Why Children Laugh & Angels Fly

Copyright 1994 by Peter Childress


There came into the Earth, one gloomy and dreary day, an imaginary Angel of serious mien and heavy heart. She was sad, for when she had discovered that she was an Angel, she had also discovered that she couldn't fly, and so she had to walk. Naturally, one can only walk if there is something to walk upon, so our imaginary Angel slid down a rather pale and raspy rainbow and landed on the Earth, where there is plenty of solid stuff to walk around on.

The poor angel wanted very much to fly, but because she couldn't, she felt very gloomy and sorry for herself. So she walked. She walked up hills and down hills, and around curves in the road. She walked through fields and forests, and swamps and plains and deserts. The longer she walked, the gloomier she got, until she felt very sorry for herself, indeed. But the Angel was determined, so she kept on walking, through sunshine and fog, through rain and snow, and through the ever deepening gloom of her own imaginary mind, until all at once she saw a city in the distance. And there, above The City, she saw some pigeons flying carefree over the towers and gabled roofs.

"Flying things!” she exclaimed to herself. "Those are flying things. Maybe they can teach me how to fly, too!", and she hurried towards the far-off city as fast as her tired and aching feet could carry her, her eyes never leaving those wonderful flying things.

Upon coming to the gates of The City, she dusted herself off and preened the feathers of her rainbow-colored wings, for although she might not have the best attitude in Heaven or Earth, she was, after all, an Angel, and Angels are known for their well-bred manners and personal grooming.

After satisfying herself that she looked presentable, she walked through The City's gates, into a hustle and bustle of hurried and harried city dwellers, each of whom were leaning forward, as if against a great wind, and walking as fast as they could.

Thus it was, that the first thing she discovered about city dwellers was that if you aren't any of their busy-ness, they don't even notice that you exist. And, of course, as everyone knows, Angels that can't fly, like beggars and poor people, are none of anyone's busy-ness, so no one saw her at all.

"Oh, excuse me!” she said, as someone bumped her elbow, but the man was in a great hurry and didn't even appear to notice her presence. "Pardon me!” she said, as someone else jostled her shoulder and continued on, ignoring her completely. "Sorry!” she said, as men and women scurried about, knocking her wings and stepping on her already sore feet. "Excuse me, sir! Pardon me, ma'am!” she said, as people, quite oblivious to her, kept bumping into her despite her agile efforts to dodge the steady stream of humanity rushing all around her.

Finally, between a zig and a zag, she slipped and landed with an unceremonious bump on the sidewalk, red-faced, feathers bedraggled, and on the verge of tears.

"Oh, damn!” she cried in frustration and anger, at which utterance (quite unbecoming and Angel) there was a loud PINNNG! and an iridescent feather popped out of one of her wings to land on the sidewalk beside her. That was the last straw, and she burst into tears of frustration, feeling even sorrier for herself than ever.

"Excuse me, ma'am," inquired a small voice near her ear, "is this your feather?" The Angel looked up, surprised that anyone in The City could see her, much less care to speak. Before her was a sad-faced little boy, not much more than five years old.

"Is this your feather?” he repeated patiently. "W-why, yes, it is,", said the Angel, sniffing a little, as the boy held out the multi-hued feather in a grimy little hand. "I lost it when I said a four-letter word.” she continued rather sheepishly, more than a little embarrassed.

"It's a good thing you didn't say the F-Word!” said the little boy conspiratorially, with a self-conscious emphasis on the last three syllables, "Or you might have made your wings bald. You're an imaginary Angel, aren't you?” He was now staring at her with eyes wide in awe.

"Yes, I guess I am, sort of," replied the Angel, a little flustered at the child's directness, "that is, I am an Angel, but I don't really think I'm any more imaginary than anyone else." Then regaining some of her composure, the Angel asked "How is it that you can see me when no one else can?"

"That's easy," replied the urchin, "I'm an imaginary playmate. At least, that's what my friends tell me their parents tell them when they tell them not to play with me any more. But then when I tell them to tell them that I imagine them as easily as they imagine me, and that they could imagine anyone as easily as they imagine themselves, doesn't that prove that we're all imaginary anyway, and so what if we are as long as we're all having fun?"

