Shooter...An Unlikely Assassin

SHOOTER…An Unlikely Assassin

For thirty years, I longed to confess and peel away the shame attached to my bloody past. For thirty years, I saw dead men walking through my dreams. I killed them in the jungle. We all killed them in the jungle—the soldiers and I. But my story is a confession of men I did not want to kill. It is a story that questions my place in the war and my struggle to understand a time when all seemed dark and death was no better than life. I needed help out there in the jungle and I needed to find a refuge I could unload the flashbacks in my mind. But I had nothing. I was ordered not tell anyone about my missions in the war. I was ordered not to confess that I was the Assassin.

And I am the Assassin. I am the nineteen-year-old boy who trekked through mud and swamp searching for the faces of the soon to be dead. Thin, smooth faces, lips sharp and narrow, eyes slanted, of course, and a mole sometimes lingering right below the nose or sprinkled on a brown chin. These were the faces I hunted. These were the faces on photos I kept in my left front pocket.

My accuracy was precise. My weapon never faltered. And I could shoot huddled with my face against the ground at a distance over four, five, six hundred yards. Fresh out of high school, I was placed on top-secret killing missions with the Special-Ops teams. I eliminated those deemed a threat to U.S. national security. And I was good at it. I was a young boy groomed and shaped by our government to destroy life and sold to the belief that I was defending my country. I caused chaos with my weapon and I served my country in the sweltering jungles of Vietnam.

But my mind was broken into millions of pieces with memories swarming about with the faces of those I assassinated. I felt guilty. I felt ashamed. And my self-condemnation ran deep for what I accomplished in Southeast Asia. I came back home feeling used by my government for carrying out their dirty work. And I came back doubting that I would ever see God in Heaven.

For thirty years, I obeyed the command to keep silent about my aggressions. However, my silences erupted into violent red explosions in my head and I wrestled constantly with the belief that what I did was wrong. But was it? In dreams my answers came, in the flashbacks my memories collided with a young boy’s amazing gift for marksmanship being turned into purposes for murder. And this young boy, this soldier who despised himself for ending so many lives felt compelled by some strange force and thrill to keep on killing. I am that boy and I am that soldier. I am the Assassin and this is my story--SHOOTER...An Unlikely Assassin.