Questions Of Peace

By Jeff Carson

Questions of Peace is a one-of-a-kind book of the endless struggles of two strangers on their way to being a family. This is one man's journey from his childhood void of love to his lifelong search to find out if true happiness really exists. Life takes him from a juvenile life of crime to the war-torn jungles of Vietnam and on to the cold harsh streets of New York City--homeless, helpless, locked in a day-to-day battle against the world and all its evils. His search ends with a most unlikely responsibility--a vivid testimony of God's true love, through the eyes of a child. This is a story of how the honest love of a child can bridge all gaps of society, no matter the color of our skin or our origin. On this planet, we all have the capacity to give love and be loved, if we would just dare to try. This is a different kind of love story, full of triumphs and defeats, which encourages us to stand up one more time after we stumble and fall. Question your life's peace. Do you have a godly peace? Do you honestly know where peace can be found? I have found it as I lived each of the pages of this book. I pray you find it here also.

--Jeff Carson

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9798890432001

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Questions Of Peace

Jeff Carson

ISBN 979-8-89043-199-8 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-89043-200-1 (digital)

Copyright © 2023 by Jeff Carson

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Dedication

About the Author

Dedication

This book is dedicated to every person who has a desire for a better life, especially those of us who live with a severe learning disability. We may have a tendency to want (better) just a little more than others. In this book, you may find flaws in the punctuation, spelling, and editing that reflect solely on me. Please bear in mind with the good Lord's help, I have done my best to do every part from the first to the last page. Only through trial and error do I offer up a glimpse of what is in my heart to the world.

Cover design by Mandy Richardson and special thank you to Cathy Dillard Unger for encouraging my soul.

You know at that exact moment I would have probably traded my soul for a Pepsi. And what a misfortune of fate it is to know what one tastes like but never be able to have one again. Ahh, as if it wasn't enough to be dying of thirst, I was now dealing with the true aggravation of an eye twitch. This only proves one thing to me, it doesn't have to be a big annoyance to succeed in driving you crazy, it just has to be steady. I calmed the jumping nerve in my face by laying my head against one of the bamboo poles on the side of my cage. Overly weakened and disgusted by it all, somehow exhaustion finally won out and I managed to postpone the torment by dozing off. Now what can only be described as a prolonged frustration of trying to rest even for just a moment came to an abrupt end by a most unlikely interruption. A desperate sounding prayer. And as precious as sleep is here, it truly aggravated me to be stirred from it. It took me only a second or two to tell this wasn't the usual random nonsense of someone just speaking. There was an honest agony that was evident in the words themselves that seemed to compete against the other sounds that filled the darkness of the jungle. I listened without a choice. Although I knew the prayer was not meant for my ears I couldn't help feeling that I was caught in the middle of someone's spiritual battle. Any other time I wouldn't have been so willing to give up my resting, but the sincerity of the carefully timed words of a defeated life resonated loud in my ears, the deeds sounded all too familiar to me as I took them to heart. I shook my head to the weight of my own guilt that was seemingly being spoken in someone else's quivering voice. In more ways than one I could relate to these humble words of remorse reaching out from this self proclaimed sinner. Steady and loud the prayer was at first, but soon the whispers of confession grew fainter without an Amen. The usually quiet emotion of someone weeping was just loud enough for all to hear, but even that sound softened to an end after a span of a few moments. I really didn't know how to absorb the stirring of someone's spirit. Now there seemed to be an awkward silence that took over the moonless night. Who was it that had taken the time to pray about their lifetime of mistakes outloud?

I listened intently for more sounds until all I could hear was the thump of my own heart beat and it became quite maddening after I once started listening to it. The night soon became endless with no more cat naps of sleep to be found. Every distraction imaginable now tried to steal my thoughts. But the one thing that kept revolving around in my head was how badly I craved an ice cold Pepsi. It was a terrible bother to me, so much so that it became its own measure of cruelty.