Somewhere among all those "tells" and "thems" the Angel got lost, but not wanting to admit her confusion or disappoint the only person who had acknowledged her presence so far, she mumbled a lame "Imagine that!", and picked herself up to stand in the protection of a nearby doorway.

Then, remembering why she had come into The City in the first place, she asked her imaginary little friend what those funny flying things were, and where she could find them.

"Oh, those are called 'pigeons'," replied the boy, "and there's a bunch of them in the park on top of the hill. My imaginary friends like to chase them around, now that they can't play with me any more." With this admission the sad-faced little boy's face became even sadder, but brightened when the Angel asked if he would take her to the park so she could see the pigeons for herself.

So off they went, down crooked streets and dark alleyways, over fences and through back yards, until all of a sudden they found themselves on top of a large hill, at the entrance to one of The City's many parks.

There, among trees and grass and statues, was a flock of pigeons being chased by a pack of glum-faced children. The children were glum-faced because they could no more laugh than the Angel could fly. The imaginary little urchin said the children couldn't laugh because their parents never laughed, being so caught up in the busy-ness of The City, and the Angel, shuddering in remembrance of the crowds downtown, could find no fault in that speculation.

While the Angel was standing in one corner of the park taking all this in, the little imaginary playmate went running to join his former friends, the Angel's lost feather still clutched in his hand.

The Angel stared at the pigeons in flight, trying to understand how they could fly and swoop through the air with such natural ease until, with a long and heavy sigh, she looked around for a place to sit down, for her feet were very sore by now.

In the middle of the park there was a fountain surrounded by several benches. Seated on one of the benches was a smiling old man who was watching the Angel with amused and unabashed curiosity. The Angel wondered why the old man could see her, when no one else in The City could, except, of course, for the imaginary little urchin, who was now running around tickling the glum-faced children with his Angel feather, trying to get their attention. There was a distant squeal of laughter, as he apparently succeeded in tickling one of the kids who were chasing the pigeons around the park.

"Well," thought the Angel, gloomier than ever that she couldn't figure out why pigeons, much less Angels, fly, "at least someone is having fun. I may as well sit by that strange old man since he can see me and nobody else seems to care. Besides," she thought, "he looks like he's been here a long time, so maybe he can tell me why pigeons fly." So she walked over to the center of the park where the old man was still sitting and smiling at the Angel.

"Well, halloo!” said the old man as the Angel approached, "And how are we this fine and beautiful day?"

"H-hello," stammered the Angel, hesitating for a moment. "May I sit down here with you for a while? I've been walking for a long time."

"I should say you have!” said the old man, with a knowing twinkle in his eye. Then, with an airy gesture of his hand, as if he were conducting a symphony orchestra, he said "My name is G.K. Chesterton, and I'm a long dead poet. Although I must admit that I feel livelier in my death than I ever did in my life, and now sometimes wonder if what we call life is merely a long process of dying, or if death may actually be a higher form of life. But please forgive my rambling on. Have a seat, and we'll talk about the philosophical questions of the age, such as why poets are never understood, and how many Angels can dance on the head of a pin."

"Thank you, sir.” said the Angel, and she sat down wearily.

"So," said the poet, "you're an Angel." It was more of a statement than a question.

"Why, yes, I Am.", said the Angel. There was another squeal of laughter from one of the children as the imaginary urchin struck again. "And you're a poet."

G.K Chesterton merely smiled and nodded, not saying anything further in reply. There was a long silence while the Angel rubbed her sore feet, wondering if she would ever learn how to fly.

"If you're really a poet," said the Angel after a while, "then why don't you tell me something poetic?"

G.K. was amused by this, and thinking for but a moment, said "Very well, I will!"

"I will po' you a cup of tea
if you will et a cookie with me,
and then before you even know it
in the first two lines you'll
find a po'-et."

"Pretty bad," frowned the Angel.

"Pretty sad," nodded the poet, and he burst into a fit of giggles.

"Okay," G.K said to the Angel, "when I was alive, I was really a novelist, but I always wanted to be a poet. Tell me something: why are poets are so little understood?"

"I'm not sure I know first hand," replied the Angel, "but maybe I can ask my imaginary creator."

