Comments on: Bits & Pieces

By: Bryan

Bryan — Sat, 19 Dec 2015 04:52:40 +0000

I’m not a fan of grilling myself, especially if they use charcoal starter fluid.

There was always an area at bad accidents and murder sites where people could go when they lost control to ensure they didn’t contaminate any evidence.

By: Kryten42

Kryten42 — Fri, 18 Dec 2015 22:42:44 +0000

Yep, true Bryan. The smell is worst. I think I mentioned in a comment a while back my experience. We were actually trained to use the sense of smell in interrogation. It’s our strongest trigger to memories, as I was to discover. Before signing up, I really enjoyed a good BBQ. It’s an Aussie tradition. 🙂

My first BBQ after Cambodia was about two years later. All was well at first, then I decided to see if my m8 wanted help, and as I approached a gust of wind blew the odor of cooking meat into my face, and I was on the ground retching until I was exhausted. I didn’t understand what had happened. My friends helped me inside & cleaned me up & I drank some ice water. I truly felt wretched. Whenever I got near the BBQ, I felt nauseous. I had a meeting with a councillor a few days later and she reminded me of the link between smell & memory. It took a few years, but I eventually dealt with it. Well, I stopped throwing up at BBQ’s anyway. 🙂

Yeah Bryan, the first time I posted the comment above, it didn’ show up. Gremlins in the machine! 😉 😀

By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 18 Dec 2015 22:16:08 +0000

Oh, Kryten, there was a partial comment with your name on it floating around. The body was mostly gibberish, so it looks like there was transmission error or, possibly a data base error.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 18 Dec 2015 22:12:01 +0000

As bad as the pictures and the sounds are, the smell, something we can’t currently record, was the worst for me. I catch a whiff and I have the sights and sounds stored away. It makes no difference whether it is a battlefield, an accident scene, a robbery, a suicide – if you have ever smelled death, you recognize it. That’s why veteran detectives have a jar of Vicks Vapo-Rub in their glove compartment – it doesn’t eliminate it, but it covers it enough to make it possible to work.

By: Kryten42

Kryten42 — Fri, 18 Dec 2015 08:47:32 +0000

Oh, I should add that if seeing that photo didn’t hurt, then you would just be another selfish, inconsiderate, heartless bastard. As my mother told me before she died, “The World has enough bastards in it. It doesn’t need another one.” And that is why I keep going, and she knew it. She knew once she was gone, I had nothing to keep me here. 🙂

By: Kryten42

Kryten42 — Fri, 18 Dec 2015 08:38:52 +0000

I am glad you were not there or any other such place. I like you. 🙂 Allow me to carry enough for both us. The World needs bleeding hearts, I wish there were many more. I was one once. It was mostly why I joined up. Now I’m just a hard cynical sod that knows too much about human nature. 🙂

That image has made you a better human m8.

All I really wanted to be was an Engineer. And the Mil/Int corrupted even that. It was useful for their needs. It wasn’t my idea to work for GD. Still, I did get a half dozen years of pleasure as an Engineer, except I discovered companies used us also. I designed systems to make work easier, safer & more efficient. They used them to reduce staff. Ah well… We take what we can get, eh? 😉

I hope we get to share stories one day. It wasn’t all bad! 😀

Neither of us can change the past. What is done is done. And humans will always find away to destroy.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Fri, 18 Dec 2015 07:32:54 +0000

Kryten, you don’t have to tell me that, I already know. I already know that what the horror of what happened was far more than one little girl tortured then executed. The horror that man does to man seems to be a constant, whether we are talking about the concentration camps of the Nazis, what Pol Pot did to his people, or the atrocities that are undoubtedly happening somewhere at this very moment in time to some other 10 year old girl guilty of nothing more than being born at the wrong place at the wrong time to the wrong people. I don’t talk too much about my own past, but I haven’t always been out here in the Silicon Valley slinging electrons. This is my second life. My first one was spent in a variety of places that nowhere compares to what happened to Cambodia but had plenty of tragedy and sadness of their own. Bleeding heart, remember?

But still, that one photograph stays with me for days every time I see it, even knowing all that. If I had been there and seen the things your friend saw, I have no doubt that my fate would have been the same, because if one photograph is enough to raise the kind of reaction in me, being faced with the horror of the real thing… no. I am grateful that was not to be.

By: Kryten42

Kryten42 — Fri, 18 Dec 2015 07:18:29 +0000

Badtux, I had to look at hundreds of photo’s & vid’s because it was part of my job. I am not trying to “one up” you or belittle what that photo made you feel. I want to make an important point. Going into a village that had recently destroyed & everyone killed vicously, was worse. But we had spent over 2 years training for that. The traning is hard, and most don’t make it. I would give anything to have failed. My friend who ended his life taught me a valuable lesson. He thought he could become human again. He couldn’t, not with those memories. I am not at all the man I was before I joined up.

You are a lucky man. I envy you.

The only thing that keeps me sane & alive is that I constantly remind myself of the thousands we saved. And the looks on their faces, and the tears of joy, and hugs of the children. But you know how devious the human mind is. You can’t think only of the good parts, without the bad parts lurking in the shadows, waiting for their chance to jump out.

But the truth is… I’m just waiting for that final *tock*. All the rest of the past 25 years or so, doesn’t really matter a damn to me.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 18 Dec 2015 06:21:10 +0000

Badtux, the bitterest pill was that it took the North Vietnamese Army to finally remove the Khmer Rouge. We screwed the entire area up and got hundreds of thousands of people killed for no good reason.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 18 Dec 2015 06:10:54 +0000

They used NDAs backed by military law to stop people from announcing to the world that the US government was lying about just about everything, and intel was taking the hit when reality would finally catch up on one of their bogus claims.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if the bombing actually accomplished what it was supposed to do, but it didn’t. It was just a boon for the Khmer Rouge and destroyed the image of the US as a good guy for helping to kick out the Japanese.

The area you worked would primarily the responsibility of the CIA after you moved away from the Mekong. There were overflights, but they were changed from low and slow over land in RC-47s to high altitude over water in RC-135s after the troop draw downs.