[ IP ] Army Men

I looked at the photo again. 4 figures stood framed by the Afghan landscape in the background, mimicking the poses of the small plastic army men in the foreground. We had decided to take the photo about a week into our first deployment. Jack had got a bag of plastic army men in his mail as a joke from his brother, some gag about troop shortages. We had seen them and commented on how ridiculous the poses were. We knew then that we had to recreate the scene. We trekked out into the sweltering midmorning heat, and our buddy Sam helped us pose just right. I was on the far side, my rifle lifted over my head, in some kind of celebration I guessed. We took the picture, and passed Sam ’ s phone around, each joking about how ridiculous we looked. We loved it. Afterwards we all took our little corresponding army man, and carried it with us, as a kind of good luck charm. We had been buddies since basic, Jack, Tom, Chuck and I, and I knew that we needed to stick together out here. 
 
 After just three weeks deployed, one of our convoys was hit by an IED. It was Jack ’ s vehicle that was driving over it at the time. A huge cloud of dust exploded through the roof, bouncing the whole truck off of the road. The noise deafened me, and my ears were filled by a piercing ringing. When I came to my senses, I ran towards the wreckage of the vehicle as troops swarmed all around the convoy, scanning the horizon. I ran to the blown-out shell, and Jack was sitting in the front passenger seat. His eyes locked onto mine, panicking as he struggled to unlatch his seatbelt with a hand that wasn ’ t there any more. He looked down at the mangled stump that had begun to spit blood, and then up at me. He opened his mouth and red trails began to run down his chin. He nodded urgently down at his vest, and I could see the dark green plastic of the toy soldier poking out from one of the pockets. I didn ’ t know quite why, but I reached into his vest and pulled it out. I looked at it; it ’ s plastic finish now coated with the disturbed desert sand and dust. When I looked back up, Jack ’ s eyes had glazed over. I felt hot bile rising in my throat, and stumbled away from the truck, beginning to hack up my canteen breakfast on the roadside. I couldn ’ t get the image of the broken figure of my friend out of my head. I remembered him laughing during basic, remembering how he had always pissed off the Drill Sgt. to such a degree that they had it in for him after day 2. I wonder what Sgt. Hanson would think if he saw Jack now. 
 
 That night after returning to base, I sat across from Tom and Chuck. They already knew, but they didn ’ t want to believe. Their eyes begged me to lie to them, to tell them it was always a mistake. I placed the small figurine on the table between us, and we all looked at it, as it held its grenade ready to throw. When I looked back up, Chuck and Tom were both absently toying with their own little army men. I placed Jack ’ s figurine back in my pocket, and we sat in silence for a long time. 
 
 Time heals all wounds they say. Try telling that to Jack. But after a time, a sort of scar tissue began to form on my memories. I hated every day, being struck at by an invisible enemy, cowards that hid away and killed you as you walked past. The suspicion of every single bit of litter and debris drove me near to insanity. But I knew I had to keep going for Tom and Chuck ’ s sakes, and Jack ’ s memory. A month or so later, me and Tom ’ s platoon came into contact with the enemy on a ridge during our patrols. We weren ’ t expecting the enemy to have come this close, and we were taken by surprise when the cracks and pops of gunfire sent us diving for cover. I scanned the horizon for the telltale signs of enemy presence, but I could see nothing. This was still better than the endless fear of bombs. You knew that your antagonist was nearby, and that you could find him and kill him. I looked through my optics, straining to see a shape that I could fire at. But there was still nothing. A hail of gunfire tore through the masonry to my right, and for a second I sighed in relief, until I heard a wet cough past my right shoulder. I looked around at Tom was looking down at his chest, where red flowers were beginning to bloom through the camouflage. He sat heavily against the wall, coughing again, his face contorted in agony. I knelt next to him and screamed at the top of my voice for a medic, but in the din of battle and the bloodlust of the soldiers around me, all of which shared my hatred for the intangibility of our enemy, my cry went unheard. I tried to stop the bleeding, but his chest was all torn up by bullets and masonry fragments, and his blood leaked crimson through my fingers, staining my hands. I scrambled through his pack for a field dressing, even though I knew it was hopeless. Instead my fingers closed around a hard, contoured object. I pulled out the crouching figurine, and just for a second found the situation darkly, cruelly, comic. Here I was clutching a toy while I should have been clutching my dying friend. Tom ’ s blood on my hands stained the little army man, and as bubbles began to boil out of Tom ’ s chest, I held his hand tight as he gazed into the sky, his throat working frantically, but unable to reach air. In my other hand I looked at the toy soldier, now caked with drying blood. 
 
 I spent the rest of the firefight with Tom ’ s body, not even caring as the bullets whizzed overhead. Soon the fighting fizzled out as reinforcements arrived, and two medics came with a stretcher to take Tom ’ s body away. As I walked back into the base, I dreaded having to tell Chuck. But in the end I had to, I supposed. He hadn ’ t been told, and greeted me with his usual bravado. But his face fell when I didn ’ t respond in kind. He stopped, and I told him what had happened. The words spilled out, and I raised my hands to comfort him, before realizing that they were still caked with the dried blood and dust from the firefight. I hadn ’ t even thought to wash them before coming back in. It ’ s strange how fast you can forget that kind of thing. 
 
 Chuck and I ended up being reassigned to a platoon together. I suppose that someone up there knew how we needed to stick together. The end of my deployment was coming up soon, and I could finally get out of this hellish place. I had learned to hate everything about this godforsaken country. The sand, which got everywhere, the heat that oppressed you from the moment you woke up right to when you finally managed to go to sleep. The way the locals all looked at you, and you couldn ’ t help but mistrust them, not knowing if one of them was secretly one of the enemy. I needed to get out; I couldn ’ t take it much longer. 
 
 We were on patrol clearing out some of the now-abandoned houses in one particularly desolate part of the region when we came under fire again. I looked over to Chuck, who had the same grim expression as the one I must have been wearing. We both knew the score. This was likely to be our last contact with the enemy before we got sent back home, and we were gon na be damned if we went through this whole deployment without taking out at least one enemy. We moved through the rough-walled rooms of the houses, and we could hear voices speaking in Arabic. Chuck unhooked a grenade from his vest and pulled the pin. He threw the grenade into the room, and a panicked shouting arose. There was a scrabbling sound, and then the grenade bounced back through the doorway. Chuck looked up at me, then at the grenade. As I stood paralysed by fear and shock, he dove onto the grenade, and clenched his eyes shut. There was a muffled bang, and his body was thrown limply into the air. A burst of blood and dust blew through the room, temporarily blinding me. When I had cleared my eyes, I looked at his broken corpse in the corner, and watched from my position slumped against the wall as my platoon rushed in to secure the room. As they began moving room-to-room, I crawled over to where Chuck was lying. His chest was crumpled and his combat fatigues torn to shreds. In his hand was clutched the figure holding a rocket launcher. I took it from between his limp fingers, looking at the scorch marks that covered the upper half where it had poked out above his thumb. 
 
 So now I ’ m here, looking at the photo, four army men on my desk. One bloodied, one dusty, one scorched. Each a friend I failed to protect. And then there ’ s mine, standing unharmed next to them. I look at it and it stands in front of me, it ’ s gun raised in a mocking salute. What ’ s it celebrating? I suppose I ’ ll never know. But every time I look at those four army men, I remember that hot day in Afghanistan when we lined up to take the photo, and joked among ourselves. Now three good men are dead, and I remain. I spend a long time thinking about how I could have changed things, but it doesn ’ t matter. I just hope that I can remember my three friends, and that they don ’ t just become army men. 

