The Target

It was another hot one today,
They all are in Nam.
Humped into position, late afternoon.
An undersized company of Marines.

Twilight now, just growing dark,
Dug in on an old rice paddy,
Blocking force in an OP,
Hoping to get a shot.

Tree line facing us, two hundred yards away,
Things are getting fuzzy in the dimming light,
The trees start growing together.
As we all watch.

Sighting through my scope,
Was that movement out in front?
My spotter sits on the lip of our hole,
Calmly watching the growing night.

Movement now, I see it!
My heart begins to race,
Blink my eyes to clear ‘em,
Take a deep breathe, control it!

Not a sound is sounding,
All quite as the dead.
But what’s that my ears are hearing?
The bounding in my chest?

I lick my lips, blink one more time,
Then one more long, deep breathe.
My rifle is locked and loaded.
Need no permission to fire here.

Two shadowy figures by the tree line,
Moving, oh so slow,
My cross hairs perfectly centered,
On the human outline to the right.

Steady now, steady,
Squeeze that trigger slow,
Watch your breathing, hold steady,
All done without a thought.

The hammer strikes,
My rifle bucks up, then comes home
And I catch a fleeting glimpse of
The right shadow slowly sinking down.

All in one split second
My spotter yells “A hit!”
The tree line comes alive,
Green tracers flying high.

The Grunts, they rapidly answer,
Their shots held low and true.
My spotter still sits on the lip,
Watching green tracers against the black sky.

I grab his shirt and cuss him,
And pull him in the hole.
His first time out, I know that,
But Jesus man, get real!
 
The firefight is over,
As soon as it began,
Not one of us is hit,
We got away with one.

That night was all quite,
Not another round was spent.
One shot was all I had fired.
And I’m the one who killed.

At dawn of the next day,
My spotter, a Sarge and I,
Went out to find the body,
Or some blood trail leading away.

At sixty yards the Sarge stopped us,
Said this was far enough.
I told him it was farther out there,
Were the shadow had slowly sunk.

But he made us turn back,
Away from that dreadful tree line.
And since there was no body to see,
No credit for the kill.

For thirty years I’ve pretended,
That I was wrong about that evening.
There was really no one out there,
And my shot ran through the night.

The fire fight was just an accident,
The green tracers, just from their fright.
That for sure I never hit anyone,
 So God could hold no grudge.

But now when the nights get long,
And the stress becomes too much.
I close my eyes and see him,
The right shadow slowly sinking down.


Michael Tank
USMC
Scout/Snipers
‘69-’72

12/29/01





"Copyright 2004. Michael E. Tank All rights reserved. No part of this document may be copied, faxed, electronically transmitted, or in any other manner duplicated without express written permission of the author."

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