Calum McDonnell wasn’t afraid, or so he told himself. Yet that night changed everything.

Actually, there had been two nights like that—34 years apart. The latter had started innocuously enough—on Facebook of all places. 

Calum wasn’t exactly a big fan of socializing through screens. He had been outdoors most of his life, first as a trained commando soldier with a specialty in wilderness survival and then as a Highland Ranger in the Scottish Hebrides. 

He was also adamant—should anyone care to know his opinion—that Facebook was a fraud operation designed to lure in people who didn’t care to make the time to talk to each other, well, face-to-face. 

But he had reluctantly made an account because his daughter, Caroline, posted things there. She did that often—more often than writing or emailing him like in the old days. 

He didn’t like that much, but he had decided not to bother her about it. Caroline had enough problems with her children and her anxiety attacks.

It wasn’t all duty, though, to use Facebook. For example, Calum didn’t mind looking over the page with news about the foundering company of his ex-wife’s new husband. 

However, that wee pleasure faded again when he turned off the computer and shuffled around his empty house. When would Sheila come back? Would she stay away for good his time?

Then Calum found a group for Falklands veterans. 

Veterans from both sides. 

In the beginning, he had just been lurking, reading what others shared, but when he found out a couple of guys from his old company were also there, he began to write a few comments and like some more of the old photos that were continually shown off. 

Faded print photos from a distant time and place, yet they felt as real and close as the view to the windswept garden with the uncut grass and Loch Pooltiel beyond that.

Soon he found himself checking the group every evening for new posts.

Calum had reserved a special cup of coffee just for that. He even poured it into one of his old whiskey glasses—to make a point to himself about how far he had come with self-control.

Tonight he had liked an image with boys from the 3rd Commando Brigade, standing proud with their Argie prisoners after the Battle of Goose Green. He also dropped a comment:

C MCDONNELL: Well done. Too bad my knee got shot up so I couldn’t stand there with you.

He regretted the bitter tone, just after he had clicked, and considered deleting the comment.

Then, almost in real-time, someone else wrote:

PABLO MORENAS: Were you at Ridge? I may be one who shot. I was sniper with 12 Regiment B Company, and my position was close.

C MCDONNELL: About half a mile from the present Memorial? Are you sure?

The unknown writer called Pablo was sure. 

A bit of back and forth with the help of Google Maps (and Google Translation for Spanish-to-English) quickly eroded any further doubt. 

Calum remembered every inch of that bogland, and so did Pablo.

Calum leaned back in his chair, rubbing his brow.

Of all the crazy … I am actually talking to the guy who shot me. 

28 May 1982. 

34 years ago. 

Almost exactly to the day.

He emptied his glass.

It quickly became awkward, though. He didn’t really know what to say once they had established that Pablo had indeed been the shooter. Apparently neither did Pablo. 

The exchange faltered.

But then he felt the urge to do a bit of sniping himself.

C MCDONNELL: So Pablo. Did you really aim for my legs or was it an accident?

He didn’t want to ask that. It felt wrong. Here in public and with someone whose face he hadn’t even seen. 

(The profile had an image of a young couple at a wedding, who Calum figured must be Pablo’s children or perhaps even grandchildren.) 

But the question had chased him like a shadow through the decades, even though he had done his best to ignore it.

And before he could do anything else, Pablo replied.

PABLO MORENAS: I won’t lie. I try to shoot body. But then your men fire back. I shake and my aim go bad. But I wish I never had shot.

C MCDONNELL: We all just did our duty.

PABLO MORENAS: You were only one I ever shot before being prisoner. I have been thinking about if you lived or died for many years.

C MCDONNELL: You smashed my kneecap. I wasn’t exactly quiet after I fell into a bog hole!

PABLO MORENAS: Other shots make much noise, too. Then your ship started firing again. We run for better cover.

C MCDONNELL: Ok.

PABLO MORENAS: I am really glad you live. I think about this many years. Many years. It has been so long … You must forgive me.

C MCDONNELL: Pablo, I am not angry. You just did your duty. Like I would have done, if I had had the chance.

Calum didn’t tell him about how he had been lying all night in said bog hole, crawling around for better cover with a shattered knee. 

How hollow he had felt that all his training had been for nothing. That he hadn’t engaged properly with the enemy.

That he had been useless.

That he hadn’t … taken any of them out.

That was the thought that had haunted him for many, many years. That.

And it had cost him his marriage, hadn’t it? That he had been so obsessed with his failure. Just as his knee had cost him his career in the military and he could only half-ass it as a ranger after that.

Because when you couldn’t figure out who you were anymore, it was easy to just ask Talisker Whiskey about it.

*

Calum turned off the whirring computer and with difficulty got up from his ergonomic chair. He swayed but then steadied himself, holding on to the edge of the desk.

Damn knee. After all these years.

He turned to the window and gazed intently at the loch outside but if there were answers in its dark-blue depths they didn’t come to him.

That wound had changed his life, and sometimes he wished it hadn’t, especially after the divorce from Deborah. But now, when he was old, he felt it was better this way. 

He would not have liked the man he could have been if he had continued to be a soldier without …

He would not have liked to have been someone who did not think twice about killing.

How could he ever have wanted to be like that?

Over the years it became very clear.

Especially after he had seen how Caroline’s brother had changed, what he had done to those villagers, once he arrived in Afghanistan—before he …

There was a hard and cold pain there that was even worse than his knee. It still pricked him when he thought about it.

But the conclusion stood: He was grateful today he had not continued as a commando.  

I said I wasn’t angry with Pablo … 

And yet, he did feel anger well up inside now. 

About being shot before he could fight the war he had trained for.  

And everything it had cost him since.

And the anger threw the whole equation into doubt. 

If he could still be angry then maybe it was a lie he had told himself—that he had become better because his life had changed that night. 

A lie to diminish all the pain of divorce, of losing his job, of the drinking, even of Tim’s death—all of that.

What was the truth then? 

He felt as if he was standing on a precipice and where he chose to jump would decide his life, and how he felt about it. 

How much it had been worth. Especially since that May night in 1982.

The decades that had passed since felt like such a short distance now. 

Yet he knew they were miles deep.

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CALUM MCDONNELL, 26 May 2016

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Cover photo by Jonathan Cosens Photography on Unsplash

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46-140324.1043

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