This night was truly more dreadful than the others before it, and I wonder why? Was it because of the prayer I heard? Was I jealous in some way? All I know is that it seemed to truly cast a sobering clarity in my own agony. All the little noises in the jungle have their annoyances, but this variation of the norm had an upsetting outcome in my mind. The norm I speak of is the never changing torment of my last four and a half days without a drink. It had taken its toll, I-was-literally dying of thirst and couldn't do anything about it. My mind played on with its teasing game of memories of how good a Pepsi is. Shame on you I said to myself, think of the consequences of even thinking of trading your soul. My soul? I didn't even know if I still owned my soul after all that I had already been through. It's probably not what someone should be asking themselves at life's final moments, but I kinda needed to know, I guess.

Either way it was very grim knowing that it was as far through life as I was going to make it. Twenty years old and what had I learned about life?

Nothing really that was of any use to me now. I don't know what had helped me hold on to that point, and that was exactly what I was doing, barely holding on. It may be a natural occurrence for other people's brains to grab at any notion to save itself, but not mine. These thoughts of a trade for 16 ounces of soda for an eternity of more misery? What the heck was my mind doing to me? Stumbling through life as I always had, never prepared me for the ending. My ridiculous life has been a constant exposure to evil. It was all I had ever known. This night of prayer in the jungle had an odd effect on me, it was about then when I realized my soul is the only thing of any value that ever belonged to me. But I have always been to stupid to know it. What crazy thoughts those last hours. It was nothing short of one long desperate hallucination taking my mind past any logical limits. I must say it almost became entertaining, those untameable pieces of random mental jiberish.

I guess thirst is the poison that can make a person think about almost anything. What good was dreaming and scheming for a drink anyway, when honestly all I wanted at the time was to die and get away from this tortured life. I was just so sick and tired of it all really. It had become quite boring to be afraid of death, even as it was steadily creeping ever deeper into me. There are no exact words to describe reaching that pointless existence I was in, more dead than alive. I just didn't fear anything anymore. The serialness of it all tends to outweigh anything else going on around you and death starts to sound like a reward.

Thirteen months as a P.O.W and all the torture steadily chipping away at every part of me had only exposed a uninspired will to live. My time for dying was coming fast. That is the one thing I knew for sure. In my many days of captivity I had often wondered if somewhere on this planet there is a list of torments that can be inflicted on a person or are the Vietcong making it as they go. It seems like these people must have a play book of torture to go by, I'm sure thirst is probably at or closest to number one, because it is for sure one of the worst. In each of the last four days, my body had edged closer to the point of no return physically and mentally I couldn't say how much more wackyer I could have gone. I really couldn't distinguish at that moment if I was still sane or was only waiting to go over the edge. Whatever cliche one would want to use makes no difference, insanity is insanity. Only now I can understand the byproducts of war for what they are, death or wounded for life and an always varying state of insanity. Trust me there is no pleasure in watching a man go fully crazy unless you are the one of those people that get their jollies by pushing someone past their tipping point. In a north Vietnamese P.O.W. camp, that is exactly what the case was. I know that in war time every soldier has a duty to perform, but the Vietcong seem a little too enthusiastic about their assignment of being the camp guards, which equals as the camp tormentors. I had figured that one out by watching closely each session of the random and systematic torture that seemed at the time to be endless. The duration of all the laughter and teasing of the men as they went completely mad dog crazy certainly could only have been for their pleasure. I myself had seceded in fighting off the craziness for the longest time, but that day I was at that tipping point. Your options as a vietcong prisoner become quite limited after the first day. It basically comes down to one option really, go crazy at the beginning or keep struggling until you end up going crazy anyway. I think sometimes that I must have been crazy when I was brought in, because I had never given in and went bonkers like the rest. A sane human can only fight the many variables of insanity that are forced on you for so long. After you take all that you think you can possibly stand, elements of your own body start to work against you.

I remember hating my half crazed imagination for betraying me by painting such a vivid picture of the condensation dripping from leaf to leaf in the moist night air. And it was no accident my ears had tuned themselves to the sounds of each drop of moisture cascading downward only to hit the ground and be waisted into the dirt. Just knowing that each big palm leaf, only a couple inches away held a satisfying mouth full of water became a torment to me that normally was reserved for those in hell.

