It was the fall of 2003 that I found myself a member of the fourth infantry division of the United States Army. It had always been a dream of mine to be able to fight for my country and our beliefs but after my first mission I would no longer share that enthusiastic viewpoint that once occupied my innocent mind.
There is an eerie feeling in the air of death and suffering that can be felt by even the most robust men at the moment of arrival in the desert. The ruthlessness of events to come haunt would haunt every man that survives to remember. There are two types of people in the world. Ones that rise up to define themselves as heroes in moments of great challenge, and others who let the moment define them only to slip into darkness forever.
Almost no time at all passed before we were summoned to receive our mission objectives from Lt. Lazarus. He had a reputation of an unrelenting nasty human being. He did not except failure, it was not an option. When the lieutenant had informed us of the important terrorist figure we were to locate from deep in the heart of the country we knew it was either return home with a body or no return at all. It was known this would be a long vigorous manhunt but nothing could have prepared me for the experience that lay ahead.
We were to meet up with another unit that had been on the trail for many months already. The group was led by a man named Kurtz, I received a stern warning that he had been out in the desert for a long time and was mentally unstable. His tactics immoral but effective, like the lieutenant, he had one objective and would at all costs succeed. The second objective was to bring urtz back after we completed the operation as he was deemed unfit to lead any further missions.
We would travel up the main roadway for hundreds of miles to reach Kurtz then commence to into the unknown. The path we were taking was known as the "highway of death"; many men have died along the way to say the least.
After two days of rest at the military base we began our operation. The first couple for days were uneventful, as I was constrained to my spot in the humvee to reflect on our mission objectives. The greatest challenge thus far was adapting to life in an environment so different from anything in america. It seems as if a dust storm is permanently situated in our area making it hard to breathe and see. I quickly learned how to chug water as it was necessary to drink an enormous amount to maintain hydration. It was lie living on a strange planet; there was so sign of life in any direction.
The vehicle began slowing down as we approached a rundown town. It appeared to be uninhabited but slowly sickly faces started peeing out of window and from behind buildings. I felt as if I was looking at skeletons. It was inconceivable to me how they remained living but I ponder now if you could even label their way of life as living at all. Being only meters away from the shadowy figures I realized our men stationed on the turrets were completely unnecessary, these things were nothing more than rats infesting the buildings.
We stopped to investigate as they just stood there glaring at all of us. All it took was a few rounds fired into the air from a soldier's M16 to send them running back into the holes they had crawled out form. The structure I stood in the middle of did not even resemble a home; it was missing all of the features that would classify it as such. There was no bathroom, only a bucket in the corner. Bugs coated the walls like decorations. Experiencing this for the first time was confusing, there were many emotions to feel. The town was declared nonthreatening and within a blink of an eye we disappeared never to see those souls again.
To take my mind off the dreadfulness, I spent the next few hours in the humvee reading about Kurtz's past reports. It was easily seen why he had received the reputation as a madman. In every description of action that passed my eyes it became clear that he might very well be every bit as insane as he was made out to be. In an effort to strengthen my knowledge of Kurtz and the happenings of his career I read every piece of information I could on him. I felt a strange connection to him, although he was an unstable mind he was a brilliant one as well.
After several days of staring out the window into nothing and raiding homes it all became second nature to me. The further we traveled up the highway the more I realized that my emotions were fading. Seeing the repugnance of the death and suffering at every village had become monotonous. However, the routine was broken when we received word that Kurtz and his crews' whereabouts. He was only about a days' worth of travel away in a place called Adwar. It was believed that our target may be hiding there.
Once we had reached Adwar we spotted a group of men who appeared to be part of the U.S. Army but were completely out of uniform. There were five of them and they all were nonchalantly going about their business as if they were in their own backyard instead of a hostile war zone. I realized this had to be Kurtz's crew judging from the absence of organization to the group. I stared at the men trying to figure out who was the infamous one. It was then that I noticed a sixth man in the shadows, he blended in with the night so well that he was almost invisible. When he stepped out of the shadows I took quick note of his appearance. Before me stood a tall older man mounted with his arms crossed as if judging all of us. As he came closer it was clear he had some sort of illness. At first glance at his face, he had a blank expression that rendered him almost incapable of feeling.
The silence lasted for what seemed like hours, but was finally broken by our new leader. He went straight down to business and made it clear that we would be pillaging every building in the city until we found what were were searching for. At first impression, I had no idea what to think of him. I was expecting a hyperactive wild killing machine but Kurtz did not fit that role the least bit, he was different from the stereotype. The more and more I watched him operate I could detect his underlying disturbance.
The next night we began our task with the first building on the west side of the town, Kurtz ordered the raid. The men crushed the door in and immediately took any inhabitants prisoner. The rest of us would then begin ravishing through the rest of the building destroying everything in the way of the path. We kept a keen eye for any underground rooms or trapdoors that would be able to hide anything.
Each house seemed to have the same disturbing consistencies of dead bodies, dead animals, diseased people, and a stench that I swear still fill the air around me today. Flies filled the air as rain does during a storm.
There were many instances in which we would burst through the doors and encounter armed attackers which would inevitably end up lying in a pool of their own blood on the floor.That is to be expected. It is not the taking of an armed mans life that sticks to your mind. It was the occurrences of unarmed individuals that Kurtz would order to be tortured and killed for no reason at all that haunts someone forever. Occasionally the enemy would succeed and ill one of our soldiers which ultimately adds fire to our already trigger happy crew.
This went on for days and it seemed that the more deaths that occurred, the further Kurtz's mind fell into darkness. The way he did things was so disorganized and aggressive that he had almost sunk down to the level of the enemy we were trying to rid the world of. He once said to me, "We live as we dream, alone", truly the voice of one consumed by madness. Everyday his illness became more apparent, by the sixth day he was noticeably coughing up blood. On the ninth day of our rampage we cleared a house, it was extremely heavily armed. We lost several men. After hours of examining, a hole was discovered filled with the target of our interest. When he refused to surrender there was no problem finding the courage to pull the trigger of loaded gun. The coward lay in the hole as we glared down at him. We had succeeded in finding the man responsible for so much evil in the world. I thought I would be relieved in the ending of our mission but instead the sun refused to shine.
The news spread fast of our accomplished feat as this was a moral victory for our country. Somehow though, we did not feel the same joyful feelings. Just as we had lost all sympathy for the terrorists, we also were unable to be happy. Our emotions were inhibited by those lifeless faces that we had grown so accustomed to seeing.
We had plenty of time to analyze our efforts of the last couple of weeks on the return trip. Kurtz remained silent in his own little world perhaps trying to justify his actions. It is the men like him who let that defining moment get the best of their soul. There is no returning from the darkness that is the evil side of the human mind.
Kurtz would not stay alive long enough to see all of the American smiles we had brought to their faces. The entire country found justice in our actions of killed the wicked man who had killed so many of our friends and family members.
I wished to join their merriment but all that would occupy my mind was the last words of a corrupt man, "the horror, the horror".
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