Whiskey, Tango, Charlie

It was 0450 hours. I expected the Colonel to come busting through the mess hall door at any second, and just like clockwork there he was in all his glory. Standing tall and assertive with arms the size of cannons he piped up and said “Attention! Red Band 1! Whiskey, Bravo, Charlie is ready and the white dove is light”.

I suddenly found my body reacting physically to what he had said. I began to feel dizzy and nauseous. I began to sweat buckets. I didn’t know what was happening to me so I looked around the mess and saw the same reaction on the faces of my buds. We were all having the same physical reaction to his words. Then it all started to come back. I was remembering our training. How the Colonel would combine the physical aspect of training with a technique they called frequency adjustment techniques. I remember his voice in my head along with a high frequency pitch, which calmed my consciousness and enabled me to do my task with no emotion, no thought, and no regret. They had perfected this frequency adjustment training back in the 50s during the Korean War and have been using it ever since for black ops operations.

This would be the same for all of Red Band 1. We would be able to carry out each mission emotionless and guilt free. We six became a well-oiled machine with one consciousness; like we could communicate with each other without words. It was telepathic or something. When each job was complete, we would hear the call words from the Colonel and the next time we awoke, all the horrible thoughts, all the things we did would be erased from our minds. We would remember just the parts that would connect us as buddies. The lighter moments of each mission, like the laughs, the practical jokes, the rides to and from the assignments. It was their way of not destroying our psyche, like war does. We never suffered from P.T.S.D. because we could never remember what really happened. I would always wonder why Red Band 1 never had any repercussions from our adventures. Now I knew why, as I always do, once Colonel Clark yells out those code words. Then it all comes back, every time.

We were being mind-controlled. This was part of our teaching, our training, and who we were. I didn’t like it one bit, but each time I realized what they were doing I had no choice. We would always complete the mission and then our minds would be erased of “negative energy” as they called it. We would then go off to live our lives, only to be called back each time the world was in crisis. We had been doing this for 20 years, and I could only remember that buzzing of a high pitch tone continuously as I slipped away into my combat consciousness…and I was gone.

Written by: Stephen Brown; Mansfield Grey