it. He kicked me and scratched at my eyes with his considerable nails. The blood stung my eyes, but I still managed to punch him, beating against his chest, his face, anything I could hit. He tore at the wound in my leg, and pain exploded through the thunderclouds of my world. I fell off of him. Where the bayonet came from, I don't know. I suppose it was mine. He stabbed it deep into my shoulder, as he fell on top of me. I screamed and dug my hand into the wound in his gut. In pain and shock, he roared and began to bite into me, tearing at the flesh of my neck and shoulder. Noises came from us that were not human: grunts, roars. I knew then that no god could be in heaven, for no god of love would make something so ugly as what we had become.

I should have died. I think I might have, there really isnt any way for me to tell. All I know is when I came to, it was to the sign of a red cross on the battered helmet of one of my men. They found me and the other man collapsed together, in the thrashing the hand that reached into his wound had apparently reached too far. It was buried so deep I could have crushed his heart in my hand. I had several people comment on that later. Some of my medics said that it was the strangest thing they had ever seen, and I would'nt be surprised if everyone that ever heard that story from that day until the end of the war thought it was bullshit. If it had'nt had happened to me, I would have too. Blissful unconsciousness claimed me, and the nightmare faded into the darkness for a time. I found out later that we had forced them back after the rest of the division found us, our attack behind their lines disrupted them enough for the 32nd to rout them, and take Limon. Of course I found all of this out from the infirmary. It took me almost a year to recover. By the time I was released the war was over and it was time to go home. It wasnt until I was there that I noticed the change. My family was notified of what had happened, and were overjoyed when I arrived whole and alive. It was the only time I ever saw my father cry. I admit I was happy too, but it was coloured by my despondency. I knew where that darkness came from, it came from that bloodied floor, and the body of that man, it came from me. At first the changes were things that one in my situation could expect, depression, disinterest, anger. My parents were confounded. My father suggested that I go back to school, he thought that being around people might do me good. I decided after a year to take him up on the offer. I went back to college in the spring of 1947. I remember that feeling as I walked up the steps at Wayne state. It was..alien. Something told me that everything around me was wrong. And for the first time since I left home, I wished that I wasnt there. Nothing made sense anymore, the people, their routines..everything seemed distant and removed.