The Rest: Terror

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For the War Sonnet contest.

The author, Staff Sergeant Halliday, was in the US Army from Feb 1987 to Feb 2007. He was a Russian / French / Serbo-Croatian linguist, and intelligence analyst. He was mostly working in the USA or Germany/West Germany, but was deployed a few months translating for UN Peacekeepers in Macedonia (formerly part of Yugoslavia, near Kosovo), and was deployed a year in Mosul Iraq teaching intelligence analysis skills to the Intelligence/Security staff of an Iraqi infantry battalion. In Iraq, he occasionally went on combat patrols with the Iraqis (usually behind a machinegun in the cupola of a humvee), or sometimes did ride-alongs in Stryker vehicles with US infantry. He escorted several times wounded Iraqi soldiers to the US hospital. A few months after returning from Iraq, he learned one of his US aquaintances committed suicide at home. Before retiring from the Army, SSG H was teaching languages at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey; one of the newest school houses there is named after one of his former students that was killed in Afganistan.

The French word for ‘cockroach’ is ‘le cafard’. In some contexts it can mean ‘depression’. But for the soldiers always standing guard, ‘Avoir le cafard’ refers to boredom. I’ve heard war has been described as follows: “Ninety percent boredom, the rest: TERROR”. It’s true for those hiding in their hollows, Whether combatant or stretcher-bearer. My times in combat zones weren’t too awful. I heard the occasional “BOOM!” or “CRACK!”. Of friends that I knew that went to Mosul, Everyone (Some shrapnel wounds) made it back. But I knew some who never came back home; At least one who suicided at home.

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Jennifer Fenn

Date: 6/12/2021 12:18:00 PM

Oh wow Mark! How disturbing, but then again, it's supposed to be, isn't it? I hope that those who read this will respect soldiers more, and show them some gratitude so there will be less suicides. Great poem!