The Poems And Confessions Of A Mad Man Read online

  After one year, I had earned a black belt from this guy who was the best and most vicious fighter in Europe. Throughout my training, David had me spar with other guys in the battalion, but they were just guys who weren’t as dedicated as I was. One time he had me fight 6 guys, one on one. Not all at once, but one after the other. He told me to beat them hard and fast. I did, for the first 3 guys, but I became fatigued after them and the next 3 pounded the hell out of me. I did beat them all, but in the end I was a mess. David was proud if what he had created.

  We were constantly in the gym after I received my black belt. He was insistent on hitting the heavy bag. He said that most martial artists never hit the heavy bag or really learn to fight. If they were in a fight with a real street fighter, then they would be ripped apart. When we would hit and kick the heavy bag, people in the gym would stop what they were doing and come and watch. They said they’ve never seen a 95 pound heavy bag get kicked so hard and fast. When we would hit the heavy bag, it would fold in the middle, into an 85 degree angle. I had no problem hitting this hard because in my mind I wasn’t hitting a bag, I was hitting all of the people who ever picked on me when I was growing up. I wished they would pick on me now.

  My mind began to change toward people. I felt that I had power over them, even if they had authority over me. Some of my sergeants would try to humiliate me or talk down to me when they were with their friends. I would say to them that if they didn’t have that rank on their collar, then they wouldn’t talk that way in front of their homeys. I knew I would get a reaction from them and I would lure them into my world called, “The mad mans den.” If I could only set this one guy up to take my bait, then I could beat him almost to death and I wouldn’t get into any trouble for it. The sergeant said he would take off his rank and we could settle this in a ring. He said I could use all the karate bullshit I wanted but he would beat my ass like it’s never been beaten. I told him he was on, and got permission from our captain. The captain said, “Now don’t you go getting hurt Specialist Green, I need you to be my driver, and that man outweighs you by 70 pounds.” I assured him I wouldn’t get hurt and that I would pound this mouthy punk into the ground. The captain didn’t like that sergeant anyway and figured he needed a good ass whipping if I could give it to him.

  We went to the gym where there were a number of mats on the floor in different places. The European Martial Arts Competitions were held there every Saturday so everything was set up for us. His friends showed up and a number of other people came. David couldn’t wait to see this guys reaction when as I planted my first blow. He wanted me to bury this guy in the first round.

  There would be no special rules and no charges filed no matter what happened. We both put on the martial arts fighting gloves and I put on foot pads. He refused the foot pads because he said that only girls kicked. I deliberately began to tell him to take it easy on me and that I was only kidding. His mouth went wild as this bolstered his confidence and he began making me all of these promises about how he was going to break me like a stick and have me crying for my mama. The monkeys that were in his corner were all excited and started telling him that he had me scarred and that I was shaking in my boots, and all of this shit.

  David yelled, “Let the fight begin!” When he said this, I walked across mat with my arms to my side and when I was 4 feet away from him I threw my left hand toward his face. When I did this, he raised his hands and exposed everything below his chest. Immediately, I pivoted my right foot away from him and gave him a sidekick with my left foot to the under carriage of his ribcage. He flew 7 feet and landed on the basketball court, off of the mat. The fight was over. I broke 3 of his ribs and one of his ribs punctured his lung. He was rushed to the hospital and put into intensive care after surgery. He lived. He got away with his life and I wished I had killed him. David later said that I had better be careful because people are fragile compared to heavy bags, and I could easily kill someone. He congratulated me and said I did great. Now I would have to face the captain. He said I could spar this guy, but didn’t give me permission to almost kill him.

  The very next day, David and I were both called to the captain’s office. I thought I was going to jail for attempted murder or something. When we went in, he had a big smile on his face. He congratulated me on my victory and asked me if I could win like that every time. I assured him I wouldn’t lose to anyone in the brigade or anywhere, except against David. I told him that David was the best that I’d ever seen in my life. I could see the wheels turning in the captain’s mind. He then asked us if we’d be interested in fighting in the competitions that would be held here on Saturday. He said that the colonel heard about what had happened and wants us to represent the battalion. We said we’d be honored to. Not because we loved our battalion. We hated it, but we knew that the European competitions aren’t like they are in the Unites States. In the states, you can’t kick your opponent’s guts out without losing a point in the fight or getting disqualified for unnecessary roughness. European competitions were more like kickboxing is today. You could really hurt someone as long as you don’t draw blood. If you draw blood from your opponent, then you’re disqualified.

  Saturday came and to make a long story short, we were annihilating anyone we fought. These guys had never spent hours at a time hitting heavy bags and when they got hurt a little, they would forfeit the match. I had been hit a number of times, but was use to David’s beatings and these guys were child’s play compared to him. It was easy to justify hurting someone badly and not taking it easy on them when they were obviously wounded. I just figured that a lot of these guys probably picked on countless amounts of people while growing up, and I was just getting even for their victims. I thought in my mind, that these were the school bus bullies from when I was a little kid. I channeled all of that hatred and anger into every blow I threw. When I did this, they fell hard and rarely finished the match.

