wattle - no one special, just a dreamer who found an old pen.

I remember being a teen with a nine ending my age. Standing in the open door, callsign ‘bandit,’ as we powered across the paddy fields with supersonic booms cracking off the tips of our rotor blades. The people below always look with passion in their eyes, “They respect me,” I would always tell myself.

I now know the people in the fields only looked to see where the M60s were pointing. Their passionate eyes held no respect; I was a violent rapist, their culture was my prey.

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I remember hitching home and the ‘hippy-chick’ who gave me a ride in her volkswagen. Psychology was her trade; she said the war was wrong. The look in her eyes when I told her mine, and eventually talked her down saying, “It’s not right or wrong, it’s just a job.”

That slim body and firm breasts, those haunting passionate eyes. I wonder what she is doing now? I hope she is still uncomplicated and free.

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I remember the Warrant Officer explaining to the irate Squadron Leader, the image of the war graves overwritten by the caption ‘we’re the unwilling, led by the unqualified, to do the unnecessary, for the ungrateful’ might be better staying put above the bed. Saying, “It’s his idea of a joke, he’s a strange person, but a good airman.”

It Stayed! I now know it was no joke.

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I see on the news, the horrible carnage in London.

I listen as all the ‘experts’ use the media to ply their trade; Suicide Bombers, Fused Timing Devices, Moslems, Fundamentalism, Extremism, Terrorism, Al Qaida, Osama bin Laden, as they speak they all display the same passion in their eyes. I’ve seen it before, they speak bollocks; the perpetrators are violent rapists, culture is their quarry.