"Your imaginary creator?” asked G.K., "You mean God?"

"No," said the Angel, "not exactly, although sometimes I think he thinks he is. I mean the poor -but honest- writer that put me into this mess in the first place, Peter Whozit".

"Oh.", said G.K., slightly perplexed at her offbeat brand of metaphysics.

And with that, the Angel closed her eyes in meditation. After opening her eyes a few minutes later, the Angel said "Okay, Uncle Petey says its like this:"

"Every poet's constant curse,
as all his readers can see,
is that he locks his message in a verse
and throws away the key."

"Hhmph!" humphed G.K., "No wonder he's poor (but honest!), writing stuff like that."

"If you think that's bad," chortled the Angel, "you should see the mushy love poems he writes to his girlfriend."

PINNNG! went another feather, PING! PING! PING! PING! PING! Pretty soon the Angel was sitting in a pile of rainbow-colored feathers examining the bald patches beginning to appear on her wings, and deciding that she would not make any more smart remarks about an imaginary creator with such a lousy sense of humor.

Both poet and Angel then sat a while in silence, watching a fat pigeon waddle across the sidewalk and fly away in the nick of time to avoid being ambushed by another glum-faced child. In the distance there was more laughter, as the imaginary playmate scored again.

"So, baldy," said the poet, turning again to the Angel, "why is it you're walking around on Earth, instead of flying around in Heaven and playing your harp, or whatever it is you guys do up there?"

The Angel shot the poet a dirty look, thinking a rude thought, and PING! went another feather. "Oh, damn!” exclaimed the Angel -PING! went a feather- "Damn, damn, damn!" -PING! PING! PING! as more feathers flew everywhere. The Angel gritted her teeth and sat very still on the bench, not daring to say anything aloud, but silently fuming. PINNNG! went another feather, until with a little sob, the Angel slumped on the bench, feeling thoroughly depressed and almost in tears again.

There was yet another long silence while the Angel frowned, and the poet smiled, and the glum-faced children chased the pigeons that flew around the park.

"I don't know." sighed the Angel.

"What?” said the poet.

"I said," said the Angel, dejectedly, "I don't know why I can't fly. That's why I'm here, because I can't fly and so I have to walk, and there's nothing to walk on in Heaven, so I came to Earth, where there's plenty of stuff to walk around on."

"You mean," said the poet, gleeful incredulity on his face, "that you really don't know why Angels fly?"

"Yes," said the Angel, "I mean, no, I don't know why Angels fly."

"Is that all that's wrong?” said G.K., and he laughed uproariously, slapping his thigh. "Why, I told everyone years ago why Angels fly. I thought everybody knew by now!", and he laughed some more.

The Angel was stunned! At last, her prayers were about to be answered. But before she could reply, the little imaginary playmate came running up to her with a wide grin on his face, out of breath.

"Can I please have some more feathers for my friends?” he asked, his formerly sad face now wreathed in joy. "I've been tickling some of my playmates with the feather you lost downtown, and now they're playing with me again, and we all want some more Angel feathers so all of us can go and tickle the other kids, and..." He broke off abruptly, his mouth forming a surprised "O", eyes wide and full of concern.

"Oh, gee!” he exclaimed, staring at the bald patches on the Angel's wings and the pile of feathers surrounding her. Then, in a whisper full of love and concern, he asked "Did you get caught saying The F-Word?”

The Angel looked at the little imaginary urchin, and then at the poet, who was giggling to himself again. She turned back to the imaginary child, her heart overflowing with love for his innocent concern, and her mind bubbling over with happiness at the thought of finally learning how to fly.

Tears of joy came into her eyes, and without a word she gathered up the iridescent, shimmering feathers lying about her, and with both hands gently presented them to the child, kissing him lovingly on his forehead.

"No," she said, "I didn't say The F-Word, and you had better not say it either! Here. Take these feathers and give them to your friends with my love."

The imaginary little kid took the feathers from her in his two little fists, and with a whoop of delight, went running off to join his playmates. The Angel beamed, sent a blessing to follow him, and then turned back to the poet, who had been waiting patiently during the entire exchange.