Each minute that passed seemed to have an open invitation to travel down that path of insanity that awaits almost every soldier ever shipped over to this country. The only escape for me then was to think. But what did I have left to think of? I had literally thought of everything I possibly could. Painfully it came back to me every detail of my life, almost every day seemed to play over in my mind with very little for me to be proud of. Had I chosen my course by the bad decisions and the wrong paths I had chosen to follow or had my course been chosen for me? Either way the direction I went had surely led me to that place. I recall no satisfaction in my deeds, just regrets. No matter what direction my psychotic thoughts may have been leading me, my shackled body was headed nowhere.

It was so bitterly lonely in darkness that last morning. Endless was the waiting for the dawn's light to give shape to the all familiar surroundings that lie hidden in the shadows. The start of another day would only add to the ongoing argument that I was having with myself. The subject of the argument was how many tortuous days had I been wasting away in that wretched place? And of all the things on this planet that I could possibly be worrying about then, was a lousy number. It was the fact that I had let myself down. I had lost count! Something I had promised to myself not to do. And why was I even troubling myself? And which way was I counting, up or down to my life's end?

The fixation of my feeble mind on counting had only made light of one thing. It made me realize that I was a complete failure at everything I ever tried to do in life. Up until that day the only thing I had been successful at was being alive. Everything about it was an agonizing hell with no change.

As I patiently waited on the turning of the earth to meet the new day's light. I tilted my head up to notice the fading of the stars in the eastern sky, which meant that I had survived another night and soon another trouble-filled day would be on its way.

A ragged sounding cough from another prisoner to my right interrupted the thinking of myself, it reminded me I wasn't there alone. It led me to wonder what the other Five men hanging in the same line as me could be thinking of. No telling what could be on their minds, going home, or perhaps their wife or girlfriend? From the sound of his persistent cough I wondered how far from death he might be, because I was getting closer every hour myself. The thoughts of the coming possibility of death somehow pleased me, because being alive that way was not living. The side effects of all the hard core torments brought out the nasty desires of a closure to life.

I wished that I never started this maddening task of counting the days. Why do we even measure our time? How can it be called a day when half of it is night? And why do we consider the last few days in our lives so important, when each and every one of them should account for something. What is it that night that has made me suddenly become more conscious of all my surroundings? What could be so important about one day? What would it really matter? There is no one else on this planet that would even care about the number of days or how long I'd been in this camp anyway, but still it was frustrating to me.

Was it three hundred ninety-six or three hundred ninety-seven? I don't think time in the Cambodian jungle means nothing anyway. Each day is always the same for the most part with little or no change. That day I'm sure would have gone on regardless if I was there to see it or not. It wasn't like I really could see it anyway. My left eye was glued shut with a thick yellow mucus and it took a pretty good effort to open the right one enough to see for more than a few seconds. My body was sick beyond all hope and I knew it. My breathing had not been really breathing at all, just a wheezing growl from my chest. A few coughs might have cleared my lungs, but I was far too weak to spend any strength on that. There comes a point where you stop trying to hold on to life, instead you patiently wait to let go.

I was distracted from the nonsense thinking as I felt the warmth of the sunrise touch me softly on my cheek, and through a tiny pin hole in the crust that had my eyelid trapped I could see a star shaped baby rainbow of sunrise. In the corner of my eye was more beauty than anything I had seen in a long time. Who would have known something so beautiful could be seen looking through eye-snot. There in that country, when it was not raining the sky on any given day is a blue that has no comparison. It is a shame that all the colors that mix themselves together overhead in the mornings are never looked at by those people. And I must admit, I too never even noticed them until I was forced to live in the P.O.W camp that had no name. I once took it upon myself to put a cheerful name on the camp, but nothing seemed to fit. In the end we just called it camp one way, because the only way out was death. There was a time that I thought that each sunrise was the beginning of a day of hope, but not now, there was not much hope in my day as the sun crept over the ridge of the valley.

As the rays of light peek through the canopy of the trees and warm the dew on the many plant leaves below it becomes a sight to behold, that is when the magic started. The heat turns the dew into steam and it floats upward like tiny dancing ghosts, sometimes in my mind I would hum an old toon to it. Each mornings' dance was different but equally beautiful. This always let me know, I only had a few minutes before the Vietnamese version of the devil would start to divvy up all manner of wickedness. I always loved that time of the day. I anticipated each and every sunrise. Those few moments helped in the transition from calm to crazy. If that Vietnamese devil knew that I cared so much about the sunrise, and that it was the only pleasure in my days, he would have probably gouged my eyes out.