  We weren’t in it for the trophies, the art, or the glory. We were in it so we could hurt great fighters real bad, and get away with it. There is nothing better then to see the pain and fear in someone’s eyes and to know that you put it there. It’s a power trip. I finally have control, and it’s the control of someone else’s pain. What a rush. We both agreed to never win a tournament because we vowed to draw a lot of blood from the people who would get close to winning the trophies. In our minds we were true champions. Our captain told us that as long as we never lost due to being beaten by the other guy, it was ok. Being disqualified for causing someone to bleed all over the place was better to him and the colonel than winning the big trophy. They told us we were real gladiators. I know deep down inside, they wanted us to kill someone on the mat.

  We fought all over different parts of Germany. We were always disqualified but we knew we were the real winners. The reputations we gained and the authority we had on the mat were unparallel. David’s hatred for one of the officers in our company was eating at him on one trip. He said, “I’m going to kill someone today, you just watch.” I pumped him up and told him to pretend that his opponent is Lieutenant Schmidt, the officer he hated. I helped him maintain his rage until he got on the mat. I told him to wait until he picked out a real killer to fight, and then let him have it.

  We both lived up to our reputations on the mat as usual, but while we weren’t fighting, David was studying a particular fighter. I don’t know why he didn’t like this guy. Maybe because Dave thought he looked like Lieutenant Schmidt. Maybe because he was like us, and had little mercy on the mat. Whatever it was, David would do something on the mat that would caused the whole auditorium to sound dead.

  When it was David’s turn to fight, he said, “Watch this.” By now I was disqualified from the tournament. I had won every fight, and this guy would have been my next opponent if I wasn’t disqualified but David wanted him. David squared off to the young man and when the referee dropped his hand, signaling the fight to start, David moved so fast that the video cameras barely caught what happened.
David Round Housed the man with a kick that was estimated to be 100 miles per hour. Few people in the world could generate that much speed with their legs. David was one of them.

  The man was kicked once in the temple. It was believed that from the time the fight started, to when the man hit the floor, was less than one second. The loud “whack”, drew the attention of everyone in the gymnasium. Even people watching other matches looked over. The young man was on the mat bleeding profusely from his nose and ears. He wasn’t moving. The referee sent David to his side of the mat and told him he was disqualified. Technically, the man on the floor won the whole tournament. It was the last fight for the trophy in the black belt class. His coach ran to his side and screamed his name out loud, “Steven can you hear me!” The guy didn’t respond and the paramedics on the floor rushed up to check his vitals signs. He was dead.

  David glanced at me and looked both worried and relieved. He knew they couldn’t do anything to him. It would be labeled an accident. The coroner said that the cause of death was from a massive brain hemorrhage and a broken neck. He also said the man’s skull had been fractured.

  What a testimony. To be labeled a “Real Killer” on the mat. Both David and I were permanently kicked out of the European competitions for unnecessary roughness. We really didn’t care because our time in the military had come to an end. We only had a couple of months left before we would be discharged. Everybody who was anybody was talking about the fight. That portion of the tournament was even showed on TV.

  The captain said we wouldn’t get in any trouble for getting permanently kicked out and that David wouldn’t get in any legal trouble for the death. He said it was a full contact sport and that it was labeled an accident. The captain had also said that this whole incident has put Alpha Company 1st of the 15th Infantry Division on the map. He said that the Stars And Stripes military news paper would be doing a piece on it. He loved the attention that he was going to get for this. This was better then ever winning any stupid trophy. The captain made sure we never were given a hard time during our last months over there. We received all of this good treatment because of our fighting ability and the death on the mat.

  Border Incident

  By: Andrew J. Green

  In November of 1986, while stationed in West Germany, my company was to go for a temporary duty assignment to a small base at Colberg Germany. Colberg is located at the border that divided East and West Germany during the Cold War. Our duties there were to perform nightly patrols, looking for East German political prisoners who were attempting to escape from the East and seeking asylum in the West. If the defector could get over the border, we would treat him as a prisoner by handcuffing him or her, and take them 2 kilometers into the West. The defector would then be turned over to the military police who in turn, delivered the person to the West German government.

  Everyone in the company was obligated to pull at least one mission on the border unless they could find a replacement. No one wanted to fill in for anybody because the work was dangerous and there was a good chance if something went wrong, someone could get killed. We would be within only a couple hundred yards of the East German soldiers who were fully armed with AK47’s and full magazines in them. The American soldiers weren’t allowed to carry any ammunition at all, because the government said that it could cause a border incident if an American fired a shot over the border. They didn’t care if the East German soldier, known as the Smellum soldier, fired his weapon over the border and killed one of us. They figured if that happened, East Germany would have to answer for their soldiers actions. Our government just didn’t want to be responsible for starting World War III.

