I have an American friend who casually dropped into conversation one day that he had been one of the very few Conscientious Objectors in the USAF who had been decorated for bravery.  He talked about the day he started to see faces.  I thought him so brave to go against the flow.

This is a totally ficticious story based on that one brief conversation.

Mike leant silently on the doorjamb and watched his daughter behind her back. She was doing the ironing, watching Saturday morning kids’ TV. He felt so proud at how mature and independent she was, and so sad that her childhood had been cut short.

She placed the shorts on the pile of crisp ironed clothes in the easy chair, and caught sight of her Dad.

"You don’t have to do this, you know, Angel", he said. "I’m perfectly capable of doing my own ironing."

He held up the immaculately ironed boxers. "And you really don’t have to iron my shorts. They’re going to be hidden under my pants. It’s not like anyone will ever see them."

"I don’t mind", she replied with a shy smile, carefully taking them out of his hands and refolding them. "Besides, Mrs Henderson is hot for you. I’ve seen the way she looks at you. You might be grateful for ironed underwear."

He shook his head. "That, young lady, is crossing the line. And anyway, Mrs Henderson?" And he gave a theatrical shudder.

She shrugged, and picked up the pile of ironed clothes. "Whatever. Anyway, I’ve finished now. I’ll just put them away, and then I’ll cook us some breakfast."

He stood aside to let her pass. "That’s OK, Angel. I’ll get breakfast."

She shook her head as she passed him. "Uh-huh. You always put too much syrup on the pancakes."

"You can’t put too much syrup on pancakes", he called after her.

He chuckled to himself as he went into the kitchen. She tried so hard to be her mother. She was so much like her sometimes it wrenched at him. The coffee was perking. He bet it was decaf. What sort of start to the day was that?

He was halfway through the mug when his daughter came into the kitchen grim-faced. She placed a pile of small cases, a few inches to a side, onto the table in front of him.

"I wasn’t snooping. Honest I wasn’t. They were in your underwear drawer."

Mike nodded. He hadn’t taken the cases out in years. He had all but forgotten them, as far as one could. He looked at his daughter and raised his eyebrows in a query.

She shrugged her frustration at him. "Well?"

"Well what?"

"Dad! ‘Well what’? They’re medals, Dad. Your medals. You’ve got medals, and you never told me? You’re a computer nerd, for Christ’s sake. You got medals?"

"Watch your mouth, young lady. You’re not at the mall now. You don’t cuss and you don’t blaspheme in my house."

She closed her eyes, struggling to control her frustration. Then, with exaggerated calmness, she continued, "Dad. You work in computers. How come you never told me you have medals?"

He shrugged. "I didn’t think you’d want to know. I got them a long time ago."

She laughed in disbelief. "You didn’t think I would want to know? My dad is some sort of hero, and I don’t know? You told me all that cra… all that stuff about us being a team now, and you don’t bother to tell me you’re a hero?"

He shook his head. "Medals don’t make a hero, Angel. Most heroes never get thanks even. That’s what makes them heroes. Your Mom, now she was a hero." And suddenly he felt the weight he had shrugged off for so long descend back on his shoulders

She sat down at the kitchen table and placed her hand on his, just like her mother had done when he had told her what he was going to do. Quietly she said "What’s up, Dad?" She was so like her Mom it stung his eyes.

"You remember when I was in the Air Force?"

"Duh! Yeah. It was only, like, five years ago you left."

"Yep. Well, I was a career man. I was in for twenty years. When I joined up, I was a pilot."

"No way! A pilot? No frigging way! Sorry", she added, catching her Father’s disapproving look. "But first I find out you’ve got medals, and now I found out you were a pilot? You weren’t, like, the President at some point, or something?"

He laughed. "No, no. Just a Viper pilot. It’s a jet fighter", he explained in answer to his daughter’s puzzled expression. "The F-16. The Fighting Falcon. I flew them when I first married your Mom. We hadn’t been married long when I was sent away. Your Mom told me she was expecting you a week before I was shipped out to Saudi. Operation Desert Storm."

"Oh, we did that last term in history. Hey, you’re a part of history, Dad" she laughed, then saw the pained expression on his face. "Sorry. Carry on."