There is no restful sleep in the jungle at night when you're out in the open; the biting mosquitoes and bugs make sure of that. But in the burning sunlight of mid-day the bugs disappear to hide under the palm leaves to cool themselves, and what sleep could be found in a day's time was taken then. As the nightly cadence of the crickets wound down and the darkness fully surrendered to the sunrise, I listened for the day's routine start. The head charlie of this place always made himself heard first thing off everyday by shouting orders to those under his command, I guess to rekindle a fear of him that anybody may have lost overnight. Puffed up and proud of himself I watched as he walked out of his hooch and stretched a bit as he looked down on his prison kingdom and us below. An American made Zippo lighter stolen from a G.I. always fired to life his first smoke of the morning. I saw the lighter up close once, he dropped it for long enough for me to read the name on it, Roger Sidebottom was the soldier that it had belonged to. That is sometimes all we have as soldiers is the random names you read on someone's gear or you might hear a name at roll call. Names of soldiers you've never met are better. Because you simply don't know what ever happened to them, you just knew at one point they were over here fighting on your side. I hope that the lighter is all he lost over here and he made it out of this country. It's always better not to know. But I still can't keep from thinking of that name,Roger Sidebottom. It's hard to stop wondering about him now.

The next sound in the distance was the clicking of his beating stick as it is drug alongside the bamboo handrail hitting the growth knots as he comes closer to me. The childish intimidation was all for show and it was all for me. I only pretend to be asleep when my portion of his evil is served that last morning. Every morning, like most of them, was started with a fresh hot cup of his piss thrown in my face from the cup bottom of a U.S. Army canteen. I guess, in his mind, it was the worst way to demean me because of what I was to him, his enemy—an American soldier.

This daily cup of hot piss didn't mean much anymore, and its intended effect had long since worn off. You would have thought he would have grown tired of it. He laughed almost symbolically as the cup was returned to its daily place upside down in front of me at eye level to let the remnants of his pee drip and run down the bamboo stave that it was always on.

I had truly forgotten what it was like to smell or taste, but I was aware that I stank and his pee is like perfume compared to my pungent odor.

I always wondered if he was assigned the duty of commandant over this P.O.W camp or did he volunteer to the position. In the ranks of the Vietcong army the more ruthless and feared you are, the faster in rank a soldier climbs. How he came to be in the position is of no consequence now. I only know that he has enjoyed every minute of the abusive torture he carried out on all of us.

I don't know what gives a man like him such a drive to torture another humanbeing to the point of death. It's been the same throughout the history of nations, cruel barbaric soldiers of the past set the stage for others to follow. Only a sick minded individual would want to be good at the torment of others. His newest problem was that the camp's high death rate meant he was simply running out of individuals to use to get his jollies.

He measured the height of the morning sun with his hand as he kicked my foot out of his way as he passed by, and I slowly swung around and around. I watched with my one eye as he went down the line of prisoners poking and kicking checking to see if we had all made it through the night and were rested and ready for another fun filled day of him thrashing us with a stick.

Rain or shine every day each prisoner received an undo turn with the bamboo. Most days I had double. A prison camp is the one place where being special is a curse. Only I received the daily dash of piss. It has been that way since the first day. I have no idea why I was singled out to be beaten more often and the piss thing I never fingered out.

All of that was in the past and I can't differentiate what I did each time, but today I can hardly hold my tongue back, as it cleared the pee from my parched lips.

As I slowly swung to a stop facing the opposite row of men that are hanging 3 feet off the ground like living war trophies. I then realized what I hate so bad about this place. My good friend Miami Joe is dead. I looked at him just before dark last night. I thought that for a black man he was pale as a ghost despite his dark complexion. He is stiff and lifeless as the guards hit him to confirm that he was dead. No question about it as his body was hastily cut down. Joe bounced a bit as he hit the ground with a thud. The air trapped in Joe's lungs made a groaning noise as his body relaxed from hanging, the sound lasted for about four seconds. The guards laughed and pointed at Joe as they made jokes before they rolled and kicked him to get his body closer to the river's edge. It is hard for them because he is shaped like how he was hanging when he died. It is such a pitiful sight to see him this way. I realize now that it was Joe that was praying in the night and perhaps the air trapped in his lungs was his amen. It has taken three days for death to find Joe. He was caught trying to escape; like all the men that tried but didn't make it, he was promptly brought before us and beaten. His legs were broken below the knees and pulled up backwards and tied to hold up his body weight. I guess Joe didn't scream enough to suit them, so later on in the day he was stabbed with a long sharpened stick into his gut and then spun around and around, spraying the ground with the contents of his stomach. Blood and raw stomach acid dripping from the end of hollow bamboo is a hell of a smell. Know one should ever be forced to see such a sight. If hate for someone could ever be justified it was at that moment.