"Tell me!” exclaimed the Angel, her eyes now bright and wings quivering with anticipation, "Please tell me why Angels fly!"

"Well," winked the poet, obviously enjoying himself immensely, "Angels fly because they take themselves lightly."

The Angel just stared at him for a moment. "Angels fly because they take themselves lightly?” she whispered to herself, "Angels fly because they take themselves lightly." Comprehension dawned across her face like the sun coming up over the sea, and she smiled, hesitantly at first, then wider and broader as the full impact of the poet's words sank in.

"Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.” she said out loud. "Angels fly because they take themselves lightly!” she shouted to the children, but the children ignored her because they were busy running and laughing and chasing each other with Angel feathers.

The Angel, herself, was laughing now, no longer gloomy and serious as she was when she had first come to Earth, and as her new-found joy filled her with light-hearted expectation, she found herself gently floating over the park bench, the poet still watching her and smiling.

"Hey, baldy," called out the poet as she rose above the park and the trees and the running, laughing children, "you forgot to tell me. Just how many Angels CAN dance on the head of a pin?"

The Angel called back to him, her voice echoing the joy of the children, now no longer glum-faced, and she said "As many as want to, G.K. As many as want to!" And with that, she flew away into the light of the waning day.

The poet chuckled softly to himself, and shaking his head in amusement as he arose from the bench, he slowly ambled off into The City's crooked streets and bright alleyways, while the laughing children chased fat pigeons in the park.

The Boy Who Honored His Parents

Copyright 1978 by Peter Childress

A young man came unto his Master's house to escape from his ill-tempered father who, being a liar and a bully, beat him mercilessly without just cause.

"Grandfather," said the boy, after paying his respects to the old man, "I am confused, and come to you for counsel. The Scriptures command me to honor my father and my mother, yet they are but thieves and drunkards, and mistreat me so that I hold them in contempt. Am I committing a sin in the eyes of God, that I hold them not in respect?"

The Master contemplated the words of the boy, and knew them to be sincere, and true, for they carried the weight of a burdened heart. So he closed his eyes that he might be alone with God, for he knew the words that issued from his mouth would deeply affect the life of the young man before him,and he asked for wisdom from God that he might not lead the boy astray.

After a time, the old man opened his eyes and gazed at the boy, saying: "My son, the Scriptures are guidelines given to man, not for the purpose of limiting him in his life,but to uplift him in Spirit, and so bring the Peace of God into the earth. That the Commandment to honor thy father and mother has brought confusion to your mind and heart, rather than peace, shows only your misunderstanding of the Law. For the Commandment is not to worship your parents despite their flaws, but to live your life in such a manner that it brings honor upon them whether or not they have brought honor upon themselves."

The young man heard the words of the old and his heart was lightened. And so he left his Master's house to enter the world with understanding, bringing honor in his life not only to his parents, but even unto his own children.

And thus was the world brought closer to the Peace of God.

The Merchant and the Farmer

Copyright 1978 by Peter Childress

A merchant, in his time of plenty, was approached by a farmer, in
his time of need, who asked for assistance that he might dig a
well with which to water his fields. The merchant, rejoicing in
his abundance, thought not of his neighbor's need, but sent him
away, for he feared the farmer might drain him of his wealth.

After a season, the merchant, though abundant with riches of gold
and fine silks, went to his larder that he might eat and found it
bare. For in his rejoicing he had partaken of all his food. So he
sent a servant to the farmer, instructing him to purchase food
for the merchant's household.

But the servant returned empty handed, and said: "The farmer is
not in his field, for he could not hire laborers to dig a well
with which to water his seed, and so his crops have withered."

Perceiving he must now go hungry, the merchant became distraught
and lifted his face to the heavens. "What good are my gold and
my silks," he cried to the Lord in despair, "if I have not food
to sustain the body that enjoys them?"

And a Voice replied to him: "It is not through a lack of food
that you are now suffering, but through a lack of love for your
neighbor, the farmer. For if you had shared your abundance with
him in the season of his need, even now you would be rejoicing in
his abundance and yours. Be not deceived by appearances in the
world, for this is the Law: The abundance of one is the abundance
of all, lest the poverty of one become the poverty of all. For in
fear and greed did you plant the seeds of hunger, and in the
passing of the season you now gather what you did sow!"

