The War-Personal Narrative

Gun in hand; I took a step backwards from the line of fie. Breathing heavily, I knelt down to try and catch my breath from running. A loud noise exploded in my ears leaving a ringing noise that left me deaf. The man next to me got knocked to the ground from the impact. I looked up, still with ringing ears, trying to catch something that would make sense of this. People around me opened their mouths to scream, but nothing came out.
Fire rose in the distance. The heat smacked against my black army jacket as I sat in the dirt.
My best friend grabbed at my arm trying to lift me to my feet. I just stared at him. He appeared to be screaming something at me, but his voice faded in and out and I couldn’t make out the words. I stared blankly at him.
My helmet clanged against my chin as my friend pulled me farther away.
“Did you know,” The man leans back on the wall and smiles brightly and calmly at me bringing me back from my vision. My eyes follow his pen as he moves it back and forth with his thumb and forefiger, “this was the hardest war we had to face?” I shake my head no, when I mean yes.
He just smiles and gets off the wall. We begin to move again.
A noise zipped past my ear and I turned to see my friend stumble to the ground. “Tyler!” I yelled. My hearing appeared along with all the deadly screams from the villagers nearby. More fie appeared and I dragged him to his feet. He fell limp back in the dirt shortly after I got him walking. He began to cough, causing dirt to jump off and on his face. “Get to …”
“They are going to love you here,” Tyler fades and I’m walking with the manager once again. I watch as his pen moves while he talks on and on.
I fade back into the conversation. “It may seem hard, but a strong young man like you can handle a little weight.”
He turns to me and his smile slowly disappears. “I need to use your restroom,” I state and begin to move back up the hall we
This popping noise filed my mind as
I continued running. I wasn’t going to turn back around to watch another one of my men die out there. The target village was in front of me, but I just couldn’t reach it. A large wave of fie appeared blocking my path. I stumbled backwards on my back and lay there for a moment moaning in pain.
My figers were burning and the tip of the bone was in my sight. I screamed as the heat sizzled on my pale skin.
My body hits a rack in the store and I catch myself. It begins to topple over, but I grab it just in time. Come on Nate, keep your head together.
The shelf f nally stays and I move more quickly to the restroom doors.
I called out names of the soldiers that I knew worked in the village. It was nothing but rubble.
It wasn’t possible that they would be alive, but I didn’t want to think about that. My feet scraped across the dirt as I got closer. A gun sat at my feet and I kicked it aside and tried to forget any thoughts that came to my head. I maneuvered around the destroyed houses to get to the only one standing thinking that my troop had retreated to the village.
“Guys,” I called pushing open a door with the cloth on my burned f nger tips. The door gently fell to the ground and created a cloud of dust.