SNAP!

Glen’s eyes jolted open from inside his covered foxhole, but the rest of his body held still. Squinting, he watched as two Vietnamese soldiers walked nearly five feet from the barrel of his gun. One of the two had obviously broken a twig underneath their feet which awoke him… and sealed at least one of their fates.

Leaning his head over and using one eye, he aimed for the soldier walking in front. Though it wasn’t in the back of his mind, there was no assurance that the recovered gun would work, but now was the time to test it out. Glen contemplated letting them walk off, but his paranoia and training convinced him to take them out now before they could find him later and kill him.

Slowly creeping his barrel over a couple of leaves, he visually locked onto the front man’s chest. Gritting his teeth, he pulled the trigger…

BANG!

The gun had worked.

The first man had fallen.

The other ran.

Glen jumped up and out of his makeshift protection and began to run after him, but quickly slowed down as his joints ached from his awkward, crouching sleep position. Being cooped up in a small hole for more than eight hours had taken its toll. It was more than a dozen good strides before the worst of the pain was through, and once it was, Glen was back at full speed.

As he chased his enemy, he became focused like the day of the battle before he ran to the river. He was in the “zone” again; he was avoiding trees as if, they too, were the enemy, and he his movements flowed with every adjustment.

The small Vietnamese soldier was somehow slower than the 6’8” Glen Miller, and after nearly a hundred yards of giving chase, Glen was starting to catch up. With only about three feet between them, Glen launched his worn body up on the preyed soldier. Glen’s enormous arms wrapped around the fleeing Vietnamese, and it was something from the Discovery Channel when a lion sinks its claws into a running meal.

Turning him over, Glen balled up his right hand into a fist and punched the enemy soldier in the face.

Glen’s teeth gritted once more as he let loose his attack onto the man who had been only about 5’10”. The young solider from Memphis, Tennessee gave no compassion to the smaller man who could do nothing against a well-fed, well-trained, well-built American. Using his free left hand, Glend pulled the Vietnamese’s head up off the ground.

“You killed Monegan!”

Glen smashed his face with another thunderous punch, and with every punch after that he would yell out another fallen comrade’s name.

“HINSLEY!

“SMITH!

“PORTER!

“REEVES!”

Without even realizing it, Glen had let an entire platoon-worth of names swell up into one poor soldier’s body. Glen finally stopped punching and looked down at the Vietnamese’s face.

Bloody. Swollen.

Glen let the soldier’s head fall back down onto ground in a lifeless fashion. Glen had killed him, but not with just fists. He had used hate, anger, and rage to complete it. Where those three combustible elements had come from, Glen didn’t know right then.

Either it was what his American country had instilled in him, or it was the revenge he sought after for his friend’s lives taken by the Vietnamese.

After attempting both physically and emotionally to wipe the blood off his hands, he looked back at the corpse, which was lying next to him on the jungle floor. He rubbed his temples trying to regain composure, but Glen only left bloody fingerprints upon his head.

He had blood on his hands and on his mind.

Glen felt the Vietnamese’ chest, from where no movement came… but there was something sticking out of a simple sewn-on pocket. Glen looked closer and reached into the pocket and took out a picture of from the soldier lying next to him.

The image was of the fallen soldier with another Vietnamese man and an elderly Vietnamese couple between them.

No… Glen thought to himself.

Walking back to his foxhole was miserable, as guilt was sweeping over his body. He knew he should feel no remorse for killing those who would kill him just as easily, but there was a thought in the back of his head.

It was the thought that he had killed two… no… he couldn’t have.

Along the walk, Glen kept his senses out for the enemy but secretly he wished a sniper would take a shot and nail him in the head. It would put him out of the misery of being in a war. A war where he was drafted into with without a say.

He didn’t ask to come here, but he was compelled to. He just wanted one bullet to enter the side of his head and put some truth in the MIA report which would be sent to his parents.

Glen was near his foxhole as he clutched the picture inside a bloody grip of worn-down flesh and bitter bones. He looked around slowly and saw it, it was the body of the soldier he shot. Walking over to it seemed to go by slowly as he didn’t want to face the truth in what he had just done, but he eventually did make his way over to the fallen body.

The soldier had fallen face down and Glen used the toe of his boot and a heavy grunt to roll it over. Once the frozen face of the soldier rolled out of the dirt, Glen’s heart sank, and he dropped to his knees. Clutching his face with his fingers, he grimaced being unable to handle what he had just done.

He had killed two brothers.

Lt. Colonel Simms leaned towards the edge of his seat and gazed at Glen, and slowly took a puff from the cigar. Simms’ eyes didn’t shift from Glen, who let a tear roll down his cheek in front of an officer.

“Do you need to take a break Glen?”

Glen’s mind perked slightly as Lt. Colonel Simms had just referred to Glen by his first name. Not Private or Miller. He had called him Glen. As Glen wiped the solitary tear from his eye, he simply cleared his throat.

“I’m fine, sir.”

It had become late in the evening, and Glen had been hiking silently for a while now. Weaving in and around Vietnamese patrol trails, trying to stay clear of a hazardous enemy. An enemy that scared Glen more than it did before. The enemy now scared him because they affected him mentally more than any bullet could.

They posed the greatest threat with their attitude, not their rifles.

While the sun set behind the mountains, and Glen started to gain confidence in his chances of returning to the US Army base. At nearly the moment he knew he needed to recreate a hidden foxhole to sleep, Glen reached the grassy fields where his comrades had retreated from less than 48 hours ago.

This good news didn’t truly help Glen’s morale.

At that moment, he was still a broken man who had taken lives, and no matter how he could convince himself he did it out of necessity, he knew what he did was wrong.