His problem was, he had bent over to pick up his helmet and caught one in the head. Now he was lying underneath an O.D. poncho in the pouring rain with his jungle boots sticking out askew at oblique angles. He couldn’t get a ride back on the Medevac bird because they only take live-ones. So he was stiffening up next to me as I sat in the dark under my poncho on a foxhole which was filling up with water and already ankle deep.

          

As I posted my 2-hour guard, the insulation of my rubberized-poncho made me sweat, which cooled me off to shivers, before heating me up again. I cyclically went from the discomfort of being hot and wet, to being cold and wet, to being hot and wet again, all the time sitting in a monsoon downpour. My lower legs and boots, which were outside the shelter of the poncho, were getting soaked.

 

I remembered seeing the KIA’s death mask that afternoon. His poncho had blown from covering his head as the Medevac had lifted off. He was a “brother” and had a two-finger-sized hole in his right temple. I felt like an intruder when I looked at him, and quickly put the poncho back in place to shroud his face, after the chopper skied away.

 

“Nobody else will probably  know the irony of his death,” I thought as I stared into the darkness and falling rain, holding my M-16 across my lap under my poncho. “Only those who saw it will know the quirkiness of what happened—will know the suddenness of death that a headshot gives—how the body falls lifeless without a whimper or a cry to God—so shocking to watch, but the victim never shows any evidence of pain—just nothing—gone—bye, bye.”

 

“The military death report will just say—‘small arms fire,’ if anything at all—the ones who should know, will probably never know the details of his death,” I thought as I looked at the lumpy poncho lying next to me.

 

I never knew him, but I knew this most intimate part of his life, and somehow that made us close, closer than just being together, this night, in the rain. “What was it like Bro’?” I thought to him. “Was it like a bee sting going through your brain—or did you feel anything at all—what kind of a mind-fuck is it to be blown away like that—are you just left thinking without a body, your consciousness still alive—is your spirit still here, watching—or gone away to another reality—or do you just fade-to-black?”

 

If his spirit was still there, it didn’t answer my telepathy; I just heard the rain continue to beat down on his poncho-covered corpse. It was hard to look at death and not get caught up in its mystery and know that was everybody’s ticket that just came in many different ways.

 

In death, the KIA’s pain was over, as mine continued in life, sweating, then shivering, then sweating again. “Yeah, you got good duty, Bro,’ a permanent sham,” I thought.

 

Dockery relieved me and I got up from the hole and found a place in the mud to lie down under my poncho, in the fetal position with my M-16 between my legs, the muzzle pointed down and kept somewhat dry and mud-free, wedged between my boots that were one-over-the-other.

 

I was so tired to the bone, but I couldn’t sleep. My discomfort wanted me to cry, to whimper like a lonely puppy, but I was strangely, stoically silent, lying in the rain and mud, waiting for dawn.