Coward
He had remained mute throughout the proceedings, from the preliminary hearings to this climactic moment of high theater. To have spoken would have been to embark upon an exposition he knew would have been futile. Worse than futile, perhaps: misunderstood, twisted to be something it was not. The military had elected to deal with him in this fashion. So be it. He could do nothing more than watch. Unable himself to understand his motives and actions, how could he explain them to others? Besides, no explanation was being solicited. What he had done he had done in plain sight, before multiple witnesses. The actions and events appeared transparent and unequivocal; the facts were presumed to be known. It would have been impossible to explain that things were utterly not what they appeared to be, even if he had been convinced of this himself, which he was not. So all he could do was stare dumbly throughout the proceedings, and receive in silence the sentence about to be imposed upon him.
As he had so many years before.
It was in the spring of his twelfth year, long enough ago that his memory of the details had faded, which had the effect that the essentials, the important elements, stood out in even bolder relief. The boy was of his grade, though not a classmate, only marginally known to him. What had started it all – as if boys of that age need a reason – was lost to time. He only remembered that the boy had laughed at him, ridiculed him for some reason, and thrown pebbles at him on the playground at recess. He wasn’t hurt, not even that angry, merely ruffled at being disrespected. The boy was smaller than he, and he was not at all afraid of him. It never occurred to him to fight him, he would be thought a bully. Still, it was important to stand up for himself, to not let himself be pushed around like this, especially by this little thing…
So as he walked the few blocks home for lunch, he thought soberly of what his response should be. By the time he reached home, he had decided on what he thought was a sensible, reasonable, course of action. He would get back from lunch early and wait for the boy – he knew the route the boy took back to school after his own lunch. He would confront him - with words, let him know he didn’t appreciate being laughed at and having pebbles thrown at him, and then he would finish by giving him a taste of his own medicine. A few pebbles thrown at the boy should drive the message home that this was not a nice thing to do, that if he didn’t like having pebbles thrown at him, he shouldn’t do it to others!
He walked back to school, took up his position, and waited. He had a vague sense of pride in his plan, pride that he was standing up for himself, yet in quite a mature and measured fashion. It was all to be very brief, very cerebral. Perhaps, once the boy had been made to see how insensitive he had been, maybe even apologized, they could become friends? He waited calmly, patiently, almost as he would for the beginning of class or any other routine event.
As the boy rounded the corner of the building, he stepped out to confront him. He recited the few lines he had rehearsed, threw the handful of pebbles that had been carefully selected so as to be not too big, and prepared to walk away and continue with his school day. But something was wrong, something was happening that wasn’t in the script he had rehearsed, that wasn’t part of his vision of how events would unfold. For some reason, either because one of the pebbles had really hurt the boy, or because he had suffered some deeper wound of the spirit, the boy came at him. Startled, he pushed the boy away, with an unintended force sufficient to push him to the ground. This further enraged the boy, who now charged with fists flailing.
He hit the boy soundly on the forehead. It was so easy to do. The boy had no defensive skills, and he was charging head first, so that his unprotected forehead presented the nearest and easiest target. The boy charged again, and again he hit him on exactly the same the spot on his forehead. The boy charged again, and again he hit him. And again. And again. And with each hit, the boy seemed only to become more determined to charge, more fearless, more reckless. He could see the welt growing on the boy’s forehead, already turning purple. And yet the boy kept charging; he was crazed, he had become a wild animal, a wild boar oblivious to the fact that he had been stuck, and he charged with the total abandon of one who has lost his senses, one who has become blind to his own vulnerability, one caught up in a madness of pain and rage and despair.
At first he was just frightened, but quickly became terrified. He had never witnessed anything like this, never could have imagined such a madness to be possible. The boy’s forehead was severely swollen even now; if this kept up, he might be seriously injured. Was this boy ever going to stop charging him, absorbing blow after blow after blow? What would it take to stop him? Would he keep charging until he lost consciousness? Until he died? Was he going to have to kill this boy to stop this madness?
This had to stop. He had to get away, before he killed this boy. Why wouldn’t the boy stop charging, didn’t he know this was serious? He had to get away. He kept backing away, backing away from the boy, hoping that somehow a few feet of space would bring a pause, a hesitation before the next charge, a break in the pattern that would be sufficient to disrupt it. But the boy charged all the harder, running at him, growling an animal growl, pure instinctive beast, stripped of any shred of reason, rationality, sense. And each time meeting the same end, yet another sharp blow to the forehead. This had to stop, he had to get away. He had to run, he didn’t want to hurt this boy anymore, he was terrified he might kill this boy. He tried to run away, but the boy wouldn’t let him, charged him again and again, forced him to dole out more punishment, more injury. What could he do, he had to stop this boy, stop him before it was too late! Here he came again. No, he couldn’t hit him again, couldn’t hit him again, but here he came, charging, mad, insane, growling.
He kicked the boy in the groin as hard as he could. Mercifully, the boy crumpled to the ground, gripping his crotch in agony. Finally, he could flee, and he ran away into the school building, relief flooding over him that at least the greater madness had stopped, that he didn’t have to keep hitting and hitting the boy over and over again, that he hadn’t killed him! But he was thoroughly shaken by what had transpired, by the boy’s sudden and total descent into irrationality and bestial rage. He had born witness to an aspect of human nature his twelve years had not prepared him for, and he was dumbfounded by what he had seen. How was he to go to class, now, and sit and listen and learn as if nothing had happened?
