Chapter 4

(Excerpt from my novel “The Watchmen’s Chronicle: The Tower of Babel is Rising.”)

April 22, 2057

Dear Abba,

The stories of my conviction of being a guardian of the truth of the Watchman and of my infancy have been told. Now the tale of my journey to becoming a soldier must be told from its beginning. Being a scout sniper in the United States Marines Corps turned me into a warrior. However, God had other plans for my life, which is how I found myself in this cardboard box. Even as I came to be the man of honor that I am now, so this was my training added with the seven elders of the Watchmen.

I was in the Marines Corps for some twenty-five years of my life, which helped point me in the direction of this walk of faith. I saw a light from which I couldn’t turn away, that of becoming the Watchman of the City in North America. And although it was as foggy and unclear as the San Francisco harbor, I marched onward toward that mark.

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Michael Tsaphah I came to disciple the son of perdition when he was at a young age, and my journey was with a man who came to define himself as an infamous rebel with a cause. Knowing nothing at all about who Christ my savior was, or who I was at that time, led me down a twisted and dark path. Constantly he was tested by my love of both the creator and his creation as I danced with the devil’s delicacy, in his indecisive change of heart. However, he made his run after the lunar paradises of jewel. The son of perdition was like the false illuminations of power, money, and sex that are the heart of all the great leaders of this world. Moreover, finding myself in a whirlwind of pain, afterward I played the concerto of the fool’s dance with the prince of Hades, which bounced me from one crumbling pillar to another, nearly dropping me to melt in the lava pit of agony. The first time, I was homeless and at the beginning of my journey. I began walking down the dimly lit alleys of being a soldier, homeless, and an assassin long before I even knew what homelessness was. In my fragile, orphan’s mind, I didn’t think of myself as destitute. Nonetheless, I was waiting on my mother to get better and marry another daddy, but she never did come back. I was only eight years old. In my mind, my unpacking was temporary, because I expected to eventually rejoin my mother, brother, and sisters. But the truth was that I was to be proven to do Abba’s will. Although he was not the cause of my parents’ deaths, he allowed it to happen because of the sinful and evil world in which I was living. That truth drove me to this path of being a warrior of righteousness. I was born Raymond Benjamin Moore, and many times in my hometown of Port Norfolk, Virginia, the truth of this ugly world was all around me. But it was the death of my parents that hit me dead in the face. 56 |

The Watchmen’s Chronicle However, my life as a child wasn’t bad in the beginning. I can remember lying in the front yard most of the day until the nine o’clock gun would sound off from the Norfolk naval shipyard. For me the early sixties were not a worrisome time. The war in Southeast Asia was just starting, young lions roared at God. The seeds of rebellion were sprouting new growth among the flower children. Meanwhile, on August 28, 1963, a Baptist preacher named Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial and delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech to the world. And our nation grieved the loss of our beloved President John Fitzgerald Kennedy on November 22, 1963. However, I was unaware of all of these historical events, since I was very young. My life was all about watching ants form lines to their anthills, catching and freeing lightning bugs from my mother’s mason jars, and eating the bowls full of cherries that life had to offer. As I watched the clouds roll by like little puffs of whipped cream, I could do no wrong. In those days, I swung by like Batman, the caped crusader, and fought imaginary enemies alongside the Green Hornet and Kato. The world I lived in back then gave me hope that life would never end. But that was then, and this is now. I am stuck like chuck in this body as a Marine. Lance Corporal Raymond Moore was in a foxhole, nervously waiting for Charlie to cross the Thailand border for the fifth time in the year of our Lord 1984. No, that was not the Vietnam War. I was much too young to fight in that era. This was a coup d’état that the Vietnamese government attempted to launch against the Thailand monarchy, which they did every year. In the eighties, someone named Prince made the movie Purple Rain, and Michael Jackson was crowned the new king | 57