Joe had tears on his face from his pain, I had tears in my eyes from the hopelessness of his fate. As he slowed to a stop from spinning we looked at each other and both knew he was a dead man. From that moment on he remained silent as he hung there waiting for the inevitable to come. For his sake I'm grateful he died quietly in the night. His face will join the many faces of the men I will have forever etched in my mind, what little mind I have left. I can only watch as he is rolled over and shoved into the river. He floated by slowly. His eyes, dull and fixed, seemed to look at me as he bobbed and turned with the river's current. For a minute, his body hung up on a clump of bamboo, but the swiftness of the dark water pulled him down slowly. Good-bye Joe, I said in my mind. You never want to say those words to someone that you care for, it troubled my mind to even think about them. I had seen death there almost daily; but Joe I will surely miss, mostly his easy going manner and sweet sounding voice that helped make our troubled days shorter. No one ever held more hope in their heart about going home than Joe, He was truly a fine man. The only way Joe would ever make it home is in someone's nightmares.

Joe was now gone from our eyesight forever; he died on day three hundred ninety seven. The sight of him dead had cleared my mind long enough for me to get the numbers straight with the days. I guess this is what my useless habit of numbering the days has been about. Maybe that is why it kept me up all that last night.

Silent faces watched the finale of the murder of Joe. Funerals there are short but never sweet. There are no uplifting songs, flowers, or eulogy—just the grim reality of another life ended. Again that day I was reminded of our value to the Vietcong. My mind cannot make the connection between the war and our torture; it would be too practical if they just shot us when captured.

Many times I've asked myself if this is real. How did I end up here? I suppose the ones in Hell ask themselves the same question. If it is as easy to get into Hell as it was for me to end up here, then hell must surely be a crowded place.

I stared for a while at the spot where Joe went under. I know the river itself had nothing to do with his gruesome death, but how it swallowed him up so easily made the waters seem to be in cahoots with the evil that was all around me. There was nothing more to see as the guards stooped down by the water's edge to wash the stench of death from their hands.

I couldn't help but stare at the churning waters and wonder who would be next. I was grieved to the point that I can't help but wish somehow I could have trade places with Joe and just be dead. We were tied by the river's edge for many reasons. Mainly to torture us with thirst, and also to lower our spirts by watching the discouraging sight of the random dead body's that sometimes float by. More times than not turtles and snakes hitch a ride on the bloated ones. This scene never leaves the mind. After a few days of floating the dead look all the same. It doesn't matter the color of the skin, black or white, American or Vietnamese.

The Mekong River and its smaller contributaries is where everything travels, but the dead only go one way, downstream. The river makes it easier for the Vietcong to do their job. They just simply flush their war crimes away. These people must truly enjoy keeping prisoners, I can't think of any other reason to keep us for months on end. The days in a camp like this one were always random. Sometimes they would just let us die and other times they simply kill us when the mood strikes them or when they're ready to move campsites.

After that morning's short display of butchery, our morning continued. The little five foot tall bastard was as predictable as the sunrise itself. Each one of us prisoners had our own name for him. From me, that day he won the title of little satan. His evil was genuine and none of the other guards could even come close to the effort he put into our treatment. Every minute he tried to show off his authority, even on his own people. It had been that way for me each day of the fourteen months that I have been under his control.

He always followed a strict daily routine before he went back to his breakfast. The ritual started with two minutes of screaming in our faces. The same words each day. And then with the beating stick we got 10 wacks. He never hit us in the same spot on our body. For those of us that are hanging in our bamboo gibbet, he would swing us around and around, then hit us whether we did anything or not. But not me that morning, he just looked at me, and walked around me looking and looking. Then something new as he stood there. He pulled out his paper and tobacco and rolled up another morning smoke.

