Captured

“Advaaance!” My sergeant waved his hand energetically to show us which way to move. The rapid gunfire of the Vietnamese soldiers haunted the jungle air. Clutching my gun to my elongated chest, I leapt over a fallen tree and behind a protruding rock. I was in the front, so now it was my turn to provide cover fire for the rest of my platoon.
“John! Ammo!” Another soldier, yelled to me from my right. I tossed a couple of extra clips his way before turning to fire myself. My tired, emerald eyes scanned the jungle for a target, but all I could see was green. Quickly, out of the corner of my eye, a glint of the sun reflected off of a Vietnamese rifle. The time it took for me to duck down behind the rock seemed like it took hours. Time slows down when one stares down the barrel of a gun. Then, to make up for it, I found myself lying on the ground with blood spurting from my shoulder. The sergeant was yelling, but my ears were stuffed with cotton. Unable to hear or see, I fell asleep.

I woke up in a dirt prison. The only way out was through the skinny bamboo lumber that imprisoned me. I tried to stand, but it was futile. My legs had been immobile for an indefinite amount of time. Maybe an hour, maybe a month. I used my hands to massage my legs in an attempt to restore feeling. After such a simple task I was already sweating. My prison was scorching, even though it was hidden from the sun. I rubbed my face and, to my surprise, discovered a stubby beard. There was movement from the corner of my cell. I glanced over to see what it was. Another man was crouched in the corner, rocking back and forth.
“Haaaaa…..” I tried to speak, but my throat was dry and tight.
“3 days.” He told me. “You’ve been out for 3 days. That’s what they always ask…”
This guy seemed like a skinny, tiny, pessimistic whiner. Nevertheless, I tried to make the best of it.
“Hi. My name is John.” I opened up to him. He seemed reluctant.
Quickly he snapped, “Ben.”
“How long have you been here?” I wanted to get a conversation going.
He was unresponsive. Frustrated, I gave up. I laid down letting the dirt stick to my sweat.

A jolt ran through my head, waking me from sleep. A hole had opened in the top of my bamboo cage. Burning sunlight poured onto me. I looked up at it and saw a rock fly through the gap and hit me in the nose. I let out a grunt of pain and rolled around, clasping my nose. A crooked toothed Vietnamese soldier grinned down from above. If he was down here, I would snap his neck in one swift move.
“That’s why I sit over here.” Ben muttered from the same corner. “They can’t get me with the rocks.”
I laid on the ground, bleeding openly from my head. The Vietnamese soldier yelled something, then spit down on my wound. With a shrill laugh, he dropped a piece of meat into the cage. For the first time ever, I saw Ben leave his corner. I wanted to reach out and grab some of the meat for myself, but Ben snatched it up and retreated back to his corner.
I watched him bite into the meat as if it were the soldier that gave it to us. I could not see what kind of meat it was. It appeared cheap and dry, maybe even rotting. Still it made me realize just how hungry I was. A warm pool of blood had collected around my face. Combine that with the warm sunshine and the increasingly intense pain from the rock wound, and I passed out again.

I awoke to rain. It slipped through the cracks of the bamboo and into our cage.
“Drink up.” Ben muttered roughly. “It’s the only water you’ll have touch your lips.”
I sighed and tried to cup my hands tight enough to catch water. It did not work very well, so I quickly degraded to the point of licking the bamboo. There were cuts in the bamboo where water would collect. So I simply ran my hoarse tongue up the wood and thought of it as heaven.

Apparently it was feeding time again as the door above opened and a piece of meat fell down into the mud. I looked up at Ben who had his eyes fixed on me. I already knew what was going to happen, but was too weak to prevent it.
“Split it!” I cried out as he stood up. I could tell just by the look on his face that splitting it was not an option. He charged me and tackled me against the side of the cage. It hurt, but I had to fight to get a piece of that meat. I gave him a quick shot to the kidney before pushing him back. He slipped in the mud and landed right beneath the exposed food door. A rock flew down, but missed him. The soldiers above groaned with disappointment. I stood up and prepared to attack Ben. If the mud was dirt, I would have ran at him, but I walked instead. As soon as I reached him though, a small rock pelted me in the head and I fell into the mud. The last sound I remember was the cheer of the soldiers above.

I awoke again. My weight was down, but my hair was long. All at once I remembered the fight for food with Ben. I looked at the corner and found him crouching there again.
“You son of a-!” I stopped when I realized something was different. He was not breathing. My job was infantry in the army, not physician at the hospital. Even so, I could tell that he had died of starvation. His waist was so small, I thought I could wrap one hand around it. Even though I hated him, I cried. I wept like a little boy mourning for a strange dead bird. I leaned against the edge of the cage and yelled out, “I HATE VIETNAM!”

Several minutes later I could hear the soldiers running about above my cage. There was a lot of commotion, and I only hoped the U.S. finally decided to nuke this god-forsaken jungle into the ocean. My military training told me different. I could hear the sound of silenced bullets whizzing through the air. Could it be?! I jumped to the edge of my cage and prayed for a rescue mission. The Vietnamese returned fire, but I could hear their bodies hit the top of the cage, hard. The rock throwing soldier had fallen beside my bamboo cage, his lifeless eyes staring in at me. That was the first time I smiled in… God knows how long.

Then there was silence. A couple of splashes sounded as the troops ran to my cage.
“Sergeant Mike Anderson! 103rd airborne division!” The U.S. soldier saluted me. “We’ve come to take you home.”
Even though I already knew it, that last sentence made up for all the suffering I went through.
“Now watch out. I need to blow it open.” He cried out.
I backed into the opposite corner, next to a lifeless Ben. Sergeant Anderson planted the bomb and started running away, yelling “C-4! C-4!” The explosion blew open a large hole big enough to drive a car through.
“Follow me.” The sergeant reassured me. “We’ve got a bird 2 kilometers east.”

After walking through the hole, I was obligated to step over the dead Vietnamese soldier. Taking one last look back, I grinned, and spit on the face of the rock throwing soldier before catching back up with my rescuers.