DAY SEVEN

When I went in to my first major battle, I knew that this time, I could not miss my target. I knew that this time, if I didn’t kill, I’d BE killed. Unlike the patrol, I knew that this time, there was a good chance that I wouldn’t make it out alive. I knew that the odds were against us due to the fact that we were low on ammo and training. As this was my first battle, I also had no I idea what to prepare for. Whatever there was in store for me, I was not ready for it. I had been training for less than a week and I still couldn’t bring myself to kill anyone. But as I went in to that battle, I remembered the village that I had seen a few days ago and what the Loyalists had done. I remembered all of the destroyed houses and the corpses that were becoming unrecognizable because they were swelling up in the heat. All of those poor people that died and would not be provided a proper burial and who were already being forgotten. With this in mind, I fired. When I killed those people, I though of the families that lost a loved one. I thought of how they might have been drafted like me and might have been against the war. But I followed orders and killed anyway. I knew that what I did was wrong, but there was nothing I could do. But they are in a better place now. Now, I am a true soldier.

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