After he lit it up, out of the corner of his mouth he said,America, you bad smell, he spoke with poorly broken English. You make fly grow, he said to me as he poked me again in my hollow stomach. I wondered what he was thinking while he was tilting his head. The heavy smoke from his crudely rolled cigarette drifted up and clouded his face, closing one of his eyes. He looked at me in a strange silence. For the first time he just walked away. He is right about the fly's; I could feel the maggots working in my back, legs and crotch. The day before, I watched the little white things creep along the ground to get out of the sun; they did indeed make more flies.

Twelve days before I was tied up and beaten till I passed out just because I was looking at the clouds instead of giving him reverence as he walked by. Scents that time there hasn't been any rain to wash off the blood, and the flies have had their way with my wounds. Being tied here with my legs out in front and arms to my side, I couldn't tend to the wounds and cake them with mud like they needed.

The smell is more than I can stand. It's truly indescribable, the stench of my flesh rotting off my body, while I'm still alive. My fever is so high I can't control my shivering. Death is coming alright, and its name is Pneumonia, I am going to die from drowning in my own mucus, and this is going to cheat him out of his triumph over me, and I think he knows it.

Up until today I have withstood everything the Vietnamese have done to torture me. I've never opened my mouth to say a word or even let any of my pain show. Not because I'm tough, but because I made up my mind that I wouldn't satisfy his evil thirst. I guess that's why he has let me live so long. It has been a challenge for him to get his enjoyment out of me, he has tried it all, but still we go on and on locked in this pointless torture routine. Our torture has been of every flavor. Things a normal person would never imagine are a sick twisted reality here, and the relentless beatings have come every day without fail. I never thought that there would be so many ways to degrade a person, yet there is nothing that I haven't seen. It has truly taken my spirit down to the bottom—there's nothing left in me that makes me want to fight to live. If he only knew how close I am to giving in and crying out in defeat. I've yet to hear his real name. In my mind, again I just call him Satan. He rates no higher than that to me.

I know almost to the second what is coming next. It's the same thing every time without fail. He lays his hand rolled stub of a cigarette on my neck and it starts to burn the already seared skin. I see he has gone to retrieve his Tokarev 7.62x25 mm automatic pistol from his hootch. I've been threatened and whipped with it so many times that I have memorized the serial number. Another one of the useless habits I practiced, keeping track of which guard owned what. That same gun has moved around three different guards and he has been without it for a month or so. He must have won it back. The Vietnamese are a betting lot. They gamble almost every night and every rainy day. I've watched them for months now. While the games go on and the guards are preoccupied, we prisoners talk and send messages by using our P.O.W. tap code, or if time allows, the old army morse code. It is our only source of communication.

Something is a little different about today. The rest of the men are beaten first saving me til last. He walks back to me with a new stick of bamboo. It's longer—much longer. He pokes at my back a couple of times, then pulls his pistol and stands back about ten feet. I make all you fly grow, he sneers. I think he is saying that he is about to kill me. If I could I would have told him, Please don't miss, because my body is ready to die and I have gone as far as any person can go. At that moment I accepted the fact that I would be dead in a few seconds. Once I and the rest of my comrades are dead no one will be left to tell the world what has happened at this P.O.W. camp.

He yells words in vietnamese, I haven't heard before. He walks around and around me giving a speech, saying who knows what and pointing his gun at me and the rest of the men. All of this is to bring the attention of the camp to himself for what he is about to do to me. Everybody in the camp stops what they're doing to watch as he raves on and points the pistol at my head and pulls the hammer back.