Michael Tsaphah of pop. I was a Cold War veteran in the force recon company, pulling sniper duty on a hill far away from home. One day when I am old and gray, I will write my memoir, but for now that is a letter to my first wife. While I am soaked to the bone in this bloodsucking leech- infested mud hole, I’m praying we never see Charlie. Because I guess if I die, no one will ever read the tale I have written in this letter home. I joined with my comrades-in-arms, veterans of countless other wars before me, while the Thai marines would have to ward off this take-over attempt by the Vietnam government. Nevertheless, we are trying to lure the haughty Vietnamese into an ambush, because we are the same weak, imperialistic, capitalistic Americans of the sixties … “I never should’ve rebelled against the call of God in my life,” I said in a whining voice. “Oh, for crying out loud, Moore,” Lance Corporal Graham snapped back, “you big-ass, cammy-draped baby. ‘Whayah!’ As I waved off the only spotter who could talk that way to me, I knew better than to preach at him about who I was in Christ. Even though I was raised in that foster home, my local church in Norfolk taught me, along with Miss Smith. As a teen, I became very outspoken and rebellious. As I began to grow into a man, I didn’t need a gang. My stepfather was dead, my real father was walking around like he was dead, and I was turning into a lone thug. Because of the death all around me, I could only define death as being separated from everyone whom you loved and everyone who loved you. All the bereavement in my life added one more pain that would haunt me. Years later, my mom committed suicide in the mental hospital. The winds of fate kept me safe from that news, or I would have joined her while I lived in Miss Smith’s foster 58 |

The Watchmen’s Chronicle home. I found out this grim news when I was graduating boot camp on Paris Island. By then, however, I was a Marine, so I forced myself to be battle hardened and never cry for her loss. A man came running down the center of a single squad bay toward me. He was dressed in a short-sleeved shirt and green slacks, and he was wearing a drill instructor’s hat with Marine Corps insignia, which is an eagle, globe, and anchor. “Moore,” he yelled, “are you eyeballing me, maggot?” “No, sir,” I yelled. “Well, ladies, since Maggot Moore likes to diddly-bop back on the block,” the drill instructor yelled, “we are gonna climb.” “Yes, sir,” the platoon yelled in unison. “Get down and give me fifty,” ordered the drill instructor. I missed being in the foster home because at least Miss Smith never made me do push-ups when I messed up. A member of the local Assembly of God church in Virginia Beach called the Rock Church, Miss Smith was fair about allowing me to go to Ebenezer Baptist Church in Portsmouth, because a van would come to the house and pick me up. The Reverend David P. Williams never trusted wild-eyed boys like me. Nevertheless, the women of the church took the place of my lost mother. Being nursed by those mothers of the church helped me maintain my mental health. “Mother, that boy is a train wreck waiting to happen,” the Reverend Williams whispered to Mother Grace, who was pouring punch at the youth social. “He got too much fire in him.” “I seem to remember the same thing was said about you as a youngster,” Mother Grace responded quickly. One time when I was home on leave, Miss Smith told me that the Reverend Williams had been charged with having sex with | 59

Michael Tsaphah an underage teenage girl in the church, and that three days later he went into his office and blew his brains out. I fought for neither God nor country. Every time I was put in a foxhole in a foreign land, I fought so that I could live to see another day. This philosophy didn’t always ring true in my brain, until I was drawn like a prizefighter into every great and small war in which this country got involved between 1982 and 2005. For the sake of amusement, I’ll say that they were all fought in the name of freedom. All the same, at least I enjoyed the opportunity to see the world. And my imperial republic could relax, knowing that countless volunteer pawns, such as me, were fighting for their freedom. Because of us, the elusive upper-middle-class masses could eat, drink, and play their Xbox games. I stand here, like a sitting duck, with the muzzle of my rifle pointed at an embankment. Meanwhile, down below me are Bravo Company and Recon Platoon with the Thailand Royal Marines setting up an ambush to draw the Vietnamese into our little trap. They were stringing thousands of feet of wire, along with fake and real claymore mines with flares, which would lead them to Lance Corporal Graham and me. We were pulling double duty as forward observation and sniper’s watch. We were dressed in camouflage, known as a ghillie suit, which is netting with burlap and camouflaged rubber leafing on it to help the wearer blend into the background. I couldn’t see anything except what was in front of me because of the damn heavy rain. Lance Corporal Graham saw and heard everything, but I couldn’t see my hand before my face because of the downpour. The ideas was for Lance Corporal Graham and me to draw as many Vietnamese officers and soldiers to us as possible and then kill them. Rather than allowing them to go to Bangkok, they would stay here in Pattii Beach and die in our ambush. 60 |

