She sounds way too calm. So far, this is all we know.
Hey,
Sorry you haven’t heard from me for so long. Had a little accident and am in the infirmary after the Medevac got me to [redacted]. Me and Jamila and a bunch of other soldiers from the engineering unit were headed to [redacted] to do the surveying for [redacted] stuff so we wouldn’t need so many convoys – you know they just bomb and snipe the shit out of us when we convoy. I’d tell you how scary it’s been in the month since I got here, but I just ain’t got it in me to talk about it right now.
Me and Jamila were sitting next to each other all cozy-like and we were glad the ride was almost over. I think we were in [redacted] region. We’d been trying to sleep. We never get to sleep. Our skin was spitting sand. It blows everywhere. Breathing it. Stinkin’. Even when it’s pitch black it’s hotter than hell. Mortar fire started and hit the truck ahead of us. The driver took evasive action, but it was a clusterfuck. We all grabbed our rifles and our small artillery crew started firing back at what? Nothing? Couldn’t tell no way where those bastards were coming from. Smoke was everywhere and it seemed like the rain of mortar and machine gun fire was never going to stop. Something hit my leg and it felt like the fires of hell ran up to my neck. I had to rip off my t-shirt to wrap it up. Blood was everywhere and I just remember thinkin’ as I was looking down at the pile of chitlins that was a leg that it wasn’t really my leg so it’d be okay.
The firing stopped about then. Either that or I passed out. All I know is the last thing I remember was looking over to check on Jamila and she was just laying there all crumpled up all funny like—she was turned all unnatural—it didn’t make any sense. I didn’t even see any blood.
Next thing, I woke up on the helicopter and that’s the last I remember for a long time. What the hell am I gonna’ do? I thought maybe it wasn’t true, but it was. I couldn’t even tell her I love her one more time.
I’ve got to find a way to see her mom, just don’t know how I’m going to do it. I can’t even tell them that she died trying to save somebody or something – she was just in the wrong place—in the wrong country—where we’re all doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons. That there was no damned reason at all for her to be dead.
Ain’t nothing going to be right ever again. Not in a world that’d take her and not me.
I’m being shipped back to Landstuhl where they are going to operate on my leg again.
I have to go.
Lane
