by Неизвестный
Once again, I had exhausted my strength. I began to wonder whether the water at my destination would be sufficient to reward the effort involved in getting there. Considering how much drier the streambed had become down here, did I not have to assume that the same had happened farther upstream? I stumbled to the ground at the edge of the forest.
The meadow before me was only about a hundred feet across, hemmed in by dense foliage on the stream side to my left as well as straight ahead, but it spread open to the right, sloping gently up the mountainside toward the stronghold. It was covered with the same tall cogon grass, rather like Japanese kaya grass, that brought such a soft, dreamy green to hills and meadows throughout the Philippines.
Silence reigned all around. I do not know how long I lay motionless in that spot. Nor do I know whether I spent that time contemplating my suicide or merely suffering from unquenchable pangs of thirst, for the event that followed erased from my memory all recollection of anything not directly related to it.
I do know that I contemplated what action I would take if an American GI appeared before me. I decided I would hold my fire.
Whether I shot an enemy soldier in that place could in no way alter my own fate or that of my brothers in arms. Its only effect would be to change the fate of the man I shot. I did not wish to stain the waning moments of my life with another man’s blood.
I envisioned the encounter: A GI appears. We stand facing each other with our rifles poised. An eternity goes by but I do not shoot, and finally, impatiently, the GI pulls his trigger. I crumple to the ground. He dashes up, wondering what to make of my strange behavior.
A real encounter could not possibly have followed such a script, but I am recording the scene here exactly as it played out in my imagination at the time. Hand in hand with the final moral decision I had made came the desire to have someone else know of my benevolent intentions. Deep in the mountains of the Philippines, that someone could be none other than the man who would kill me.
It did not take long for my decision to be put to the test.
A shout rang out high up on the other side of the canyon. “Yes, something or other,” a second voice responded—in English but with a Philippine accent. The voices reverberated through the crisp forest air. This was my first direct contact with the opposing force of violence against which my outfit had for so long remained at a distant standoff, and I felt oddly cleansed by it. I rose to my elbow.
The voices said nothing more. In their place I heard the rustling of footsteps in the grass, and I turned my head in that direction. A lone GI had come into view, still some distance away.
I had no desire to shoot.
The GI was a tall youth of about twenty, his cheeks red beneath the deep-set steel helmet covering his head. Standing erect and holding his rifle at an angle before him, he advanced toward me with the gentle stride of someone on a pleasure outing in the mountains.
His lack of caution astonished me. The possibility that an enemy soldier might be lying in wait for him along his path seemed the furthest thing from his mind. A soldier across the canyon shouted something I couldn’t make out, and this young GI gave a clipped reply. Probably some simple exchange like: “Finding anything?” “Negative.” The youth continued to approach.
My breath caught in my throat. I, too, was a soldier. Though not particularly deft in my motor skills, I had held great confidence in my marksmanship ever since scoring well in live-fire target drills as a student. No matter how drained I might be in strength, I had seen him first, and he was standing at full height completely in the open: I could not miss. My right hand moved instinctively to release the safety on my rifle.
When the GI had traversed approximately half the distance between us, a sudden burst of machine-gun fire broke out at the stronghold.
His head spun around. The rattle of guns continued. He stood motionless for several moments as though taking measure of the racket, then slowly swung about and started walking in its direction. His stride quickly gained speed, and soon he had exited my field of vision.
I heaved a sigh of relief. “Well, well,” I said with a wry smile. “A mother somewhere in America should be thanking me right now.”
Since then I have often reflected on this encounter and the decision that preceded it.
I am surprised, first of all, by my own humanity. I had never borne any real hatred for the enemy, but as one of Stendhal’s characters says, “So long as your opponent holds your life in his hands, you have every right to kill him.” Since any enemy I met on the battlefield would have the power, if not the desire, to kill me, I had wholly anticipated showing no mercy in return, however innocent the man might otherwise be of any offense for which I might wish him dead. Never had it occurred to me that I might choose to hold my fire in such an encounter.
What led me to discard my “kill or be killed” cynicism at that fateful moment was without doubt linked to the fact that I could no longer entertain any hope of survival. If my own death was a fait accompli, then the logic of “kill or be killed” no longer applied. I had subconsciously recognized this new truth.
Yet this recognition does not in itself explain my decision to refrain from killing. The conclusion “since I’m going to die anyway, I won’t kill” makes eminent sense when premised on the proposition “kill or be killed,” but it does not follow necessarily. The knowledge that one is going to die anyway can lead just as easily to the opposite conclusion: that it makes no difference whether one kills or not. Nothing dictated a decision not to kill.
In my repeated contemplations of the maxim “kill or be killed,” I have discovered that it also subsumes the ethic “avoid killing if possible.” That is why, when the either/or logic of the maxim broke down, I so readily resolved not to kill. The seemingly Machiavellian dictum was not so cynical as I once believed.