The Watchmen’s Chronicle Lance Corporal Graham was a funny character from a Montana reservation, and a descendant of Sitting Bull. I felt very comfortable with him as my spotter and scout. We had been partners for some two and a half years since we got out of boot camp together. Our platoon sergeant said that Graham and I were a mismatch, because I was raised in Port Norfolk, a naval town, and Graham grew up on an Indian reservation. But our differences seemed to make us the perfect match to watch each other’s back. Lance Corporal Graham was a community college dropout who had decided to see the world from the end of a rifle instead of a textbook. Graham’s parents had taught him to hunt, track, and listen to the wisdom of his spiritual guides, which wasn’t typical, because many Native American families suffered from drug and alcohol abuse. But his parents chose to teach him to follow the ways of his ancestors and stay away from trouble. Graham joined the young buck’s tribal youth, and then the leading tribal council made him an honorary member. He was a tribal police officer while also attending community college, until he shot and killed the chief’s son-in-law for selling drugs. Meanwhile I was learning how to stay alive on the gang- infested streets of Port Norfolk and Virginia Beach. We made the perfect team. I was no lone ranger, however, and Tonto was a bum compared with Graham. “What the hell do you mean, ‘Whayah’? I ain’t a crybaby.” “You been bitching like this since boot camp,” Graham said, laughing. “You should know. I would have to dig in the rose garden for the shit you pulled.” “It made you the bad-ass, locked-and-cocked Marine you are today,” Graham said. Sergeant Kensington barked from his foxhole, “If you | 61

Michael Tsaphah damn ladies are done bitching at each other, can you keep an eye on the gooks coming soon?” The sweltering night air was suffocating as the sweat dripped off my nose, and the mosquitoes were bombarding more than the Vietnamese that night. My heart was racing, up in my throat, in anticipation of what was to come. Meanwhile Graham had his ears open for the sounds of the enemy’s advancement. I could hear nothing but his breathing, which was very shallow. The night was still as a graveyard with death riding above us. Graham took first watch, and I, of course, fell asleep. When the Royal Thai Marines gave us the signal, by flare, we had only a few seconds to shoot down the enemy. My job was to kill the staff officers at the Vietnamese command post, at a distance of a thousand yards. There were five hundred Vietnamese soldiers against one hundred and fifty U.S. Marines and two hundred Royal Thai Marines, who were there to ambush the Vietnamese as they crossed the border. I was fifteen hundred yards away from the border where Bravo Company and Third Recon Platoon were based. The company commander, along with Lieutenant Manson and Gunny Featherson, put Bravo Company and Third Recon Platoon in foxholes five hundred yards away from us. Meanwhile, the Thai Marines were enveloped in the jungle along the border, silently waiting, because the Vietnamese Army had set up surprises with trip wires of claymores and flares. A mile away from the border was the First Thai Marine artillery regiment. They had fire support with three 105-mm howitzers in tow and waiting in the rear echelon, one thousand yards out from Bravo Company and Third Recon Platoon. However, time was creeping by for Graham and me as it started to rain lightly. As we tried to maintain the visual of the night watch, 62 |

The Watchmen’s Chronicle I could hear no movement from the Vietnamese. Finally, I drifted off to dream under the thousands of stars in the sky … The leviathan called on me for another nightmare. Republicus was spawned from the womb of the pit of rebellion, which was a violet sea of the abyss. It had the flaming face of trillions of tormented souls. This was my childhood nightmare, come to visit me again. I saw the beast come from the sea of humanity and disappear into a boiling melting pot of the sea of the huddled masses. Republicus was not seen until a thousand years later, when the course of history was complete. The United States was exploding into a nuclear blaze, and the beast emerged from the lava lake like a Phoenix reborn. Now that this hideous beast had appeared, it would only turn back the furious dragon slayer who was screeching and calling for our doom. One of the seven heads of the leviathan, which looked like a skull, was called Scarcity. This head would bring down the strongest of men in repulsive sickness and disease. It had a swarm of flies and maggot-filled sores around its mouth and nose, which dripped puss and slimy acid on the babies and young children of the United States. The acid would kill all the firstborn, whether rich or poor. Screams were heard coming from the cities, towns, and villages as people suffered from the wrath of war and wept for the loosed unborn. Every time the beast raged in war, these two heads would feast most heavily on the carcasses of the unborn and the dead. The sight of this beast would make any person who called for help or crossed the threshold of the cloud have to pay tribute, in response to the dragon’s call for charity. “Give more. Give more,” the dragon from the cloud would call. | 63

