The Ordeal

Since I've been here, there have been many struggle. I've been in several battles and I have survived them all. It's hard to see a fellow soldier go down but at the same time, I'm just grateful to still be alive.  You wouldn't believe some of the stuff that goes on out here. "The bad stuff never stops happening: it lives in its own dimension, replaying itself over and over." (31). There was this one time when Curt Lemons, a soldier, was messing around with Rat Kiley, another soldier, just playin' a game in the tree's when Lemons takes a step to the side and gets blown to pieces. And another time, when Lieutenant Jimmy Cross had us camp out for the night in the village toilet. Of course he didn't know it was the village toilet at the time he told us to camp out there. It was right next to the Song Tra Bong, a river running through the area, and we needed to stop for rest soon. That night, it was pouring, and then it really began to smell, like, like I didn't even know. So the area started filling up fast and the mud became sticky and hard to walk through. Then all of a sudden, a bomb went off and my buddy Kiowa...well, he went down. We spent a long time lookin' for him and finally we found him, by sight of a boot sticking out of the "water". That was hard, let me tell you. In all this time I've spent here, Kiowa has helped me through the majority of it. I miss him a lot.