Ablutions in Blood

Ka-Wham!

Sgt. Kerry Gardner shook his head, but the high-pitched ringing stayed in his ears, giving a surreal effect to the screams of pain coming from the next foxhole.

"Medic!"  He screamed, and wondered if there were any medics left alive.

"This is nuts," he thought to himself.  Nobody wanted this dingy piece of pockmarked real estate covered with rotting vegetation and soaked in blood.  But it was the principle of the thing: 'fight for Old Glory,' and 'these colors don't run,' and all those other things American soldiers tell each other while they're on liberty, or in their home towns.

He crawled on his belly up to the edge of his foxhole, praying for a lull in the firestorm of flaming debris and sobbing steel.  Clamping his hand on his helmet, he carefully lifted his head enough to peer down the slope.  His ears rang, and vision was blurred, but he could just make out the carnage below through the drifting haze of smoke and dust.  Bodies were strewn like pick-up-sticks, tossed by a huge, unfeeling hand.

Someone was yelling his name, he could hear it through the cottony sensation of his overloaded eardrums.  "Sergeant Gardner!"  It was the radioman, Stiles.  At least he was still alive.  What did he want?  "Hey!  Gardner ... over here.  Can you hear me?"

Kerry moved his head, and the red-rimmed vision shifted behind him.  Stiles was crawling toward him on his belly.  Two more rounds sobbed in, echoing off the trees before their earsplitting blast deepened the cotton.  "Stiles ... what?"

The man crawled right up, falling into the foxhole, sprawling in an ungainly manner across the body of Corporal Williams.  That was the first time Kerry had noticed Williams was dead.  The whole side of his head was missing.

"Sarge, you're hit."

Kerry put his hand up to his face, and the sweat stung him.  He pulled it away, and it was smeared red with blood.  "Shit!  I didn't even know it."

"The CO is on the horn, Gardner.  He wants us to hold the line."  The words barely got through over another avalanche of noise, followed by more screams.

"They've gotta be kidding!"  Kerry swallowed, the sound unusually loud within his ringing ears.  He'd heard the tales of heroes, and been moved by their exploits ... but there were no heroes here.  Only him.  Him and what was left of his outfit.

Silence fell.  Well, except for that consistent ringing in his ears.  The barrage had suddenly ended.

Kerry crawled to the edge of his foxhole, and peered carefully down the slope.  There was almost no breeze, so the smoke hung in a great pall over the dusty foliage.  There was a furtive movement near the bottom.  Just settling dust?  He didn't think so.

"Stay here."  He commanded the radioman.  He crawled out of the foxhole, feeling naked and vulnerable on the smoking earth.  He reached the next foxhole, hearing someone sobbing softly.  Easing his head over the edge, he saw Pvt. Sims, holding his buddy's head on his lap.  The man was coughing up blood that ran across Sims' hands.

"Sims!  Get up, boy, they're coming up the hill."

"No!"  The terrified boy's eyes went wild, fluttering from place to place.  He was about to break and run.

"Sims!"  the word was an expletive.  Sims jerked, and looked at Kerry.  Filling his voice with a bravado he didn't feel, Gardner commanded, "Get your ass up there, boy, before I take a bite out of it.  Anybody makes it up that hill, I'm gonna hold you personally responsible."  He crawled on to the next foxhole.

All down the line, he ordered and cajoled the men, until they presented their weapons down the hill.  "Use your grenades first, then mop up with your rifle.  Don't waste ammo -- wait for it," he commanded.

Nobody remembers much about the melee that followed, only that 'holy hell broke loose.'  By the time reinforcements arrived, the battle was over.  Four hundred dead VC littered the slope, and only eight men survived of Dog Company.

The Company Commander put Kerry Gardner up for the Distinguished Service Cross, but Kerry just shook his head.  "Ain't no heroes here," he chuckled.  "Nobody but us chickens.  Tell ya the truth, we were too scared to run."

That wasn't the same story the Commander got from the other seven men, though.  They gave him the credit for their courage.  "We were hiding in our holes, waiting to die.  If it hadn't been for Gardner, we'd all be dead," they agreed.

This is the paradox of heroism: the battle for freedom is won by frightened men who did their job anyway.  Whether it's a soldier on the battlefield, a fireman in a smoking building, or a policeman in a dark warehouse looking for a prowler, the power of this nation is in its people.  Their ablutions in blood are poured out as prayers -- prayers that end up on the lips of every citizen.  We will be free!

Dallas D'Angelo-Gary 02