Hearts and Minds

Home is the fantasy. The people where these men are from are the denizens of imagination; normal is the nearly forgotten dream.

Memories of home are smoke, and where there is smoke, there is a pyre.

It is oddly beautiful, in an apocalyptic sort of way.

If eyes are shut, the heat and smell can be mistaken for an open-pit barbeque. Long loins of pork or maybe even split half-hogs roasting over red coals, simmering and popping, can almost be pictured. This jungle, nearly familiar to men from the American South, is filled with things just different enough to remind an observer that they are most definitely strangers in a strange land.

They are doomed to be strangers in their own land, too.

The smell of hardwoods is missing, instead, dried grasses and bamboo mix with just the slightest tinge of scorched hair.

The humidity of the place almost boils in a flaming embrace. Combined with fire, the air temperature is nearly enough to bake the men watching the inferno.

Thunder rolls in the clear skies overhead as winds from an artificial hurricane whip the fire, nearly beating it to death. A Huey helicopter touches down far enough away from the village to avoid damage to the machine, but close enough to not care about damage to onlookers.

The skids stay earthbound for less than two minutes, long enough to load aboard two men and most of a third.

As the steel dragonfly's roar fades, the flames rebound. Thatched roofs and woven walls turn to char and smoke, and with eyes wide open, the smell doesn't remind the men of backyards or Friday nights after a big game. They sit, war-weary and worn, atop their steel helmets. Silent tears stream down the face of the younger of the two, and a man only three years his senior but infinitely older puts one grimy arm around the lance-corporal's shoulders.

Five minutes in the future, the stripes on the older man's sleeves will matter again, but in this moment, they are two men in mourning.

When they finally return home, they don't remain friends. They are from separate worlds, and the shared experiences they have in what should be a tropical paradise are things they rarely speak on, but think of much.

Shadows of vague horror cross the faces of those who listen to what few stories are shared. Looks of thinly-veiled disgust from friends and family drive home a need for silence.

While they don't remain friends, the men do share some things in common.

Neither will ever enjoy campfires again. Nor will they eat barbeque, wear boots, or own anything even close to olive drab green.