May 16
by Scott Beard
Thunder clapped loud as the black Z-71 lumbered up the incline and into to the rusty shed. Bill let out a sigh as Powell put it in park. They crawled out of the cab, bodies aching from a long day of fishing down on the Cache La Poudre River. The mercury struggled to hike to sixty and gray clouds had thwarted the sun’s attack on the foothills of the Sawatch Range.
by Cornelius Coleman II
Green Country
His return to the individualized and lonesome trappings of private civilian life had become a pendulum of anchorless abstractions: a changed man’s thoughts wandering aimlessly through an alien environment. Sergeant Josiah Betancourt’s homecoming from Operation Enduring Freedom bore no resemblance to the ticker-tape deluges of welcome home parades or the iconic still-life photography that immortalized Lucky Strike puffing American G.I.s’ embracing starry-eyed pin-up girls. These romantic celluloid mirages, for him, always captured that generation’s collective need to simply appreciate survival as the zenith of all joyful moments; the precursor of all great things large and small. Now, Josiah foraged for these sentiments through the thick brambles and thorn-laced briars of combat related stress However, his subsequent findings could only be described as disillusion as he looked directly at the final deposit for a veteran’s service – the confounding disintegration of a once-unvarnished faith.
by Will Sweger
I eased along the jagged surface of the rock and peered along a crevice trying not to show too much of myself. The vantage point that we had climbed all morning for was worth it. Small scrubby trees clung to the sides of the mountains as they dropped into the narrow corral of a valley. At the center, just offset from the dry creek bed that carved the place, was the walled compound that was our target. Its mud and stone walls rose above the dusty ground around it as if the place had been hewn from the earth itself. Like most Afghan country enclaves, it was arranged with a high outer wall and several inner buildings huddled around a courtyard. I strained to see the entrance of the valley, to see if the cav troopers were set up there with the cordon. Standard procedure was simply to roll up the valley and take the compound, but I had argued with command to let me take infantry through the high pass in order to cut off the escape of anyone who tried to run.
by Brian Kerg
John Butler didn’t think he’d be asked to make such an unfair promise.
He didn’t know how to feel when he managed to keep it.
He was terrified when he was asked to make it again.
by Shannon Coghlan Reiss
Dad’s impending retirement had worried me for years. “What’s the worst thing that can happen?” my brother Bobby asked. I figured he’d sit around drinking beer and watching television all day. Work keeps people alive. Everyone knew that. Recently, my friends’ parents started retiring, and one by one, they got sick.
Apr 4
by Renee Gherity
families of the fallen
there’s a center for you
in a coffee-tabled room
with tranquil
landscaped paintings
and leather couches
and there’s a room for children
with pillowed floors
and walls with chalkboard paint
to draw their feelings
while you wait
for the transfer case
Renee Gherity’s husband is a retired Navy captain. Her poem “War Waltz, Uncounted,” about PTSD, was published in The Innisfree Journal, 21.
by Jeremy Warneke
Bachmann ran like hell. He was darting down the avenue dressed in his blue-and-white-checkered, pajama bottoms and cordovan, patent leather, dress shoes, folded beige-and-green striped, staff umbrella in hand. It wasn’t the first time. It would not be the last. It was not raining. It was a fairly warm autumn evening. The time was 12 o’clock, midnight.
by James E. Smith
I spent a week with the rat patrol
checking the road for booby traps.
Larry talked about his girl in Georgia;
he carried a picture of Lisa smiling
beneath the magnolias,
wearing a pure white dress.
We passed through a country
where we didn’t belong,
sent to preserve somebody’s freedom.
Soldiers believe there’s no greater bond
than the one between brothers in arms.
Larry told me he killed a man,
not for hate nor for glory.
His squad was ambushed one night –
Larry kept shooting into the dark,
into the heart of a stranger.
Buddhists believe we are bound
to an endless cycle of birth and rebirth.
Next morning he didn’t rejoice
when he found the twisted corpse
of the man who tried to destroy him.
Larry shouldn’t have taken his wallet;
he showed me the picture inside –
a girlfriend or wife reaching out
to touch a lotus flower,
wearing a pure white dress.
James E. Smith served during the Vietnam War as a grunt with the 25th Infantry Division. He is active with the Vietnam Veterans of America and works with incarcerated veterans.
O-Dark-Thirty