Writing A soldier's Story

[Drizzt Do'urden]

I hadn't done a story in awhile, and a recent debate in my speech class made me recap my time over in the desert. A night in particular my crew and a few others were playing Texas Hold'em with a group of soldiers and Marines.

We spent most of the night recapping different events, and by the end of the night most of us were pretty emotional...

For personal reasons I'm going to change the names and ranks of those involved, though the stories are all very much real.

[B][U]Introduction[/U][/B]

I remember the night well, it was probably the best and worst night of my tour in Iraq. As most nights were in summer it seemed almost chilly, even though the temperature was still over 70 degrees.

Our crew, which was made up of myself, Sergeant Bowers, and Senior Airman Miller, had met up with a group of army MP's just arriving back from the greenzone in downtown Baghdad. We invited them to our weekly Poker game, that was running pretty dry since the normal crew we played with had rotated out a few days prior.

That night they brought 2 Marines with them, 2 men that had been augmented into their squad for the past month. We thought that the Marines would only bring a...more colorful evening. Instead one of them would be the man who changed the tone of the entire evening...more importantly he would be the man who would turn the simple evenings routine into the most memorable one of my military career...nay my life.



Comments and criticisms are appreciated, don't hold back. I'm thinking about turning this into a book at one point, though this intro is just something I threw together.

[Drizzt Do'urden]

[B][U]Lance Corporal Batle[/U][/B]

We were into our sixth or seventh hand of poker at this point, and the younger of the Marines began bragging about how many times his convoy had been hit on the way in. Nothing major, only small arms fire and nobody had been hurt.

That was when the older of the two Marines, Lance Corporal Battle, decided to "school" the younger Marine on how inappropriate it was to talk about the 'dangers' of the current situation to those of us who hadn't been in country long.

Of course, not wanting to sound pathetic, and not realizing the perverbial box we were opening up by agreeing to swaping tales, we all coaxed Battle into sharing one of his stories.

You see Battle had been in Iraq longer then in at home in the past 5 years. Spending a mere 6 months at the home front, all his other time had been spent in the desert. After some coaxing, and a winning hand dealt by yours truley, Battle was ready to go.

"I remember it so well, I'd been in Country for maybe two weeks and had been in a handfull of firefights, but nothing spectacular...."

"Private Battle!" Gunery Sergeant Rex barked at the me, "get your gear. Your with Rogers tonight..."

All I could think about was how cool this was going to be. The rumors of us taking Baghdad were flying around the platoon, hell even the officers were buzzing. Staff Sergeant Rogers was a hardass, simply put, he volunteer'd for patrols, was the first one into buildings, hell with his time he could sit back and let the grunts do the work. Instead, however, he choose to be in the shit with his boys, often times being the "doorman".

I gathered up my gear, the whole time being assaulted by ,"You lucky ass, how'd you score a trip with Rogers. You're finally going to see some real good stuff in this sandbox. Hell you might actually come back with the first kill. Lucky bastard..." My "battlebuddy", the army's cute little nickname for a bunkmate.

"That's right, I'll be in the shit and you'll be here holding yourself." I jabbed at him, slung my ruck, and stepped out. Heading for the rendevous point with Rogers, and a night I've taken with me ever since...
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I'm going to run these "stories" like this. Two chapter format, the first the "intro" by each person, and the other the story itself.

I really would appreciate comments on this, I'm doing non-fiction so of course I can't add anything in, but there are several points in which the storyteller is interupted that I've left out to keep it at a reader friendly length. But can add it if people think the chapters are too short as it is...