And the merchant, lamenting of the pain of his hunger and in
regret of his greed, passed out of the earth wiser than he had
entered it.




Post Script to "The Commo Man"

A few years ago Zeb told me that after I was medivac'd, one of the guys came over with an M-60 machine gun and completely destroyed the old man's head with automatic fire so they couldn't tell how old he was. I was sick to my stomach at the thought, even more thoroughly disgusted than I was when the Bummer killed him. And I keep thinking about the little Vietnamese kid...

-Uncle Petey

The Commo Man

Copyright 1985 by Peter Childress

I never did know his name, not then, not now, but I knew I was entering one of those magical experiences pregnant with personal meaning. He was short and chubby, a moon-faced Asian about my age, hunched over his drink, drunk, gripped by an un-nameable misery that had spread its tentacles to the marrow of his bone.

I sat down on the barstool to his right and ordered a beer. He turned to me briefly, red-rimmed eyes wet with grief, and said "What do you know about guilt?" I looked at his face; tears were beginning to run down his cheeks, leaving glistening trails mapping the full extent of his sadness. He turned back to his drink, something pale and poisonous in a shot glass.

What did I know about guilt? Not a helluva lot. Guilt was the province of Catholics and Jews, mother's milk and stock-in-trade for born-again preachers, nothing I could ever feel. I won't allow it. Not me. Never. I build my walls firmly, every emotional brick in place, held fast by the best intellectual mortar my rationalizing mind can make.

He turned to me again, this round-headed, red-eyed stranger, his cheeks wet with shining misery, and a wall began to crumble. Images flooded my mind, 16-year-old pictures of blood, pus and tears in Paradise.

The morning was young and warm and comfortable in its adolesence, humming with insects and shimmering with a light that seemed to originate in the atmosphere itself. The ground was green, different shades of emerald that bespoke of peace and life and the timeless order of growing things. Another day in Paradise. Except for the throbbing in my hand. I looked down at my hand and wiped some more pus off of it, giving it a gentle squeeze. Another piece of shrapnel popped out. "Just like popping a pimple," I thought to myself, looking around at the other pimply faces surrounding me. The Sniper was sitting on a dike fiddling with his weapon, his sallow, pasty face showing white through the grime. The Bummer -our platoon sergeant- was resting on the edge of the rice paddy, soaking up the sun.

We were standing down, waiting for Dustoff to pick me up. I was being medevac'd because two weeks earlier Doctor Pepper couldn't get all the shrapnel out my hand that I'd picked when my LP was ambushed, and now it was infected and swollen like a rubber glove filled with water from a faucet.

All of us were pretty pooped; we'd been chasing an NVA battalion with a communications company attached for a couple of weeks with little success. We'd been getting ambushed at night pretty regularly, had been in a couple of running firefights and had lost a few men. I'll never forget Doc's face the morning he buried Pederson's leg. It was just a bloody stump in a boot, and nobody wanted to touch it, so Doc went over, picked it up and buried it in a hole. When I looked at Doc's face I saw something grim and horrible, as if it were his own leg he had buried. And I knew that in a sense it was, because Doc cared about his men and took every casualty as a personal affront.

But that beautiful morning while we were waiting for Dustoff some of the guys were laughing: we'd been joking for a week about "The Commo Man". We'd been finding bits and pieces of communications gear -a length of wire, a handset, some batteries - but the jokes were grim ones under the silliness, about what we were going to do to "The Commo Man" when we finally found him. We were all tired and bone-weary; dirty, scared, pissed off and frustrated from our losses and lack of rest, so this temporary respite from humping the paddies was a welcome one.

It all began innocently enough. I was sitting in the shade of a palm tree when an old man dressed in white pajamas and wearing a long, white, scraggly beard suddenly appeared on the trail. He looked like Father Time himself, somewhere between 70 and 90 years old. At his side was a young kid about 5 years old, his grandson probably. He didn't seem startled to see us, but instead put his hands together in the traditional Buddhist greeting and motioned for our permission to pass along the trail.

