The following journal entry comes from a young soldier deployed in the Persian Gulf. He has shared it, anonymously, so that others will know something of what young men and women in the military are facing.

“These were the streets where calloused men walked, shrouded women worked, and curious children played. They were lined with trash and the cloud of flies too dense to see through. The power lines like spider webs hanging over these beautifully sad streets.”

An-Nasiriyah was the town where Jessica was captured, and a platoon of Mortars overrun. American bodies were drug through these streets. The Marines before us lost 18 men defending a bridge. So when they told us we were going into this town, we envisioned a blood bath. Tension grew, and I learned that the only thing to offer others and myself was a good sense of humor at the appropriate times.

The fighting ended twenty-four hours before we entered the town. We left our position from the Iraqi military base that served as their boot camp. The sun was setting over the marshes as we loaded onto five-tons. I was armed with my Beretta, but I borrowed a shotgun off of our point man, who also carried a rifle. I think I kept it close with me the whole time because of the security I felt with it. I had no intentions of using it, but these were untrusting streets.

Our convoy halted as gunfire began just a few hundred yards to our left. Echo Company was engaging a target and their tracer rounds bounced off the ground. It was amazing what you could sleep through. Our men were sleeping in shifts. We were not planning to sleep at all that night once we finally hit the deck. I couldn’t sleep. The stars were out and the rhythm of the guns just echoed in my ears. I reviewed everything I had learned over and over again in my head—sucking chest wounds, arterial bleeds, and compromised airways. One can only think about such things for so long. My mind wandered to family and friends. I had to shake myself out of it. I tried to keep from thinking about people and places that I loved while I was across the border. It only made me homesick. I wanted to keep focused. I didn’t want to fail my Marines.

After a four-hour wait in the piercing cold of the night, the trucks jolted and we slowly moved into the town. We drove by little houses tucked away in a grove of palms and into a field. The houses of the town lined the other side. We off loaded. Our platoon was to head back along the road and set up security while the other platoons got into their footholds. Then as the sun came up and the people woke up we would be in their front yards and they could not protest us.

We hiked back through the village in the grove along the Euphrates. We pushed back along the road. The wildlife of the Euphrates reminded me of nights in Virginia with all the wildlife of Tidal Waters calling through the darkness. Frogs and crickets called out, breaking the cold night. Animals have no concept of anything around them. They wake up, eat, and go about their daily routine, then rest. The next day is the same for them, uninterrupted and simple. They did not know that the animals that were the highest on the food chain were at war with each other. And the men that invaded their habitat were armed and scared. They could not understand these things, and I couldn’t either, but I wanted to be like them so much that night. I wanted to wake up in a warm bed and not have to be apprehensive and focused.

A single shot rang out and I heard the sound of the impact as it bounced off the ground. It was close, twenty feet away, maybe more. Every one dropped down. It was too loud to be an AK-47. “It was CAAT platoon,” our radio operator said as he strolled past us in the middle of the column, “they said they won’t shoot at us again.” We moved into our position, and sat. We sat for hours by the river with the stars, the wildlife, and the cold to keep us awake. In the military you sit around a lot. You form this ability to block out time. Two years ago, four hours was a lifetime. Sitting for hours now is just sitting for hours, and when it is over you never knew it was there.

We displaced and moved back to the village where we slept in watches. It was three o’clock in the morning. We had to stand to at 5:30. I fell asleep with the root of a palm tree as my pillow and no sleeping bag for warmth. The sleep was often broken by the sound of roosters and the dogs. When it wasn’t broken by that I woke up shaking from the cold, and counting the time until I would see light again.