The Wind Song

I was a tank commander in the Gulf. Man, was it hot there! People over here don’t know how good they have it, compared to those that live in such a desolate barren country.

It’s hard not to inject my own thoughts. The memories of such events are so strong. It’s just natural to talk about them. War is a terrible thing. But, maybe, just maybe, something good came from it. Maybe, just maybe, something good can still come from it.

The journalist in Kevin took interest. He leaned forward, elbows on the table, sipping the hot coffee, as the Colonel continued.

We cranked up our A1 tanks that morning. God, it was hot. The tanks rumbled to life, their 1500 horsepower gas turbines growled at us. We made them mad, I’d thought, disturbing their sleep. Woke ‘em up to the desert heat. No wonder they sounded grumpy.

They were ominous! Sixty tons of mean machine that took life and gave it at the same time. But they were sweet technology, too. We were equipped with night vision, automatic fire suppression and reactive armor. They could roar across the desert at forty miles an hour, for two hundred and eighty miles. Those beasts were the backbone of the armored forces in the Gulf. God, they were sweet!

We loved ‘em like they were pets and they loved us back. We had fueled them the night before, knowing our mission already, and what we had to do. We were going to Baghdad that day. Gonna knock on a few doors; knock a few down too. The crews were excited. Half scared, half heroic. They wanted to see the action and dreaded the fight at the same time. Weird feeling a soldier gets, when he knows he’s going into combat.

The tanks were idling as we checked the maps again. RECON had given us the quickest, easiest way to get there. This was not going to be an easy mission. We were up against one of the largest military forces in the world. They had some cracker jack tank units, too.

We all shook each other’s hands then mounted up for a long hot drive. Giving the thumbs up to each other, we closed the hatches and eased our metal monsters into the desert.

The headgear muffled the roar of the tank and the radios were silent. Much quieter to communicate over the Internet. Passwords and programs made no detectable noise. Hell, they didn’t even know we had built-in computers with Internet access. It showed us everything, the battlefields ahead, troop movements, all of it. Orders could be sent and received without ever breaking the squelch of a radio. Simple communication was nothing more than a typed message directed by e-mail. If the computers failed for some reason, we still had the radios and we used them if necessary.

Not far into their country, we found two of their T-72 tanks buried into the sides of sand dunes. Attempting to use them as fixed artillery pieces, they’d dug their own graves in the sand. The heat signature of their tanks lit up our monitors like floodlights in the dark, begging us, ‘Shoot me! Shoot me!’ We did. There was no escape for them.

The smoke from the first Soviet-designed tank boiled up from the sand dune like a big ugly cloud of death. Lucky for the tank crew, they weren’t inside when we fired on them. The second tank crew wasn’t so lucky. Our thermal sights were unhampered by the thick black smoke from the first target and we fired again. At least it was quick. The A1 armor-piercing sabot hit their tank, creating instant rubble. They never knew what hit them. There was no fight. We fired. They died. Simple as that. The Soviet-made tanks were inferior to the M1-A1’s we sat in. They didn’t have a chance.

As we approached the site, we saw the heat signatures of several men in the area--the crew of the first tank. Their efforts to hide were futile and they gave up before we reached them. Hands in the air, they walked toward us, shouting their surrender. Well, we couldn’t just mow ‘em down out there. After all, they were surrendering! We stopped the tank and dismounted, ready to receive the prisoners of war. We had destroyed two Russian-made tanks and taken prisoners in a matter of minutes.

One of the their tank’s crewmembers lay on the ground near his tank. The explosion of the tank had knocked him to the ground. We assumed he was dead. We were wrong.

As the prisoners neared our tank, the soldier on the ground got up, yelling angrily. Can’t say that I blamed him. I’d just blown up his tank and taken all his men prisoner. I assumed he was the tank’s commander, ordering his crew to fight. The crew of his tank were complacent, relieved to be captives! Yeah, they were pleased to be captured by the U.S. Army.

Barnes had the prisoners kneeling in front of our tank, doing a body search for weapons. He had to slap them to keep them on the ground. They were so happy they were shaking his hands, kissing his hands, thanking him over and over. He had just searched the last one when he heard their commander yelling and turned to see where he was. The commander pulled an automatic weapon from his belt and began firing. Barnes stumbled past the prisoners, walked a few paces from the tank and fell over.

The M2 fifty caliber machine gun on top of our monster erupted and the Iraqi who was yelling, yelled no more. His blood and body parts decorated the surrounding landscape before he ever hit the ground.

‘Cease fire, Smitty!’ I yelled.

Smitty was still cussing the enemy commander as he aimed that big machine gun at the prisoners.

‘Cease fire, Smitty! That’s an order!’ I yelled again.

‘Parker! Check Barnes!’ I ordered.

Parker ran to Barnes. He took a quick look at him and proceeded to vomit his disgust on the desert. With my weapon trained on the prisoners, I called to Barnes. No answer.

‘Parker! Report!’ I said.

‘He’s dead, Sir. He’s dead.’

The prisoners were now frightened, scared of what their future might hold. They all rose at the same time and fled into the desert.

‘SIR?’ came the question from Smitty.

‘Hold your fire, Smitty!’ I said.

‘But SIR!’ Smitty yelled at me.

‘Hold your fire, Soldier! DO NOT FIRE! Am I making myself clear, Smitty?’

‘Yes, Sir.’

Hell, there were just a few of them anyway. Where could they go? Barnes was dead. Killed before we even realized the tank commander was still alive. I went over to him, staring at the gaping hole that the commander’s weapon had made. Half of his neck was gone, just blown off. One lucky shot and a friend was gone. He’d bled to death before he walked twenty feet from the tank.

The unmistakable retching sounds forced me to get the situation under control quickly. ‘Parker! Parker! Pull it together. We still have a job to do.’

‘Sir, permission to speak!’ said Smitty.

‘Granted!’

‘I could have got them all, Sir!’ he said. ‘We still can.’