He was in the principal’s office before he had to address that issue. He was made to sit and wait until his mother arrived. Then came the tongue-lashing from the principal. Did he know that the boy had a concussion from the pounding that he had taken, that this was very serious and that he might have killed that boy? And what kind of a kid picks a fight with someone smaller than himself, beats him up, and then kicks him in the nuts and runs away? A coward, that’s what kind of kid. Those are the actions of a coward!
He sat mutely through the lecture, the accusations, feeling their sting, the unfairness of them, their inaccuracy. But how could he explain that he hadn’t picked a fight with the boy? How explain that he wasn’t afraid for himself, he had never had one iota of fear for himself? How could he explain that the boy had gone berserk, had lost all sense, become a mad dog, a growling insane mad thing that would have kept coming and coming, that that was what had terrified him, that he had kicked the boy in a desperate attempt to get him to stop so he wouldn’t have to hurt him anymore?
He could not explain it. He lacked the words to sort it out, to make it make sense to someone else. He was deeply ashamed, yet he did not feel like a coward. Wasn’t being a coward being afraid? And he hadn’t been. Or, rather, he not been afraid of being physically harmed by the boy, but had been terrified by the boy’s descent into a madness that seemed only stoppable by death. He deeply regretted what had occurred, yet strangely did not feel responsible. He hadn’t even “started it,” but even if he had, he had no way of predicting that the boy would go insane, had no inkling that it was within human capacity to do so. No, explanation was far beyond him. And so he sat mutely, and his silence was taken as either guilt or rebelliousness.
It was the last time he had fought. Until the war. Funny, that he had never made any connection between “fighting” and combat. The two concepts seemed to dwell in completely segregated realms of his consciousness, the one tied to emotions of youthful lack of self control, the other bound up with far grander ideas of duty and honor, and the “adult” realities of geopolitics and global economics. So when his country called upon him to do his duty, to defend it and all that it stood for – albeit in a war on foreign soil against a far smaller and weaker adversary – he answered the call. He had always felt that it was important to stand up for what was right.
There was one, and only one, association he had ever made between his decision to enlist and his fight with the boy. It was during those moments alone when he confronted himself and asked himself, as all who have ever faced the possibility of combat have done through all time, if he had the courage to go to war. At those moments, the principal’s voice uttering the word “coward” echoed in his mind. And he recalled, not his moral confusion nor the horror at the unleashed madness he had witnessed, but simply the one thing that seemed relevant to his deliberation, which was his utter conviction that he had not acted like a coward. He had never been afraid for himself! With a facility that was certainly naive, he projected his self-assurance from the past into the future, donned a uniform, and joined his brothers in arms.
Their particular mission that day had been to secure an area that contained a very large village. There were estimated to be as many as three to four hundred enemy soldiers positioned in the area, about three times the number of the troops in his company that had been sent out to engage them. However, the superior strategic positions his company’s troops would command, and their vastly superior weaponry and firepower, more than offset the numerical odds. It was fully anticipated that the enemy would surrender in large numbers, and logistics were in place for the mass processing and transport of POWs. The mood of the troops as they moved to take up their positions was one of routine, for some almost one of boredom, the outcome of this battle being all but foreordained. In fact, nobody could quite figure out why this whole war wasn’t over yet! Surely this runt nation knew it could never win against the vastly superior might it faced? It could only be a matter of time before it came to its senses and capitulated, but why was it taking so long?
The engagement with the enemy began as expected, with some simple rifle and mortar rounds being answered with a massive pounding from the tank artillery. This was followed by small forays of soldiers streaking out of the village, reconnoitering by drawing fire. They were duly dispatched. It was at this point that the strategists had expected a mass surrender. The enemy having found themselves to be totally surrounded and outgunned, nothing else made sense.
But there was no surrender. Instead, a larger wave of soldiers came flying out of the village. And when they were all dead, another wave followed. And then another. And yet another. And suddenly the dread of recognition was upon him. The same madness that had possessed the boy had seized these men, these soldiers. For one fleeting instant, he saw himself as a tiny speck of dirt being tornadoed about in the whirlwind of war, the folly of nations laid transparent to his awareness, watching the slaughter of these soldiers of this people he did not know, in this land that was not his, words like “martyr” and “kamikaze” exploding in his consciousness with meanings never before suspected.
Then the horror set in, because he knew that they would not stop, that they would keep coming and coming, and dying and dying until they were all dead, every one. Oh, he had to get away, he had to run away, to escape this madness that had ambushed him after all these years! They had to stop before they were all killed. THEY HAD TO STOP! How to kick them in the nuts before they were all dead! But he knew they would not stop, that only bullets and blood and death would stop them. He had to get away, to run away, anywhere, just away, away…
They would call him a coward. He would be charged with desertion, accused of endangering his comrades, perhaps culpable for the death of one of his own. Was that too high a price for escaping the most terrifying thing he had ever encountered? Perhaps it was too low? Was this then what true courage was, the ability to stand one’s ground, not at the risk of one’s life, but at the risk of one’s sanity, one’s soul?
He hadn’t run. He had carried out his orders, stayed with his company, mowed down his share of the swarm. And now it had come to this. Standing at attention as the commendation was pinned to his uniform, he flushed with a wave of shame and grief. To the cameras, it looked like humility.