I looked at him, and then at the Bummer. Sarge glanced at the old man and the kid, and said "Go ahead and let him through." I motioned to the old guy and told him he could pass. His face broke into big smile and after a profusion of head-bobbing and bowing he took the kid's hand in his own and, still smiling, began to walk through our lines and down the path. It was a touching scene; my own grandfather and I had walked for miles through his citrus groves in Florida, an old man and a 5-year-old kid, hand-in-hand, walking in the early morning sunshine. Even though my hand throbbed, I felt a sense of peace at the memory.

That's when the trouble started. The Sniper, that dough-faced kid from Youngstown, Ohio, said "Hey, Bummer! That looks like The Commo Man!" Everyone laughed at first. Then the Sniper piped up again: "Hey, Bummer! You gonna let The Commo Man get away?" I started to get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Other guys were joining in the refrain: "Hey! That's The Commo Man! The Commo Man, The Commo Man, The Commo Man!" They were chanting in unison now. "Come on, Sarge," the Sniper said again, "You gonna let The Commo Man get away?", flashing the Bummer an evil leer. The Bummer lazily got to his feet and walked a few yards out into the rice paddy. By now the old man and the kid had disappeared from my view around a bend in the path.

I knew what the Sarge was going to do, but I didn't say anything. I just watched, as if in a dream, unconnected from the world around me, paralyzed, impotent. I could have stopped it. The Bummer and I were close. All I had to do was say "Bummer, don't do it." Just four little words, and the spell would have been broken. Instead, I said nothing, and watched as Sarge put his rifle to his shoulder, took aim and fired.

The shot was loud in the peaceful morning air. It echoed into the distance, a sound of finality carrying its message of death. There was a silence in the still air for about 15 seconds. No one said anything. The quiet was complete.

I was already running down the path when I heard the wail. It was a solitary cry of anguish, long, drawn out, ululating, as if someone's soul were being rent in two. Suddenly I was there, at the scene of my silent crime, standing over a little boy and a bloody bundle of white rags lying on the ground. The kid was staring at me, open-mouthed, snotty-nosed, tears coursing down his face leaving tracks on his dirty cheeks, looking in my eyes and asking but one question: "Why?". We stood there what seemed an eternity, the skinny American soldier and the little Vietnamese kid, looking at each other, both knowing The Question, neither knowing the answer.

One of the new guys came over while we were standing there and took a photo of the scene with his 35mm camera. I knew the picture he took would fade with age, become old and torn and yellowed, forgotten in a scrapbook, stored in an attic and thrown out with the rest of the litter one young and warm and comfortable morning like this one. But the picture I took would never fade unless I built a wall around it. A sturdy wall. A strong wall. A great wall to hide a great crime.

I looked around for the Bummer, but he had already walked back to the edge of the paddy. I looked at The Sniper. He was watching me with an ugly grin; satisfaction glinted in his eyes. I wanted to wipe that leer off his face with a burst from my M-16, for it was he who had instigated this murder, this treachery, this sin, and he was pleased with himself.

I heard the whump-whump-whump of a chopper in the distance and knew it was mine. I looked back at the kid, at his dust-and-tear -stained face, still asking me The Question without accusation. I looked down at my throbbing hand, pus oozing onto my fingers, leaving a trail in the grime like the kid's tears, and I turned to collect my gear under the palm tree. I thought to myself that I could have stopped this murder. But could I have stopped all of the murders I had seen in the last 9 months? Could anyone?

Dustoff was about to land. I picked up my gear and walked through the marking smoke to the paddy, angry with myself in my misery and guilt. As the chopper was lifting off I looked over the scene below me: men in dull green resting on bright green, a speck of red and white in the dust, a smaller speck kneeling by the red and white speck, and I knew I would never go back to the field. The wind from the chopper's pounding rotors felt cool on my face. I looked down at my still throbbing hand and wiped off the accumulating pus.

"What do you know about guilt?" he asked again. I was back in 1983, at Tiki Bob's, on the corner of Taylor and Post in San Francisco, my still cold beer in front of me. I looked at the voice, the round, Oriental face streaked with tears, and I said "I know." I was crying, too. He stared at me for a moment. He knew, then, that I knew. I put my arm around him and we sat there together for a long time, he crying into his shot glass of pale poison, me crying in my beer, sharing a misery that overflowed the walls men build.

