Veteran's Day

The image remains clear in my mind – as sharp as the smell of cordite covering the tarmac. The pungent odor reminds me of a fireworks show gone berserk. Columns of white smoke are drifting up into the night sky like twisting specters, each lit by the glow of lights along the flight line. Sirens are howling continuously as if in disbelief. Something is causing a throbbing orange glow in the distance, punctuated by quick pops and deeper thumps. Dazed, I rise to my feet and inspect the red rash along my left arm below the sleeve. Pulverized bits of concrete from a near-miss.

Bien Hoa, Vietnam, and the airbase had just taken over a hundred rockets in a startling twenty minutes. It is early morning on the fifth of August, and the sun had yet to rise over what would, for me, be a long day. I was on the night shift, guarding some aircraft who, like me, had gotten lucky.

Over thirty years have passed, and I can still recount my first battle as if it were yesterday. It is Veteran’s Day, and once again I remember these things.

The time is now in the future – a fictional one to be sure. Least I hope so, because the scene ahead is horrifying. The sky appears as a great orange storm from which burst streams of brightness. Sometimes they come in chains like brilliant necklaces of destruction. Other times, they rend the clouds around them in an awful burst of painful light. The thunder is muted and unnatural. There are flames washed across the sky in violent streaks. The trees ahead can be seen in the night because they are burning. A glimpse of hell, and my characters brace themselves to fly through it. This is a scene out of Rogue Dancer, yet it is also a mirror of my own past amplified to nearly unimaginable proportions. I earned this vision the hard way.

Being a combat veteran is an odd gift for a writer. It pumps realism and energy into scenes with an edge to them that few outside the military can envision. It draws, however, from a grim haunting of memories that have left their mark. I was lucky not to have left a part of my soul back “in country”. I have seen so many staring faces when visiting the wall in Washington DC – brothers-in-arms and their loved ones who have yet to truly come home. Somehow, I feel as if I have cheated. Yet, there is this thing behind the eyes of my characters when I send them into harm’s way. It is a reflection, and a sobering reminder of what I and so many others went through.

Veteran’s Day was yesterday – but don’t let that stop you from thanking a vet today.

Kerry
www.kmtolan.com