Beyond Survival. Gerald Coffee

been shouting his orders. Finally, they appeared: five soldiers, each carrying a rifle of some kind, each in some kind of a ragtag uniform. It seemed as if nobody in this country had a uniform that matched. Nevertheless, the reality of the threat that had been made inside the hut began to be more clear. A firing squad was forming in front of me.

      The officer shouted his orders to the five soldiers, actually all young boys. This, too, had probably been rehearsed beforehand, but they sure weren’t remembering their moves very well. They finally managed to shuffle into a straight line about twenty feet from me. God, they were so young! Just kids really. A couple wore really baggy pants; none of their shirts seemed to fit. Their weapons were of the Heinz-57 variety: a couple of old American-made World War II–style M-1 rifles, a couple of French rifles that were worse for wear, and another rifle whose origin I didn’t recognize. About all they had in common were the pith helmets that each wore. A couple of those had camouflage bits of cloth on them, and the others were bare.

      About the time the officer in charge decided that they were in a straight enough line, a couple of women emerged from around the same corner the soldiers had come from. They stopped abruptly with wide eyes, startled by what they saw. Obviously, they didn’t have any idea what had been going on in the courtyard. My interrogator saw them and shouted something. They turned around and fled back out of sight.

      I was distracted from the pain in my arm now as I looked in the faces of the young boys with the guns. I could see that some of them weren’t sure about what they were supposed to do, and one youngster with an M-1 rifle almost as big as he was didn’t seem to be any more certain about what was going to happen than I was. They all tried unsuccessfully to look tough and serious.

      The interrogator walked up to me, looked in my eyes, turned, and motioned the priest over toward us. He repeated, “This is your last chance. If you have anything to say to this man of God, you had better say it now.”

      I looked at the priest and again at the five young gunmen. My mind flashed back to survival training school in Brunswick, Maine. I’d been there less than six months before. There was a section in the POW training that talked about instances like this, and I remembered the words of the instructor: “No matter what they say or how they threaten you, they probably won’t kill you because you represent something of value to them.”

      God, I hoped he was right. They’re only bluffing, I said to myself.

      I glanced back over my shoulder at the field. There was an open rice paddy—no wall, no fence, nothing to stop bullets. And since there was nothing out there, I supposed they could go ahead and shoot without worrying about hitting anyone behind me.

      Again, the words came ringing back: “No matter how they threaten you, they probably won’t kill you.”

      I looked at the interrogator, shook my head, and said, “I have nothing to say.” He nodded his head decisively, took three or four steps back, motioned the priest out of the way, and said something to the officer with the red tag on his collar. The officer positioned himself off to the side of the line of gunmen, snapped an order that seemed to rouse them out of their stiff positions of attention and into a wider stance, rifles positioned across their bodies, much as hunters walk through the woods, ready to bring their weapons up at any time. Then he barked out the next command very sharply, and although I couldn’t understand what it was, there was no question in my mind it was the first word of those three infamous words: “Ready. Aim. Fire!” Those three words that we’d played around with as kids, had seen in movies, and heard on the radio. We’ve read those words in novels and we’ve thought about the things that go through people’s minds when they’re faced with those three words. It conjures up notions of last-minute rescues of our cowboy heroes who are saved by a lifelong friend at the very last moment . . . .

      But I could see no way that the fatal process would be interrupted now for me.

      As the officer barked that first command, the squad brought their rifles up to eye level, partly sighting down the barrels toward me. I noticed that the kid with the M-1 was so undersized he’d hardly been able to heft it up to eye level.

      “AIM!” The officer’s second command seemed to fill the courtyard. I glanced around me and took in the scene.

      “Whatever they tell you, they probably won’t kill you. You represent something of value to them.”

      They’re bluffing. They’ve got to be bluffing.

      Five deadly muzzles pointed toward me, not very steadily. But steady enough.

      They’ve gotta be bluffing. But if they’re not . . . what a shitty way to die . . . so far away from home. God, let them be bluffing!

      My heart thumped loudly and my body tensed for either the impact of bullets or the draining relief of the bluff.

      The third command—“FIRE!”—rang out but was engulfed by the fiery roar of the kid’s M-1. I viewed the scene as if it were in slow motion. I saw the kid slammed backward by the recoil of his weapon. His pith helmet jerked down over his face as he struggled to regain his feet while reeling back. Out of the smoke and flame emerged the slug from the muzzle of his rifle. I could see it coming. It should have been spinning from the rifling in the barrel of the gun and coming at me near the speed of sound, but for some reason—even though it was heading right toward me—that was not my impression. In fact, I could see the bullet wobble as it came closer and closer. For a moment, I felt I could even jerk my head out of the way before it reached me.

      Instead, I closed my eyes in helpless resignation. Suddenly, I seemed to know in my gut that only my impression was slow motion and that there was truly nothing I could do to keep from actually being killed.

      WHACK! The slug slammed into the tree trunk next to my ear. The splinters and pulp from the impact stung my neck and cheek. I kept my eyes closed and my body tense waiting for the impact of the next slugs. Surely they couldn’t all miss.

      I waited. The roar from the gun gave way to a great deal of shouting and jabbering. Everybody in the courtyard seemed to be yelling, but the voice of the provincial administrator rose above the rest. I opened my eyes. Still tense and disbelieving, I saw them all converging on the kid with the M-1, shaking their fists and their fingers in his face.

      Overwhelmingly relieved, I understood what had happened. Now I was aware of my body slumping heavily as all muscle tone seemed to disappear. Totally limp, incredulous, I realized that they had indeed been bluffing.

      But there had been a glitch. The chambers of all the rifles were supposed to be empty but the kid didn’t get the word or had been careless. The other soldiers were standing there with their rifles at their sides in disbelief. The shot had surprised everyone, especially them—and even more especially, I suppose, the kid who had fired it, now being shaken by the collar of his shirt by the officer.

      The administrator was really pissed. He stood there with his arms waving, ranting and raving, the soldiers and the young officers recoiling from his voice as if from a hot blast of air. They gathered themselves up and hurried back around the corner of the hut, hardly in the semi-military way in which they had appeared.

      The administrator stood with his hands on his hips watching them go and then turned and had a curt exchange with two of his councilmen. He turned on his heels and strode toward me, seething in anger and embarrassment.

      “So you think we are through with you!” He barked an order to the guards, who came around behind the tree and untied my arms. The release of the pressure was almost as excruciating as its application. As the guards twisted me away from the trunk, I noticed the gaping wound in the trunk of the tree, white jagged splinters sticking out stiffly, the sap already oozing. It was easy to imagine what my face would have looked like had the kid not missed.

      Now they shoved me back to the other side of the courtyard toward the drainage ditch. With his rifle butt between my shoulder blades, one of the guards forced me down to my knees and finally flat on my face in the dirt. They tied the rope around my upper arms very tightly until it cut off the circulation; then with his foot behind my neck, he cinched my upper arms behind me. The strain and pain on my shoulders and