"Well, we pretty much destroyed their air capability as soon as we started. Took out their airfields. Their radar guys were too scared to switch the radar on, because as soon as they did we’d put a Harm missile right down their throats. You see, the missile would lock onto the radar signal and the enemy would guide it right to their own base. So the Viper was king of the skies.

"Pretty soon all we were doing was air-to-surface runs. We’d load all sorts of smart bombs, then drop them on targets. Surgical strikes, they called them. Clever. Made it sound like we were doctors, curing Iraq, sort of. Or we’d take out convoys of tanks. That sort of thing.

"Then one night, towards the end, we went on a run to take out a military convoy running from Kuwait back to Baghdad." Mike took a long draught from his mug, and as he replaced on the table his hand shook. He stared into the depths of the mug, as though it were a crystal ball showing him the events of that night.

"Dad, if you don’t want to…"

He waved her into silence. "No, you should know. You’re old enough.

"Highway 80. Heard of it? No? They called it the Highway of Death, afterwards. We were scrambled, told we had to take out the Iraqi Guard. They loaded up the Vipers with any armaments that were to hand. I mean, some guys had Bunker Busters loaded up, just to take out trucks, because that was what was handy.

"Highway 80 was just a straight road. I mean, just a line of road in the middle of nothing. No cover, no nothing. We just strafed it out of existence. Bombs, mavericks, even 20 millimetre cannon. They had no cover, no AA, just rifles. So we could get in nice and low when we hit them.

"There was some movement, one of the vehicles broke rank and started to bounce across the desert. I was hollering and whooping, I mean, it was like all our Christmases had come at once, and then this bus made a break for it. One of those VW camper things, you know? So I came at it, cannons firing. I saw some people jump out, straight into the shells."

His knuckles were white on the mug, his eyes fixed on the table. He slowly shook his head. "You know what they call it when a pilot loses his nerve? They say he sees faces. Usually, you’re so high, or you’re moving so fast, you just loose your load at some target. I mean the target can be miles away. And that’s what it is. A target. You loose your load and you’re gone. You don’t even get to see the explosion, most of the time. It’s like playing Space Invaders. Not even that, most of the time.

"But you think about it, you remember it’s people down there, and they say you start to see their faces when you hit the button.

"There were women in the bus. I didn’t realise it till I was past them, but in the seconds after I had shot them to hell, I realised. There were women coming out of the bus. And then every time I dropped a bomb, fired a shell, I could only think of the poor sap down there. Some Iraqi GI wanting to get home, or some Kuwaiti hostage.

"I was a mess when I got back to base, but that was it, as far as the war was concerned. That was the last major engagement."

"When I got home from my tour I sat your Mom down and told her I wasn’t going to fly again. I was prepared for her to walk out the door, and I honestly wouldn’t have blamed her for it. Who wants to be married to a coward? But she stood by me. Supported me. And it was worse for her. Oh, it was pretty bad for me, having to explain it all to my CO. Having to explain it to my crewmates. The guys who had covered my six all that time. But it was worse for her. Being blanked by the other wives. Not being able to go anywhere on base without the looks, the comments. But she stood by me, proud, every minute.

"And it’s not many conscientious objectors that are decorated." He pushed a couple of the cases aside. "Them there, they were given out by the Kuwaitis and the Saudis just for turning up. This is my good conduct award, worked hard for that. Only one in my unit that year that got one. But this little guy here, that’s the Air Force Cross. Awarded for extraordinary heroism." He gave an ironic laugh. "I didn’t think I was being heroic at the time. I was just looking out for my squadron. That’s what you do in combat. Forget all that ‘for my country’ bull. You do what you do to keep your pals alive."

He put the cases one on top of each other, carefully lining up the edges. Then he gave a little drum roll on top with his fingertips, breaking the maudlin spell. "I’m proud I served my country, Angel. Proud I was a member of the US Air Force, the finest bunch of aviators bar none. The bravest bunch. Don’t you ever be ashamed to be American, you hear?

"But sometimes, sometimes you have to be loyal to yourself. And that can take more courage than flying into combat."