SOLDIER’S DREAM

I was at a Gandhian nonviolence conference a couple of years ago. An American veteran of the Vietnam war began to speak to a packed room. Very soon, the man began to sob. For a full hour, he choked his way through the story of his initiation into soldiering and the work he was now doing to heal from what he had experienced. On his first day in Vietnam, an officer took him up in a helicopter and flew him over a rice paddy. Looking down, they saw a lone farmer. “Shoot him!” the officer commanded. The soldier hesitated, and turned to question the order. Shoot a lone, unarmed civilian? The officer told him that the farmer, anyone, could be Viet Cong, probably was. So, just to be sure…. Again the command, “Shoot!” It was his first killing. For the rest of the war, he remembers nothing else, no other battles or killings.

At the end of the war, again, an officer took him up in a helicopter. They saw a water buffalo. Again the command, “Shoot!” Again the hesitation… Incomprehension. “Water buffalo are essential to the enemy for his farming. Kill the animal, destroy the enemy.” The soldier remembers that he pulled the trigger, and ‘turned it into hamburger.’

He went on to become a professional airline pilot, as many vets do. He married, raised a family, had a successful career. After he retired, he began having a recurring dream. In it, he saw the water buffalo’s face very close. He said it’s eyes were docile, loving, almost Christ like. Night after night, the same dream and the same conversation:

The water buffalo asks, “Do you want to meet them? Do you want to meet them?” The soldier answers, “But I don’t know who they are. I don’t know who they are.”

Night after night, always the same. He would wake up in a sweat and a panic. Other dreams ensued. His life came apart. His wife left him. He stopped paying taxes so that none of his money would go toward war. He was sent to prison. He had a nervous breakdown. In time, he understood that to clear his heart he had to share his story. He had to shed his tears for all to see. And there he was weeping and talking to us, complete strangers, at that conference.

I came to the end of the story. I wasn’t even sure why I had told it. I turned to Bethelson and shrugged. He had an odd look on is face, as if he were somewhere else. Then he said, “But I just remembered something. I remember! I remember!”

“The first time I killed… I was a young recruit in the Liberian national army. There had been a failed coup and the officers responsible, a general among them, went into hiding. I was selected to go with a small reconnaissance party to look for them. And we found them. They were hiding at the edge of a swamp, deep in the bush. The general came out waving a white handkerchief. He had been gone several weeks and I think they were starving. He was very thin and very weak. So he came out with the handkerchief. My commanding officer ordered that general to kneel. Then he handed me a gun and said, “Shoot him!” Can you imagine? Me, a private, shoot a general? And they had surrendered. The man was on his knees. I hesitated. My hand was trembling. My commander told me, “SHOOT!” So I pulled the trigger. The man’s body just toppled over. There was blood everywhere.

“That night I got very drunk. I started drinking heavily, in fact. I became an alcoholic. I started using all kinds of drugs… I wasn’t to myself. This is the first time since that day that I remember it. My first killing. I had forgotten for 37 years.”