In essence, then, my reflections bring me to the universal human prohibition against killing—though this is not to say that my decision derived from “love for all humanity.” I know my spirit is far too mean, and my temper too hot, for me to lay claim to such a sublime and rarefied ideal.
To the contrary, when I reflect on how I drew back from the shedding of human blood, I see at work only a kind of visceral instinct. Our universal abhorrence of killing is in all likelihood merely an inversion of our desire not to be killed ourselves. Consider, for example, that the abhorrence we feel when we imagine ourselves killing another person and the abhorrence we feel when we imagine someone else killing another person are exactly the same. Whether one does the deed with one’s own hands makes no difference in our perception of the deed.
Not that this is the only response the human animal can have to the killing of his own kind. This particular response gained primacy only because we humans learned how to maintain our existence without killing one another, at least within our own communities. Recognition that each individual’s continuing existence was beneficial to the entire group made “thou shalt not kill” one of the earliest laws. Yet to this day, the religions of the world sanction killing in the context of war when the interests of communities collide.
That is to say, our abhorrence of killing is an instinct that belongs to peacetime, and my response to the GI in the meadow shows that I had already ceased to be a soldier at war. Separation from my comrades had facilitated this transformation. War is an act of collective violence, and the behavior of each participant in the violence is constrained, on the one hand, and incited, on the other, by the collective consciousness of the group. If at the time of my fateful encounter I had had even one of my fellows at my side, I no doubt would have fired my rifle without hesitation, quite without regard for what I expected to happen to my own life.
Whatever the ultimate reasons—whether love of humanity or something closer to animal instinct—I had resolved not to shoot. And indeed, I did not shoot. But an important question remains: Can I truly claim to have carried out my resolve?
I can certainly confirm that I experienced n
o impulse to shoot when the young GI first came into view. But if he had continued his steady advance in my direction and had finally caught sight of me lying there at a distance of, say, twelve or fifteen feet, would I still have chosen to hold my fire even after I knew that he had seen me?
When I recall how my hand moved reflexively to release the safety on my rifle, I confront the fact that the only thing compelling me to remain faithful to my resolve was the eruption of machine-gun fire at the top of the hill, which caused the GI to turn his steps away from me. That is to say, it was pure accident. At the very least, my physical reflexes seem to have been incomplete in their compliance with my earlier resolve.
As I replay images of the encounter through my mind, many questions remain.
My first reaction when I saw the GI standing tall and fully exposed was one of apprehension, not for myself but for him. I recall how astonished I was at his lack of caution—a response that reveals my soldierly instincts and demonstrates that despite the cursory nature of my training, I had indeed acquired a warrior’s habits of mind. Indeed, on the obverse side of my apprehension and astonishment lay the awareness: “It is in my power to kill this man.” Where would those instincts have led me if the encounter had lasted any longer than it did?
The grim intensity of the GI’s gaze remains etched in my memory, suggesting that my restraint may have come not from a deep resolve within my own heart but from what I discerned in my adversary. My adversary was none other than the vanguard of a massive force of violence bent on my destruction, and this meant that I must exercise every caution in facing him. Could it be that I actually held back out of simple cowardice?
I recall vividly, too, the rosy glow of the youth’s cheek when he turned to answer the shout from across the canyon. It moved something deep in my heart.
The beauty of his face struck me with wonder. From the contrast between his pure white skin and the bright red of his cheeks to the individual features of his face so different from our own, I gazed upon a simple yet undeniable beauty—a beauty whose sudden appearance before me held a particular freshness because the world it represented had been banished from my sight since Pearl Harbor. During that brief moment of rest when the soldier paused in his advance toward me, this beauty seems to have reached into my heart and switched off the warrior’s instinct that had been awakened when I first spied him.
At the same time, I was struck anew by his extreme youth. That he was quite young I had noticed at first sight. But now, several steps closer, when he abandoned the posture of his steady advance to raise his head and bring the full length of his face out from under the shade of his helmet, the tenderness of his age became all too apparent. I doubted he had seen his twentieth birthday.
Though the words he shouted escaped me, his voice was a clear tenor, matching his youthful countenance, and when he finished speaking he pinched the corners of his mouth in the manner of a child. Then lowering his head, he turned his gaze farther down the other side of the canyon as though surveying the path his buddies would take. (What he really ought to have been surveying, of course, was what lay ahead along his own path.)
The movement of my heart upon seeing the GI’s extreme youth resembled feelings I had experienced from time to time since becoming a father, at the sight of young children or of nearly grown children who still carried an air of adolescent innocence. This may not be sufficient grounds for claiming that it was the GI’s youth that stayed my hand from shooting him, but I believe his youth can explain why my first thought after he disappeared from sight was of his mother somewhere in America and the gratitude she owed me. Clearly, that turn of mind could have come only after I had actually seen the soldier. Earlier, when I first resolved not to shoot, I could not anticipate the age of the soldier I would face, so I had no reason to think of his mother.
