It had been a really long night, and we all couldn’t sleep. They put us in trailer homes made to house 12 people in six bunk beds. Our entire crew was there. You would never know that we
were all in the same platoon if you didn’t ask. No two of us looked like we would ever be caught hanging out with each other if we didn’t have to be with each other, but one thing was for sure. When you got all of us together, we were an unstoppable machine. We traveled in two humvees through the barren desert to secluded towns. That was where it all went wrong. 
    Right as we entered the second town of the day, it got quiet. It wasn’t us being quiet, it was the people who not five minutes ago were walking around buying, selling, and trading food in
the market. 
     Fox team prepare for entrance was blasted over the headsets of everyone in my car.  We slowly rolled through the town, looking in every nook and crack in the building. It was just routine for us to do this day after day. After rolling in and out of the streets, and confirming that it was safe, we would venture out into the town in hopes to develop a relationship with the people. And they would be happy to see us most of the time. Yes, we would have to leave some places alone, but we wanted everyone to know that we weren’t here to hurt them.
     I slowly got out of the humvee and stepped onto the hard tan sand. I looked to the left and right with my gun cautiously at my side. I knew my job if anything happened. Surprisingly, I knew that the first step out of a vehicle was the safest one. My eyes met the driver of the humvees eyes behind us, my bunk mate, Jim Walson. He was always the one to make us happy and get us up and ready in the morning. I smiled at him, and he gave me a wink back and started to open the door. That is when the loud bomb went off, sending his car flying 40 feet into the air. I was thrown back by the explosion into a brick wall. 
    When I finally regained consciousness about five seconds later, I was covered in bricks, and bullets flew overhead. I was out of it, but not out of it enough to send back bullets into the storm. An arm grabbed onto the back of my coat and pulled me out through the bricks and about 20 yards back onto a wall. While sitting there, I blacked out. 
    When I finally regained consciousness, I immediately knew that I was in a hospital, and there was only 5 
eople standing around me. I silently named the people of my platoon to myself.
There was Allen, Sam, Doug, Jon, and Sid. Where is Jim I said in my head
as they all looked at me and started to recount what had happened. 
    I had been waiting for them to say that the other people were in the waiting room, but they never said that. They replaced it with they didn’t make it. I tried to get up and go find him. I
tried to get up out of the bed and fight past them to go find him, but it was useless. The remaining part of my platoon had me pinned down to the mattress until I finally gave in and just laid there looking up at them. 
     I asked them really softly to tell me where he was. They told me that they had been getting a ceremony ready for the rest of our platoon. It was what I had to live with. I wish it wasn’t
true. What if I had never gotten out of the car, what if we just drove on through? One thing we knew was for sure, we were here to stay, and once I got
better I would be back with my platoon driving through towns. It was my job. 





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