The Fire

the fire He didn’t die straight off…the flames seared his flesh and burned his hair. The Nomex flight suit he was wearing melted in spots as the fire grew hotter. They held me off as I screamed and clawed to get free. He finally stopped moving and drew rigid in death and those eyes bored into me right to my soul. I stopped struggling and fell forward in the most terrible pain that I have ever known possible for a human being to endure. They still held me. I guess they thought that I would try to pull him out of the chopper again and started pulling me back. They were probably afraid of another explosion which never came. The first one burned up the fuel. The other pilot got free somehow and lived six days in misery with awful burns. I never saw his eyes but I could feel him looking at life and death at the same time trying to figure out the best path to take. The crew chief and gunners only had a few scrapes and bruises among them but were visibly shaken from the crash. My own hands are cut and bleeding and slightly burned from tearing at the jagged pilot door. My hands still shake sometimes they bleed as I relive those days when I paid no heed to a living soul and no one was safe from the likes of me. Pilot Error would be the cause in the final analysis. Too little flying time, too much war. No VC bullets or rockets. Pilot Error. This should make his wife and family feel a little better. Pilot Error. Not the fact that this flying wreck should probably have been grounded with all the rest of the flying and rolling and floating and human wrecks. Poor equipment, poor maintenance, too young, too much war. Pilot Error. The perfect catchall and cover up. Makes the reports look and read better. Perfect, precise, in triplicate. Burned and torn and dead in triplicate. 28Mar…the first day. I miss him being my friend and every now and then I catch him staring back at me from across a fence or from behind a tree he is always with the other two the ones I didn’t know very well it doesn’t matter we’ll become well acquainted when we all end up at home in hell. I miss them all…those boys turned to men and those men grown up before they should. Those who lived carry heavy burdens in their hearts and souls. It is a very strange thing how some are not utwardly affected by what they did or saw. I do not understand (and I am very envious) how some individuals walk as though nothing happened to them. Can one repress loss this deeply? Please if there is a higher power show me how…please show me how to get through even one day without living with the myself that I know. Is there another deeper self that can slough off the blood and the smell and the faces that pervade my every waking hour and day. I do miss them. We drew close one to the other and then grew apart to try to not remember the ones we lost. I am afraid to close my eyes I am afraid to sleep they are waiting for me they are not buried deep pray these demons you never see. Some I may pass daily as they try to blend into the earth and hide in plain sight in the bricks and pavement of dirty streets. These are heroes who wish each day to die but for some reason cling to life at least for one more day. We are all one in the same. And I weep for us all.