Without any grace he snaps the trigger—CLICK! A misfire. For a second I thought he was just trying to make it more suspenseful, but he jacked the action back and a bullet bounced out on the ground. He cocks the hammer back again, points it at my head and another misfire. In disbelief he works on it another time and points it at the ground. He pulls the trigger, and it fires at my feet. He is now satisfied that it will function. He again points it at my head. He screams out more strange words to regain his audience once more. I ignored him as I looked up past the craziness of the one that held my certain death in his hand. All of it didn't seem to matter. It didn't stir up a hint of fear in me. Instead, I chose to look away to my last morning of steam and dust bunnies dancing about in the morning sunlight. It made me smile. Perhaps in years to come the dust of my dead body will float around in the morning sunrise. I wanted that to be my last memory of this day,—not his ugly face. But he could not accept my lack of interest. In anger, he stepped up and hit me with his gun barrel to make me look at him. As the blood started to run off of my forehead, I stuck my tongue out at him. It was the only thing I could do to retaliate. Laughter came from all around us. He turned and scolded the crowd of onlookers to make them quiet. It took awhile for the laughter to die down and the seriousness of the situation to return.

Everything was set, my death was on its way with one tug of his finger, but I just didn't seem to care. I was that far gone mentally. I glanced away again at the brightness of the morning sunrise that was almost at its climax. It was simply too beautiful to ignore; I was too ignorant at the time to pray for my own soul; instead I whispered to myself, God if you're up there I thank you for the beautiful sunrise this morning. I didn't even flinch when I heard the shot, but then I realized a millisecond later that I heard a shot—instead of getting shot. I looked over to see that somehow, in the same split second he started to fire, a bullet struck him in the jaw spinning him around. He dropped the pistol. His feet tangled as he plopped on the ground facing towards me. The pistol lay between us in the dirt still cocked and ready. His teeth and jaw bone were mixed with the meat and skin of his face. Dark red blood was pumping with every beat of his devilish heart; he was as shocked as I was of where the shot had come from. In an instant out of the jungle came a whole platoon of United states marines.

The air around me became filled with small arms fire—556 bullets cracking as they whizzed by overhead. Hand grenades being tossed everywhere. Explosion's of every kind chewed up meat, dirt, and leaves into a pulp that rained down in fragments on everything. I could hear the distinct sound of a 50 Cal steadily drilling holes in whatever got in its way. What a beautiful noise and a treat for my ears. It sounded like a rock song to me with the M-16s playing the lead.

As the fire fight went on all around us. I looked down to see little Satan kneeling there on the ground at my feet. His breath was now labored as he struggled to stay conscious. For the first time ever, he had to look up at me. In an unreal twist of fate his control over me was gone. I knew he still desired to pick up his gun. But he only seemed to have the strength to take a long, hard, last look at me. It couldn't have been more than fifteen seconds, but it was still long enough for him to see me smile from ear to ear. The smile was only for his sake—my smile ended as I spoke to him for the first time. I whispered in a dry gravelly voice, You should have killed me yesterday! He just stared at me as the swift justice of a three round blast rang out at point blank range; it found him in the neck and head, he crumbled forward to my feet with his eyes still looking at me. There was no blood flowing, so I knew he was dead. It was so ironic. I wanted to die and he wanted to kill me; but yet I was alive and he was now dead. He had given death away to so many, now death had chosen him.

His constant torture had succeeded in turning off every emotion in my head. Daily for months on end, I was poised for my certain death. But just now, I have the sensation that I was robbed of my chance to be free from all the pain that has pushed me to my wits end.

As I looked at his small dead body lying there in the dirt. I realized that in all this confusion I had missed the best part of the sunrise and that made me down right confused. Watching the sunrise this morning was as far ahead as I had planned my day. This rescue from my certain fate, triggered a brief mental shut down of all my thoughts. My body was alive, but my mind was dead and it just couldn't seem to get past the moment of this new component added to my day.

The shock of instantly having no one to hate forced all kinds of spontaneous emotions out of my mind. I hadn't laughed in so long, that I had literally forgotten what makes a person want to laugh! Uncontrollably a sorrowful pitiful laugh came out of my trembling, sick body.

Nothing was funny about this situation, but I laughed all the more. It echoed through the now silent valley. The insects and animals were finally made silent by all of the shooting. Now I was center stage, my impromptu laughter had everyone staring at me. I had witnessed most of the prisoners go completely insane, but this would be my first steps down a road that few come back from once they have started the journey.

I laughed until my strict self discipline to never give anyone a reason to have enjoyment from my suffering kicked back in. I became instantly silent and all emotion ran away from my face. I turned away to hide my face once again. Staring into the dirt