By 'SKS 7.62'. Published in Issue 11 of Paper Chained in September 2023.
‘You can never start a sentence with AND,’ said my English teacher. ‘AND why not?’ was my wry reply. Maybe that is where it started. My father called it the ‘exuberance of youth,’ the courts would later refer to it as the start of ‘antisocial personality disorder.’
‘I was born in the wrong country,’ my uncle would say, Australia really isn’t the place to be if you have a genuine passion for shooting sports. What other sport is so political, so polarising. A birth in Texas may have led me to legitimacy as opposed to becoming a down-right outlaw. Weekly shooting competitions at school and army cadets every Friday night galvanised my beliefs. Perhaps that is why it’s so hard now. Doing time in jail is just boring, the real struggle is rationalising how I got here.
A career in the military seemed apt at the time, back when I knew little. I think as we age and a lot of us look back, that’s when if we are honest, we regret. I regret being so ignorant. Iraq and Afghanistan. What a monumental cluster fuck. A lot of us went in bright-eyed and bushy tailed, just like every other brainwashed gunman that went before us.
In between giving diabolical local warlords hard US currency and helping them traffic their heroin across the country, it’s no wonder that most of us began to question ourselves and our core purpose of being there. ‘The ends justify the means,’ was the quiet axiom that was spoken. My government paid me to run guns and drugs, because ‘all is fair in love and war.’ Another pithy platitude. So I sit here in prison for doing the exact same things in my homeland. Seems like the old crown doesn’t like it too much when you apply your training in the civilian world.
Hindsight. What did I really learn about truth? About human suffering and indignity? I learnt that we are the children of warfare, our genetic pool stands on the shoulders of those most violent. I am who I am through bellicose bloodshed, my distant forebears slayed many that I should live. Lands were seized for me by force of arms. I was gifted what is not rightfully mine.
Yes, murder still crosses my mind. Who are they to tell me the days of conquest are over, thou shalt not kill, unless it is en masse and government certified. Praised will I be in victory, or remembered in dignity through death. Yes, pin another medal to my chest.
I miss the bolt slamming closed. An intertwined belt of steel brass copper and lead. Powder sparks like symphony in slow motion, cutting down the enemy in Tarin-Kowt. Time stops, metal compounds shred flesh and bone in majestic flames and cataclysmic thunder. Glorious.
I will tell you the truth. Truth was our enemy was determined, the rules of war were over, there is no room for second place in battle. Gas was deployed in breach of conventions. Don’t worry it will only make you cry. Its ethereal grey mist suits the sombre slaughter. Yes, I’ll choke the life out of these animals I thought. I’ve been indoctrinated to hate them, you are not human, lesser beings. Suffocate and die. We love to hate. So that is war. That is what we did. But the question is, How do I feel about it all now from inside this cell?
Well, I survived and at the time I thought I’d won. Victory was ours we were told. We were the righteous, we were the brave. Our way of life was honourable, and of course the enemy’s way was not. God has ordained it so. Or so some of us were led to believe. Especially the Yanks. But I feel naked, suddenly. My uniform is gone. They won’t give my rifle back. I’m military surplus with an itchy trigger finger. My hands clutch for it, crave it. They made it an extension of me, then banned me from possessing it ever again. Give me just one more 30-shot magazine. Let me hear that melody again, and smell the nitro-cellulose burn.
So we sit now together, the jaded ‘winners’, how happy we were. We drink and smoke, some of us inject heroin through our vicious blood. Chemicals we once helped smuggle, that same blood we now wish we spilt. We will remember them, lest we forget.
My regret grows, pain becomes melancholic numb. Empty vessels deleted. Obsolete men past their used by date. It’s hard for me to rationalise it all now, but in truth, as time passes in here things become clearer. Jail will grant you clarity if you let it. I don’t blame anyone for my choices. I made executive decisions at the time when I thought my actions were justified. Those choices led me to prison.
I tried to fit back in when I left the military. Made a few attempts at adapting to what is deemed the normal life. But nothing is ever normal again after you have shot a man at point blank range through the face and you learn to celebrate such a feat. Combine that with the numerous other rotten things I had done, is it any wonder that a life of crime was inevitable. Crime felt natural, homogeneous even. You would think that a life of regiment and taking orders would have set me straight. In reality it gave me the tools I needed to wage my own private war against the system that took my innocence from me. The irony is that the underworld is really an honest life, because you are taken purely on your merits. Your word is your bond, no messy contracts required. Bullets are bonds in this world.
Drugs are funny things. It’s crazy how we are all conditioned to be repulsed from illicit substances from a young age when, once again, the truth is that it is all an act of social engineering. Drink all you want, take your antidepressants, but cocaine? I worked out over time what another war really was. The ‘War on Drugs’ once you cut away all the bullshit, it’s really an excuse for the elite to maintain a paramilitary intelligence agency in society that can be morally justified. Legalise drugs and a lot of powerful people will suddenly be unemployed.
By ‘SKS-7.62’ , a NSW prisoner
