Article content continued

We transferred off the bus onto standard army trucks and packed ourselves into the back, unable to move in our brand-new, stiff ballistic vests. Our weapons were still broken down in our kitbags under our feet, our ammunition still in carrying bags. We looked out the open tarp at the back of the truck as we passed picturesque villages with peasants. It was strangely picturesque, like something out of a cartoon.

The blood was still fresh. We saw right away that the spatters were all different sizes, and every man on the truck realized why: Dad, Mom, the kids

And we rumbled along, the truck was full of the mindless bravado of young men. We discussed how we would soon put fear into the local ethnic forces and show these clowns what real soldiers looked like. We discussed how accurate our new optic gunsights were, how well they enhanced light and how deadly they made us. We traded “war” stories of our bravery during the intense training in Fort Ord and Winnipeg.

You don’t often actually experience a room or gathering suddenly falling completely silent from a happy clamour. But suddenly the sunny truck bay was absolutely still. We had entered no-mans land and a recently “cleared” village. Some of the houses still smouldered. There was stench of burned metal and plastics, and another, dankly sweet organic stench. Personal belongings were scattered everywhere. People’s memories, their realities, were spread like shrapnel on the ground in this smoking testament to inhumanity.

We rounded a corner and off the left side of the truck the one remaining wall of a ruined farmhouse came into our field of view. And clear and dark along the wall were a series of blood spatters. There where five distinct spatters — five victims. The blood was still fresh. We saw right away that the spatters were all different sizes, and every man on the truck realized why: Dad, Mom, the kids. The lowest impact spray would have made the victim about four feet tall.