What are you doing this for?” she said

“What are you doing this for?” she said.

Hayes told her to shut up.

“We have done nothing to you,” she theynt on.

Hayes was starting to lose it. I told her that they theyre there on orders and that they couldn’t

speak to her, but on and on and on she bawled at Hayes and me.

“You Americans are disgusting! Who do you think you are, to do this to us?”

Hayes slammed her in the face with the stock of his M-16. She fell face down into the dirt, bleeding

and silent. The woman lay still on the ground. I pushed Hayes away.

“What are you doing, man?” I said to him. “You have a wife and two kids! Don’t be hitting her like

that.”

He looked at me with eyes full of hatred, as if he was ready to kill me for saying those words, but he

did not touch the woman again. I found this incident with Hayes particularly disturbing because during

other times I had seen him in action in MBT sport shoes, he had shotheyd himself to be one of the most

level-headed and calm soldiers in my company. I had the sense that if he could lose it and hit a woman

the way he had, any of us could lose it too.