I was being posted to the frontlines of a war that I wanted no part in. My country had picked me up at my high school and I had been sent here, against my will, ordered to kill people who I had no bad feelings towards. Yet, for the last 3 months, I have been firing my gun when ordered to, and ducking for cover whenever we are shelled. This war is not something that I wanted to be a part of, and still don’t want to, but I am a part of this war, and there is nothing that I can do about it….
For you to understand me, I suppose I will need to take you back to before I was drafter into the military. Back home in Colorado, I was a simple high school student, whose biggest worries were whether I had passed my algebra test and if my girlfriend Kelly wanted to do something with me over the weekend. I had been raised in a family that respected the government and was taught at an early age that I should be proud to serve in our armed forces. And I thought that I would be, but then this war broke out. I saw friend and classmates leave to go overseas, and a while later, the school would be called to an assembly that we were all too familiar with. There had been another casualty from among our friends, and someone else would be called to take their places. Each and every one of us would pray that we were not chosen, and would breathe a collective sigh of relief when someone else was. However, one day, I was asked to stay after one of these assemblies. My school’s principal was standing there with one of the militaries recruiting officers – someone those of us still in school had dubbed a grim reaper – and I knew right away what it was about. “Son, do you know why you are here?”, was my principals question to me – asked more as a formality than anything else – we both knew that I was aware of why I was not in my psychology class. “Yes, sir, I believe I do. If I am not mistaken, this man here”, I glanced towards the military officer, “is here to recruit me as a soldier for the war”. “You’re right, son, I am here to recruit you. We need more able-bodied officers out there”, he replied. “When do I have to report to command, sir?”, I asked. “Report to the command outpost in Aspen at 1500 hours tomorrow.” “Yes, sir”. Well, that was where it all started. The military thought that I was eager to join in their fight, and so I was given special ops training. Imagine that, just a few days ago I was just a high school students, and now I am being shipped off as a special operative.
My transport has left the base now. We are travelling further and further closer to enemy territory. Soon we will almost be right on their location. All of the other soldiers here look just as scared as I am, yet none of us will admit it. After all, we are the militaries secret weapons, the special ops! If we show the slightest bit of fear, we will disappoint both our country and ourselves. We keep moving forward. We have just arrived at what will be our command post. It is little more than a cave in the side of a cliff, but it will work. The commander comes out, and gives us our orders. We are to move towards the enemy camp at 2200 hours. We will disable their communications, take out their commander, and retrieve the new secret weapon our forces have been developing, which was stolen from one of our outposts. We are not told that this mission will be easy – in fact, we are told that there is a high probability that we will fail and all die. But to always remember – we will die in honor and we will die serving our country.
Our special training takes about a month to complete. During this time, we learn more about electronics and most sciences that we would have ever learned in high school. The instructors are not easy on us and many times we want to just go back to the barracks and collapse, out of both exhaustion and fear of what the next day will bring. We are also trained in extreme methods of hand to hand combat, and are certified on all of the militaries newest tricks in weapons. When we graduate from the training, we are ordered by our commander to report to Los Angeles, where will be shipped to a top-secret location. During the plane ride, all windows are covered and we are not allowed to even speak. It makes for a very boring trip. When we arrive, we are taken through an extensive 2-week orientation seminar on the terrain we will be working in. After this, we just sit around for 2 weeks waiting for something to happen. Then we finally get our orders. We are being sent to the front.
At exactly 2200 hours, the strike force, which we have code-named Omega Force, moves out, ready for our mission. We begin our attack on their outpost by knocking out their abilities to communicate. Lt. Kirby Johnson is then ordered to begin to eliminate any guards one by one. As he does that, the rest of the team moves towards the main command center. As soon as we get the all clear from command, we begin our assault. We quickly gain access to the command center, and learn that this had all been a trap. There was no commander there, and out weapon was not even in the area. Lt. Johnson is brought in and executed in front of us. They quickly follow with the rest of the unit, until it is just I. My captors give an evil laugh, and pulls the trigger on his gun. The bullet flies through the air, into my chest, and collides with my internal organs. I quickly die from massive internal bleeding. It’s time to go find someone else to do this job. This will not stop until this war ends.