Though not from love for all humanity, might I have held my fire out of love for the young soldier as an individual? Absent any clear sign that the decision I had made beforehand determined my actions, I am drawn to the hypothesis that my feelings as a father forbade me to shoot, even though I cannot remember consciously feeling anything of the kind at the time. Both the image of youthfulness preserved in my memory and the nature of the thought that came to mind immediately after the soldier disappeared seem to bear this hypothesis out.
Next, however, I encounter an unexplained blank. I can recall a turbulent, suffocating feeling of tension growing within me, something closely akin to terror, but I can conjure no images to accompany it. Though I know he must have turned to face me and resume his advance, no such frames appear in the motion picture of my memory. Apparently, something deep down inside me does not wish to remember those events. Instead, the next frame in my memory is of the GI turned the other way, in response to the sound of the machine guns. And my own rifle is poised with the safety released: During those moments of building tension, I had taken up my weapon.
Had I decided to shoot after all? Or was this merely an instinctive act of defense, with no more significance than reflexively closing my eyes when an insect flies in my face?
Then the machine guns rattled, blasting away both the oppressive tension and the threatened confrontation. The encounter was over. Today, too, the shattering gunfire rings in my ears and brings all my pondering to a halt.
Whatever the deeper truths may have been, the young American ultimately moved away without ever catching sight of me, and I smugly congratulated myself for the “good deed” of having spared him.
This self-congratulation did not come without a certain bitter aftertaste when I immediately realized that the man I had spared would join the battle at the stronghold and thereby increase the burden on my comrades. It was a painful realization, but I rationalized that the undeniable superiority of the American forces doomed my comrades to certain death in any event, and the same held for me. This had become my convenient way of absolving myself no matter what happened.
The rattling of the guns continued. One sustained burst was followed by another, as if in reply, and the exchange was repeated several times. It sounded exactly like opposing forces answering each other’s fire.
Since the GI had approached from the other side of the meadow, I could but guess that the men led by the corporal had failed to escape in that direction as well and had returned to the stronghold where they were now engaged in their anticipated fight to the finish. I listened to the gunfire as though monitoring the pulse of a dying man.
The shooting went on for quite some time but finally came to an end with a single shot that left a long lingering echo.
A short while later, shots were fired down in the canyon, in the general direction of the spot where the two sergeants had debated our CO’s death. This shooting stopped right away but was followed by an explosion—most likely a hand grenade. That was the last of the reports I heard.
With the return of quiet, I was left once more to stare death in the face alone. I removed my belt, unwound my gaiters, and slowly lay back down. Scarcely had I done this when violent thirst assailed me again.
Kill myself and I could simultaneously kill that thirst, my mind argued. But my parched throat adamantly objected, insisting that I first quench its burning thirst and only after that proceed with extinguishing my existence.
This did not seem unreasonable. The theme appealed to me: the suicide who craves a drink of water before he dies. It affirmed the appetites of the flesh.
I revisited the question of where and how I might obtain some water. With the closest sources ruled out by the American occupation of the ridge, the next alternative meant a substantially longer journey, following the dry stream running through this canyon all the way down to where it joined another, larger river. This would require retracing my steps past the spot where those two sergeants had earlier had their little debate—which is to say, I had to cross the main artery traversing the canyon. The risk of discovery would be exceedingly high, at least until nightfall. I remembered, though, that the moon wou
ld be rising late, so I decided to wait for it to appear and attempt this alternative plan, gambling everything on whether the Americans chose to occupy that position overnight.
I waited impatiently for the sun to set and the moon to emerge. My body had become a single throbbing bundle of thirst. I gave myself over to visions of stretching out on the bank of the larger river with my face in the water, gulping down as much as I could possibly hold. During the daytime I would hide nearby in the underbrush with a full canteen, and at night I would return to lie on the riverbank and slake my thirst some more. Two or three days later, after my thirst had been fully satisfied, I would choose my own moment to end my life. I regretted ever having left the canyon where my squad hut had stood near a plentiful spring.
The moon finally made its appearance.
I cast aside my rifle and sword. Even if I were to come upon some GIs, I knew I would have no desire to fight. I also discarded my haversack after transferring a fistful of rice into each of my pockets. I was not hungry then, but I would likely crave it later if I spent two or three days in slaking my thirst. I took with me only my hand grenade, attached securely to my belt, and my canteen, looped over my shoulder.
Reaching for some branches, I pulled myself upright and onto my feet. I started to black out and clung desperately to the branches to keep from failing. Five or six halting steps brought me back to the path, but as soon as I released my hold on the branches, my spine and legs went limp and I fell flat on my face.
I had experienced this exact same sensation before. I knew at once that the day’s exertions had rudely reverted me to the condition I was in at the height of my fever, when I could not walk a single step.
