A Life in Pictures Scattered across the Sand

I believe that we’re all the same – people are people, men are men – no matter where they come from, what language they speak, what their religion is, or what the may look like.

Here’s how I was awakened to this belief:

I just wanted to check it out.

It was interesting to see up close what we had seen just a few minutes before from one click away through our sights. From a click away, we hated them. They were trying to kill us. Not today. Not these guys. These bearded, incompetent soldiers in tanks I had studied and wondered about for years. They looked at us through their sights from a click away and hated us, too.

When it was all over we drove that kilometer in a V formation still keeping vigilant, but now relieved and flush with adrenalin.

“Calm down, stop shouting, gents! I can’t hear the radio!”

The first time leaves you feeling like the first time you scored a touchdown. One guy, my loader even….ah, nevermind.

Now I was standing over him. The touchdown celebration was over and now only pity, sadness, shame and the overwhelming realization that we were all just men. No reason to hate this guy any more.

Poor guy. Slumped over in front of his life’s pictures scattered in front of him. His family. Smiling broadly in front of a donkey! A woman…his wife? A daughter? A house – a primitive looking house. A child. Friends. All smiling. Humble smiles. How strange these pictures looked, yet how familiar. Could’ve been my pictures.

I picked up all the pictures up off of the desert floor. I didn’t want them trampled into the sand by one of our vehicles or picked up by the most immature, most broken of us who would have laughed, joked, or disrespected this fallen man.

Like us, he came when he was called, did what was asked, but didn’t come home to the people he so cherished. Cherished so much that he took them with him and kept them by his side as pictures.

Pictures of his life scattered across the sand.