Michael Tsaphah The dragon would call the poor of the world into this cloud. And as the people would come back out, chains of poverty would be attached to them by the spirit of bondage. Those victims of famine would drag the long chains of addiction around, like slaves, until they died. Then the tail of the beast would crush their bones into powder … Then suddenly I awoke to hear a branch break—or maybe it was Graham slapping my head. Suddenly, sixteen of them came out of the brush and straight at us with muzzles blazing. Grahams pointed his M-16A2, which had an attached M-203 grenade launcher, and sprayed a small burst into the squad of Vietnamese. He also fired from his grenade launcher two concussion grenades and one smoke grenade, which forced the charging squad of Vietnamese to move up the hole we gave them into our kill zone. One bullet whistled by and grazed my ear, which burned like a flesh wound. Another round hit Graham’s shoulder and then his rifle. As my own rifle jammed, I grabbed my pistol and began shooting frantically, but the firefight got too hot and heavy. Then another bullet shot the pistol out of my hand, jamming it and making it useless. Doing a belly roll, I grabbed the muzzle of an AK-47 from one of the dead Vietnamese. Meanwhile Graham used his M-203 grenade launcher to chuck a grenade between two Vietnamese men, blasting them apart. Body parts and blood sprayed my face. As Graham continued to pitch grenades and smoke at them, I quickly turned and fired, hitting two or three more Vietnamese soldiers who fell just in front of me. Then before I could get out of the way, the Thai Royal Marines and the Marines from Charlie Company shot crossfire at the rest of the Vietnamese troops. When the smoke cleared, five hundred of Vietnam’s finest soldiers lay dead, plus the sixteen that Graham and I had wasted. When 64 |

The Watchmen’s Chronicle I looked at Graham, I saw that he was bleeding from his shoulder. “Looks like we got them,” Graham said, shaking but laughing. “Yeah, but my damn shoulder hurts.” “Okay, hero, before you go charging up that hill, let me patch you up,” I said. As I leaned over to grab a thick bandage from my first aid kit to patch up Lance Corporal Graham, we faded back into the Cold War. One day at Camp Lejeune, as I watched some television, I saw the result of the little part that I did in Thailand to help stop the coup d’état by the Vietnamese government, which we helped the Thai monarchy beat back that day. The coup d’état of Thailand and the bringing down of the Berlin Wall were many miles and years apart. I didn’t get a Congressional Medal of Honor for bravery that time, but Graham and I did receive our first Purple Hearts. Sometimes when I was sleeping on the streets of Orlando and suffering from my nightmares, I’d ask myself whether it had all been worth it. I realized that the fall of the Berlin Wall was a sign of freedom, but as the years passed, I started asking myself whose freedom we were protecting. One cloudy day—August 12, 1990—the first Persian Gulf War was over except for the mopping up, which was usually left to the army. However, Charlie Company 2/6 and I were left to finish engaging Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard, but instead we found ourselves in an all-night sandstorm. Finally the storm lifted the veil from the approaching millions of miles of wasteland, with the Second Marine Division’s two sixes, Alpha and Bravo Companies, in the lead, followed by Second Force Recon Platoon in the rear. As dawn barely cracked the sky, we began moving up toward our flank while the other companies swept those areas we | 65

Michael Tsaphah missed. They were going to meet us at a technical land zone foxtrot at 0900 hours. We appeared like scorpions out of the cool sands of the Kuwaiti desert. As we moved left of the other companies, we slowly advanced on a bunker in front of us. I was then a combat marine staff sergeant. Gone was the innocent child, turned into someone whom Miss Smith wouldn’t have even recognized. Now a little more tanned—or more accurately, slightly red and peeling from the hot desert—I stepped forward to another battlefront to watch over my men as a platoon sergeant. Thinking we would advance on a sleeping enemy, or maybe piss off one ready to fight, we had two of our riflemen advance forward. However, as we approached the bunker with caution, we saw that it was empty. You might think we would have been disappointed, but I wasn’t. It would be an easy day, with no dead bodies to mourn over or wounded to tend. Nevertheless, the bunker didn’t sit right with me and I was very leery about going near it. Just a couple of weeks earlier, Bravo Company had tripped a booby trap in a bunker that had killed three men and wounded five. I sent in two of my men from my second fire team to investigate the bunker. Assault Rifleman Lance Corporal Peterson and Rifleman Private First Class Singleton were in the second fire team, which was piloted by Corporal Gates, a blond-haired, blue-eyed Marine who used kindness to keep his men in order. Corporal Gates whispered, “Peterson, what is it?” Later, as they walked back from the bunker, they motioned for us to go over and talk with them. “We noticed that there were barrels,” Lance Corporal Peterson said. He drank some water and then passed the canteen to Private Singleton. 66 |

