The air is cool and clear with just the promise of rain and the smell of new life and growth is all around. The sky and idyllic blue with wisps of cottony white clouds floating overhead.
I'm there as an advisor.
Meeting the local regiment commander as they roll out in a parade formation through the local neighborhoods to show off their new armaments and that they are maintaining order.
They do not want to be seen as puppets, so before heading out I am given a uniform to blend in to the twenty or so other soldiers escorting the weapons platform through the residential streets.
It seems showy and aggressive to me but my opinions on the matter have little bearing now that the deliveries have been made.
We stop, the streets empty and looking of all intensive purposes like a west coast suburb right out of a 1950's television show.
My interpreter turns to me "The Commander would like to know if you would only give one warning."
As I look around, taking in the weather I say "Yeah."
As I turn to look at the commander for clarification the blast of air caused by a truck mounted rocket platform hits me at the same time as the whistle of six of the things flying off in rapid succession towards an unknown target.
I look at the Commander torn between disgust and battle ready hands reaching for a weapon that I wasn't issued before heading out.
The explosions are close, very close. Dirt and rocks rain down on us close and I duck into the alcove of a homes front door until it stops. I and my interpreter jump into a pickup with the Commander and a couple of other soldiers as they head out to survey the damage.
We drive less than two blocks, the distance further to the end of the streets than it was between launch and impact point.
People are streaming from homes on the other side of the street to see what's going on. Irritated and unarmed I look around to try and figure out what the target had been. As I'm doing this the Commander jumps back into the back of the pickup and they peel off leaving the Interpreter and I behind.
there is a group of children between curious and scarred huddled together looking across the road.
A young person, dressed in layered clothes more suited to the wilderness than to suburban streets emerges from a house with what looks like a potato gun in their hand. I realize it's pointed at us and I dive to the side as it fires. The blast fully catches the Interpreter. Two more people come from the same house carrying similar devices and I scramble for cover behind a parked car as metal pings and pops off of it.
I look back to see if the Interpreter is still alive to him shot point blank with one of these improvised weapons. At the same moment a woman in a Bright, glossy, blue cocktail dress comes out wielding a small sub machine gun. She opens fire at the three people in their wilderness clothes and hits one with a blast of fully automatic spray. She's never fired in full automatic before and the gun kicks and bucks in her hand catching the kids in it's arc. A young girl turns to me from the group, pocked with a series of red dots from her face down to her legs. She's trying to scream but there is not sound as she pitches forward onto the ground. Behind her a forth kid, this one with an actual gun shoots the woman in the blue dress.
The scrabble of footsteps coming around the truck pulls my attention the other direction and I barrel at the young kid with a weapon in their hand.
As I examine the incident later I learn that the Commander was out to eliminate what they viewed as the enemy. Three young radicalized people recently moved into the neighborhood, their homes having been recently destroyed by a military bombing campaign campaign. The rockets had been meant for them but there had been a party taking place and the Commander had given the wrong firing orders while trying to prove he was in control of the area.
Instead they struck a party thinking it had been a recruiting effort by the insurgence.
The woman in the blue dress had been at the party. The gun she had was her boyfriends, killed in the blast, that he kept in his car.
The Commander fled as soon as the fighting started.
I'm there as an advisor.
Meeting the local regiment commander as they roll out in a parade formation through the local neighborhoods to show off their new armaments and that they are maintaining order.
They do not want to be seen as puppets, so before heading out I am given a uniform to blend in to the twenty or so other soldiers escorting the weapons platform through the residential streets.
It seems showy and aggressive to me but my opinions on the matter have little bearing now that the deliveries have been made.
We stop, the streets empty and looking of all intensive purposes like a west coast suburb right out of a 1950's television show.
My interpreter turns to me "The Commander would like to know if you would only give one warning."
As I look around, taking in the weather I say "Yeah."
As I turn to look at the commander for clarification the blast of air caused by a truck mounted rocket platform hits me at the same time as the whistle of six of the things flying off in rapid succession towards an unknown target.
I look at the Commander torn between disgust and battle ready hands reaching for a weapon that I wasn't issued before heading out.
The explosions are close, very close. Dirt and rocks rain down on us close and I duck into the alcove of a homes front door until it stops. I and my interpreter jump into a pickup with the Commander and a couple of other soldiers as they head out to survey the damage.
We drive less than two blocks, the distance further to the end of the streets than it was between launch and impact point.
People are streaming from homes on the other side of the street to see what's going on. Irritated and unarmed I look around to try and figure out what the target had been. As I'm doing this the Commander jumps back into the back of the pickup and they peel off leaving the Interpreter and I behind.
there is a group of children between curious and scarred huddled together looking across the road.
A young person, dressed in layered clothes more suited to the wilderness than to suburban streets emerges from a house with what looks like a potato gun in their hand. I realize it's pointed at us and I dive to the side as it fires. The blast fully catches the Interpreter. Two more people come from the same house carrying similar devices and I scramble for cover behind a parked car as metal pings and pops off of it.
I look back to see if the Interpreter is still alive to him shot point blank with one of these improvised weapons. At the same moment a woman in a Bright, glossy, blue cocktail dress comes out wielding a small sub machine gun. She opens fire at the three people in their wilderness clothes and hits one with a blast of fully automatic spray. She's never fired in full automatic before and the gun kicks and bucks in her hand catching the kids in it's arc. A young girl turns to me from the group, pocked with a series of red dots from her face down to her legs. She's trying to scream but there is not sound as she pitches forward onto the ground. Behind her a forth kid, this one with an actual gun shoots the woman in the blue dress.
The scrabble of footsteps coming around the truck pulls my attention the other direction and I barrel at the young kid with a weapon in their hand.
As I examine the incident later I learn that the Commander was out to eliminate what they viewed as the enemy. Three young radicalized people recently moved into the neighborhood, their homes having been recently destroyed by a military bombing campaign campaign. The rockets had been meant for them but there had been a party taking place and the Commander had given the wrong firing orders while trying to prove he was in control of the area.
Instead they struck a party thinking it had been a recruiting effort by the insurgence.
The woman in the blue dress had been at the party. The gun she had was her boyfriends, killed in the blast, that he kept in his car.
The Commander fled as soon as the fighting started.
Public reports were conflicting and both sides used it in their propaganda machine in the following weeks.
This is a reoccurring dream I have.
A cautionary tale that makes me question how I should have handled things differently.
And an illustration of how these kinds of conflicts perpetuate.
A cautionary tale that makes me question how I should have handled things differently.
And an illustration of how these kinds of conflicts perpetuate.
One of the several dreams that wake me regularly.
