Fallujah,
Iraq
I've cut him up pretty badly with the
K-bar while we where fighting, but this isn't
textbook work. Not by a long shot. This is basic
animal fighting, with blood and tears and teeth and claws. I can't see out of my left eye because of a vicious thumbnail and the bite on my forearm is deep. I think I feel
air on the bone. We stopped swearing a while ago, giving over to
guttural screams and the huffs of breath
punched free of lung. I savour the fistful of hair I now hold, and I pull the knife closer into his
neck. The guy in the doorway has no fucking clue what to do and my friend has
pissed his pants. The sand in this country smells
different, the sour sweat and diesel aroma is just wrong. I just want to go home. Our heaving
breaths have matched up, and the gunman is feeling like a
cowboy. This is how it ends. I flip the knife left while the muzzle flares into a 6 pointed star of
flame. It's true. You don't hear the one that kills you.
Ben Luc,
Vietnam
I had a belly full of
Ba Mu'o'i Ba at lunch because I hate the
Bad Bush. This little fucker tried to stick me like a
pig when it started raining
105 shells. He broke 3 of my
fingers with his rifle butt when I smashed him with my
helmet. I felt his jaw break when I got my hand up into his
throat. We fell together into the wet pigshit
mud. The
bamboo scrub is wet and raw and sharp. The sweat makes our blood run
thin and brown orange. I got my arm around his neck and was jerking it up while I gritted my teeth when he got the
pin out of my grenade. I lay down on his
back and counted 3.
Chungju,
Korea
The trees are black scraps, standing dead in the thin
wet snow. We heard the
brass trumpets call a charge before the shell holes started showing heads. He jumped in my foxhole from the side while I was trying to reload with
frozen fingers. We were both scared shitless, and we swung our guns like
clubs. My boot caught his leg at the same time he got a
fist up in my chin. The shoulder rammed up into my
ribs before I drove my knuckles onto the hard
crown of his head. Steam rose from our torn coats. The squealing metal treads of the
Pershing crushed us flat before I could twist away from the handful of jacket he had wrapped up in his
fist.
Ortona,
Italy
The beating sun made the white rocks
shine as they where kicked into the air by the chattering rounds coming down the street. I rolled through the door
hunched low, and he got me right across the nose with the
dagger. I grabbed wildly and pulled his collar close before butting my bleeding head into his face. My pistol jammed after getting him in the
forearm, and through the blood I aimed a fist that caught him in the
groin. While he fell, he kicked my throat hard enough to break my
teeth and choke off my air. The burning house fell on top of
us while I tried to get up.
Messines,
France
Out under the
wire I crawled out across the black dark looking for my fellows from the other side doing the
same. I heard his
belt buckle scrape across some blasted scrap stuck in the sucking mud. My tackle from a
crouch dropped us both into the steep sided
shell hole. Falling down the side you kept giving me vicious punches with your face twisted into a grim red mask. I tried to
shield my face but you snuck one past and broke the lenses on my
gas mask. I got the pistol out of my belt and pressed it into your
ear when the whitestar
phosgene shell made that hollow "crump" over our heads. We sat in the misty
gas snowing down on us. I shot you before I did myself in. We burned from the inside out.