The Watchmen’s Chronicle “They have some kind of foreign writing on them,” Singleton said, returning the canteen to Peterson. I told them, “Okay, go back to the corpsman and get more water and chow while we find out what’s the real deal.” Later, when I got the all clear from the bunker, I went inside and noticed that two of the barrel tags had German and French writing on them. “You two get back to your fire team,” I said sternly. “Corporal Lewis, call HQ and tell Captain Morgan or Lieutenant Summers that we might have a live one here.” I moved away from the bunker several feet, and then yelled to another Marine, “Corporal Gates!” “Yes, Sarge?” answered Corporal Gates. “Tell everybody else to stand fast. I don’t want anyone playing in that bunker.” Corporal Graham came up behind me and asked, “How far of a perimeter do we make around this bunker?” “Twenty—no, make it fifty feet,” I said. “But get all the men watered down first.” We radioed back to headquarters that the bunker was abandoned and filled with strange barrels marked in German, Russian, and French. It was hard to make out the words, because the barrels were rusty. Apparently they had been in the bunker for a long time, and the desert conditions had worn down the markings. As Corporal Lewis gave me the radio, I put out the cigarette that I had just lit and cleared my voice to speak. Being a hard-core smoker, I had never thought that I would be one to put out a cigarette. But I didn’t want to look or sounds like some shit-bird Joe Blow who was back on the block. “Yes, sir, this is salute Mike echo six to Charlie Mike Oscar three. Be advised that we have an unidentifiable hot | 67

Michael Tsaphah pocket in an empty nest of possible chemical agent inside the hot pocket. Be advised that we need to meet up with Delta Company at 0900 at the TLZ Foxtrot,” I continued. “Sir, I understand that we’ll stand firm until they arrive. Roger Lima two-six out.” Corporal Lewis asked in disappointment, “So we’re staying put?” Corporal Gates replied, “Damn, the same game. Hurry up and wait.” “You know the game. Until the army ordinance guys get here, I need a perimeter around the bunker,” I yelled. “So let’s move it, and give me a one eighty.” As the hazy, hot day slowly moved toward 0700 and the dawn of a new day appeared, the boys and I grew weary of waiting for the men from army ordinance to arrive. Watering our tired bodies in the blistering heat nearly emptied the water bull as the sun beat down into the dirt from which we were created. We knew that we would be relieved as soon as the army showed up, but we were anxious to be away from that bunker. The spirit of fear was blowing like a sandstorm among the men of Charlie Company, almost as if we all knew that something in those crates inside that bunker wasn’t good news. I had to reassure them that they’d be out of there as soon as the army ordinance arrived. By 1000 hours, the heat was taking its toll. Two of my men had heat exhaustion, and the corpsmen were working on the suffering. Suddenly the army ordinance truck arrived and was greeted by the men of two-six, who were happy to be relieved of that bunker. The army ordinance people wasted no time unpacking their gear and sent three men in to blow the bunker. I wasn’t in a good mood to deal with a know-it-all staff 68 |

The Watchmen’s Chronicle noncommissioned officer. “Staff Sergeant, we were told not to blow that bunker,” I said to him roughly. “There may be chemical weapons in there.” He replied calmly, “You have your orders and I’ve got mine. So if you don’t mind, Staff Sergeant, stand back.” “Okay, fine. Fellas, let’s get moving.” I walked away and continued barking, “The army’s here now.” Suddenly the bunker blew up. Even though my men were away from the explosion and jumped for cover, the bunker was blowing its toxic tornado toward us all. The scene of chaos was like a slow-motion picture. I yelled to my men to get their gas masks on, but for some it was too late. I watched some of them overtaken by the whirlwind of toxic gases from the bunker. It was just as I had feared. As the sands blew up before my eyes, there arose a demonic force from hell that had one red eye like a cyclops. A flaming mouth started moving toward wounded and unconscious men. The demon that rose from the sand cloud began grabbing my men, killing them one by one, and devouring them. I struggled to get my gas mask on before the sand demon came toward me. Otherwise I, too, would be gripped by the Grim Reaper’s deadly mist. I saw the demon coming toward me, and it blew me to the ground. I cleared my gas mask with only seconds to spare, and then I took my pistol out and shot wildly in the air as it came whirling toward me. The demon tried desperately to grab me as it scratched at my exposed hands. Then I came to my senses, knowing that this couldn’t be real, because the demon was only a reaction to the toxic chemical and biological gases I had partially inhaled. So I took two atropine hypodermic needles and shot them into my thighs as I tried to avoid the toxic chemicals. As the atropine rushed to my head, my hands began to shake. | 69

Michael Tsaphah

As I tried to avoid being exposed, I stuck my hands into the sand. Right at that moment, the sand turned into a whirlpool and began to pull my dead comrades into the sand with me. As I was sucked into the whirlpool, I began to scream, “Nooooo!”

This nightmare was one of my flashbacks from the first Gulf War. I did make my journey home, but many of my brothers died that day. I will never get past the horror of my dreams or the nightmares of my childhood.