  I had been told before we went up there, that we would never be allowed to carry ammunition and that the Smellums’ knew we never had any. I said to myself, “Screw that! I’m bringing my own.” So I went to the local sporting goods store and bought a full combat load for one soldier. Me! I wasn’t suppose to have it anyway and could get court-martialed for having it, so I bought it all in pointed soft point, and hollow pointed bullets. If I got into a firefight when I was up there, I was going to kill something. I bought 210 rounds of 5.56mm ammo for my M16. I was ready and hoping to Rock and Roll.

  On our off time at Colberg, we could do anything we wanted for the most part. The tensions were high because the week before we got there, an American gunner in the M2 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle, accidentally fired off a round over the border while clearing his 25mm cannon. Needless to say, the Smellums’ weren’t impressed or very pleased with us. No one was hurt but our friendly demeanor went down the toilet in the eyes of the East German government. The Americans were praying nothing would ever happen like that again. How could something go wrong if no one had any bullets to fire?

  I drew the short straw on the 2nd night of patrols so it was my turn to go out. I figured it would be the same deal my friend Paul Ortiz had. Nothing big, you just drive around in an Army jeep wearing night vision goggles and have the lights off. Oh, did I mention they also gave me an M16 without any bullets in it and that the Smellums’ knew this? I’m glad I brought my own. I didn’t know that the 2 officers I was patrolling with would get lost and try to take a short cut. How do you take a shortcut when you’re lost? Well, they told me to drive down this old overgrown trail. Given the fact that night vision goggles aren’t as clear as the naked eye and that they have no depth perception, none of us saw the giant tree branch that was hanging down as we drove. I was driving about 10 miles an hour when I hit it. It came through the windshield between me and the lieutenant in the passenger’s seat. If it was only a foot closer to either of us, we would have been a shish ka bob.

  Well, with the windshield now broken and all of us lost, the officers decided to drive around for a while to see where we would end up. I swear, these clowns couldn’t find their asses with a flashlight and a map. Here we are, on the border between a Communist country and a Democratic country who don’t like each other right now, and these yoyos want to drive around on trails to see where we would end up. What the hell was I into? I was waiting for us to run into a roadblock and be questioned by men who spoke another language. I would have just said that I was on vacation from Mexico and that these perverts asked me if I needed a ride and were trying to get fresh with me. I would have said they made me put on these clothes because they wanted to use me as a bivouac toy. Believe me; I was glad I had those 210 rounds of ammo in case we did have problems. By now I wanted to shoot someone, even if it was my own officers. The officers asked me not to tell anyone about what happened and I said I wouldn’t.

  When we got back to the base, I was asked by everyone what happened. I told everybody what a cluster fuck this is up here and that I can’t believe we won the war in the first place with leaders like these. My good friend John, who had a wife and kids, had asked me if I’d pull his night of patrol when it came up. He was always a chicken shit about anything and pulled on whatever heart strings I had to help him out. He was real scared and didn’t want to go out with these idiots and everyone was becoming uneasy about the whole thing. I told him I would, but that he owed me big time for this. Well low and behold; guess who was picked to go out on the next night? John’s number came up and I knew I was going for him.

  I got everything ready and grabbed another jeep, seeing that the one we just used had its windshield smashed in and had a hole in it the size of a fence post. We were off, but this night was different. This night was real. We were given grid coordinates near the border where a political prisoner was supposed to cross over. We watched and saw nothing until 2:00 a.m. At that time we saw movement in the large open field across the border. There were about 800 yards between us and the sniper tower that the East Germans used as a lookout tower. We could see the defector sneaking as slowly as possible, trying not to get detected. We watched him for about 2 hours. He only had about 300 yards to go and he would be home free. Suddenly, we saw a flash from the sniper tower and the defectors head exploded. A mom
ent later we heard the report of the rifle. It was all over. The man was dead. We watched as the soldiers carried his body away.

  You don’t know how badly I wanted to shoot everyone of them in the head. I was so pissed and angry. I pointed my M16 at the enemy soldiers that were in my night scope and clicked off the safety. I asked the lieutenant that I was with if I could kill these guys. He said nervously, “You could if you had some rounds.” I said I had a full combat load and that if he gave me the ok, I would let them have it. He knew I was a school trained sniper from Fort Hood, and that I could waste these guys easily. First, the tower sniper would take one in the chest and then all of these maggots on the ground would die. It would all be done in less than 10 seconds. Before any of them knew what was happening, they would all be dead.

  Lieutenant Henderson ordered me to lower my weapon, so I did. He asked to see the magazine in my rifle. When I gave it to him, his facial expression fell in disbelief. He said, “Specialist Green if I told you to shoot those men, what would you have done?” I said, “I would have killed them all.” I told him to never joke around and give orders to me if he doesn’t want me to follow them. As he examined the rounds, he said,” These aren’t military issue, they’re civilian bullets.” I told him I bought them at the sporting goods store. He said that I was allowed to have some personal items with me and if these are the personal items I chose to carry, then that’s my business. He then said not to let the captain find out or he would fry my ass.