Patience, Grace, and Calmness will allow you to succeed where brute force cannot.
The Strength of Nu Wa, Chinese Proverb.
Sanitizing a lifetime of raw memory can, at times, seem disingenuous. I’ve thought hard about what to tell you, where to take you, and where to shine the light. It feels like the task the Poet Virgil undertook when he led Dante through Hell, Purgatory, and finally, Paradise in Dante Alighieri’s 14th-century epic poem Divine Comedy.
When I left the past behind, especially this particular mission, I could never go back and look for myself, unsee what I had seen, or forget what I had learned. I was never the same. Perhaps it is my life’s purpose in these waning years not to share my trauma nor shame myself by recounting the agony of knowing the truth about the human animal and myself. I would like to focus on the gift of wisdom I received from others and how I got there.
I’ll take your hand as Virgil takes Dante’s. In this singular story about fear, paranoia, and self-doubt, you will also see redemption, reconciliation, and vignettes of recollections intertwined with the introspection of life far beyond my boundaries, further still from my imagination, into the realm of disbelief. And sadly, it may all be too mundane to withstand. You be the judge, dear reader.
***
After a little more than a week with the tribe, Pete and I began to relax around each other. It seemed his attitude was more on how to swallow his pride and entertain a barbarian. I understood and made no demands on him.
***
I often referred to myself as Gonad The Bavarian from a previous stint in Germany’s Bavarian adult wonderland. Part of my fun was with the 10th Special Forces at Bad Tolz. The teams held formations in Birkenstock sandals, British Khaki shorts, and floral patterned shirts by the company Banana Republic. Many soldiers died in the old Banana Republic in South America to prop up the slavery institutionalized on the Banana plantations. The shorts were a wink to our missions in the Middle East, which no one ever mentioned. We did this in winter with a foot of snow on the ground surrounded by the old NAZI SS Barracks. My favorite command after formation was, from front to rear – DISAPPEAR. We were good at disappearing. I acclimated to the cold, but most of my missions were in hot spots, no pun intended.
***
Around the village, there were work areas where the tribal leaders held a council, and the women made traditional clothes for the Tribe to sell in the market. Other women prepared food gathered by the hunting and gathering parties. In this activity, they stored food in large clay pots with heavy lids and hung fish and game cut into strips on racks for drying.
The health department would crap a fire-glazed, big brown brick if they ever visited one of these industrious, highly organized tribes. I knew they were hardy souls if they could eat all that and not be sick. Of course, sometimes even their immune system says fuck-it and leaves the sad individual to their fate. That’s where my usefulness comes in.
***
I volunteered to be the combat medic in my Detachment, hoping to spend some time in the hospitals in classes eating good food, and trying to marry or mate with eligible nurses. I was given a lot of training focused on combat injuries, diseases, and illnesses. I was supposed to focus on my team as we tended to get punctured and torn. However, treating local populations and other soldiers, including wounded enemies, was also part of the job description. Unfortunately, I was not a medic sanctioned by the geneva convention. I carried a weapon and qualified on so much boom stuff I forsook my childhood dreams for the thrill of big boomery. After my training and yearly requalifications, I could blow stuff up and patch anyone still in one piece.
I got tons and tons of field experience. Not all of it was my fault. Male soldiers feared things that could harm a penis, and female soldiers were worried about their faces and hair. I was adept at teaching the men self-care. I would reach for my fly and say, “here, let me show you.” That trick worked every time, as they told me to give them the brochure so they could get back to work. There was a fantastic array of tools and care products for the ladies that could allay their fears. They just wanted it to stop hurting when wounded, and they didn’t care how unless it was their penis, face, and hair. Then they got picky.
It started during the Grenada invasion. Our chopper flew in a narrow valley observed by a machine gunner on the ridge in an old prison fort. The fort was the mission objective. My world turned into a chaotic scene of centrifugal force generated by a chopper in a death spiral while bits of metal, blood, bone, and gear beat on me like a hailstorm. Sometimes I wanted to give the operations planners a red pepper sauce enema to clean out all the stupid ideas they kept coming up with for us to execute. There is nothing like learning your tradecraft on the fly.
I would become a Health Physicist, making doctors and specialists cry by picking on their sloppy techniques and having no sense of bold treatment plans. Most of them would tell me the treatment plans were what nurses did. I insisted the nurses spank them if the young doctors got out of line. I think I may not be popular with traditionalists.
Hostile environments earn their name from all the microbes, pathogens, parasites, insects, reptiles, and other flora and fauna that are hell-bent on taking out a human. Jungles tend to harbor the scariest stuff you never saw in your life. So, here I was in another wilderness and volunteered to play doctor. The Tribe immediately responded in long lines to get in my little space in one of the work stalls with the pigs, ducks, and poop.
***
First, I documented their complaints, categorized groups by treatment, and determined my needed supplies. Pete hitched a ride down the mountain to the local hospital and had enough creds to come back with everything, including a good stash of opium, which I suspected was a black market score. His eyes were glassy, and his pupils were blown. He said he was tired. I told him I could handle it from here. He left with the opium.
Now the Chief was sure he should adopt me. I brought him lots of gold, red silk thread that kept the elderly ladies smiling their brown toothless grins, and now the villagers were happy with the Chief for bringing me aboard to fix their ouchies. Finally, I found a way to connect positively and ensure my safety.
I spent half a day examining everybody, including a few animals, and dispensing psychological hugs. If anyone tells you that placebos don’t work, they don’t know how placebos work on the human mind. By paying more attention to the children, I made some momma friends for life, and the men would never do anything to me that their wives would find offense with, like not being able to fix little Nguyen’s toothache or butt rash because they got me killed or drunk. In the back of my mind, I wondered why Miss Yang hadn’t shown up. If she had dermatitis or blisters, I was her man. It’s strange what goes through a young man’s mind after he commits to a loin cloth.
Hyperion Sky 
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