What the Dead Girl Taught Me...

Copyright 2005 by Peter Childress

I sat in the sand on the beach, with her head in my lap while Angels’ tears caressed us in the form of a small drizzle from the evening’s dark sky. I held my poncho liner over her face to protect her from the rain while some of the guys were making jokes about us and laughing in the dark. She was warm and looked peaceful; her eyes were closed as if she were sleeping. She was a year or two older than me, and just a year ago I would have counted my blessings to have this beautiful young girl in my arms. But there were no blessings for any of us in this dark night, and what should have been Angels’ tears soon proved to be just the Devil pissing on both of us.

I had awakened near dawn of the morning curled up under a bush. Looking around me I saw crude booby traps spread around the area, rusted ten-penny nails twisted together to form four barbed spikes, each of them hoping for the touch of human flesh to satisfy the anger and hatred of their makers. I put one in my rucksack as a souvenir of Viet Nam.

For reasons known only to our eager commanders, our company left LZ Playboy in the middle of a moonless night to grope our way down the mountain and onto the plain leading to the South China Sea. If we were planning to surprise our enemy, it was a total success. They were no doubt surprised to hear us cursing the dark and the clanking, clanging cacophony of our gear as we took turns tripping and falling down in the dark. One platoon was so utterly lost that they spent the night on the other side of the mountain, joining up with us late in the morning after the rest of the company trudged into an old French villa on the northern lip of the half moon bay.

Bin Dinh province was somewhere north of Quinon and had a population of some 500,000 people we were told, and it seemed that about 450,000 of them were VC or Communist sympathizers dedicated to killing us. We were told that the South Vietnamese general in charge of the province north of us had a deal with the Communists: If they didn’t fuck with him, he wouldn’t fuck with them, so they had a safe base from which to fuck with us, instead. I don’t know if it was true or not, but fuck with us they did. Several times a day while we were on LZ Playboy, a nearly spent .30 caliber round would whistle overhead, fired by a sniper with a vintage WWII carbine the VC had salvaged from somewhere.

But this evening, the night after we came down the mountain, it had started to drizzle. The guys were nervous, and someone saw a figure running out of a house and shot at it. It was the girl whose head was now resting in my lap. She was shot in the leg, not that big of a deal, we thought, so we were waiting for Dust Off to come pick her up. I looked down at her again, ignoring the guys who were making wisecracks about us when she gave a little sigh and died.

She died of shock from the bullet wound in her leg, in the dark, in the rain, in my lap, in the beginning of the monsoon season of 1967, on the shore of the South China Sea. One moment she was breathing softly, a living being, a beautiful girl, and in the next moment she was dead, her body as heavy and empty as a lump of meat. It was one of the most profound and changing experiences of my life, because I literally –literally!- felt her soul leave her body and go somewhere else.

I can’t explain or describe it in words that would make any sense to the intellectual mind, except to say that on that cold and miserable and dangerous rainy night in 1967, something profound and wondrous and holy happened, something that will happen to every person born to the earth. I don’t believe that Jesus or Allah or God will welcome us to heaven and willing virgins. But I do know –not just believe, but know!- that whatever essence defines us in this life will continue in some form or another in the afterlife. And for that I am deeply grateful to that innocent victim of war, that young Asian woman, who taught me a secret of life by dying in my arms so many years ago.

War, Bittersweet War...

It seems to me that there was hardly a time in my life when our country was not at war with someone or another, and the war in Iraq is only the latest of a long string of bloody conflicts we have found ourselves in. My own experience was in Viet Nam as a member of D-2/8, First Air Cav, (RECON) in 1966-1967. I wrote a story about one of my experiences there and it's found a home in a number of universities and private sites on the web.

If you'd like to read it, go to http://www.ourweb.com/guard and scroll down to the bottom of the page where you'll find a link to "The Commoman". An alternative is to google "Pete Childress OR Peter Childress" and choose the link you want to follow. Comments on this story are welcome, and I plan to publish other true stories here, including "What the Dead Girl Taught Me".

-Uncle Petey