Blood and Brass

The constant sound of gun fire rattled in my ears, the whiz and crack of rounds passing by too close for comfort. It was starting to get on my nerves more than anything. I had forgotten fear, somewhere up the mountain. The constant numbing pain from my hand seemed to have merged into the constant ache from my body. I just wanted to go home.

The dirt around me flicked up and got in my eyes in my mouth, there was sand and grit everywhere, but this didn’t bother me anymore. I looked to my left, I saw, my friend, my team mate. I didn’t recognise him for a second, struggling to see through all the sea of blood.

The air was damp with destruction caused by this senseless violence; it was meant to be a simple in and out, not getting caught up in this mess. This hill, mountain was sapping the energy out of my soul... My equipment began to feel heavy, I felt as if I was drowning. “COVERING FIRE” my team leader screamed over the roar of bullets that hailed past us from nearly every direction. “MOVING” Lt. shouted as he scurried over the rocks, dodging and weaving hoping that the next round doesn’t find its target. All I could feel was the rifle recoiling into my shoulder as I fired up the mountain into the trees pinning down firing positions then suddenly an explosion of pain that ripped right through my shoulder to my neck. I’ve been hit, again… Nothing mattered anymore, not the pain, not the hardship, not the fact we were staring down the barrels of about 300 insurgent fighters. I just wanted off this fucking mountain and I wanted to be home again.

My taste buds were numbed by the fumes of the spent ammunition, piles of brass that’d been used, like bread crumbs down the mountain tracking our every movement. Packing dirt into my wound that caught me in the shoulder, a good hit, to at least stop some of the bleeding. I looked over my shoulder to see Lt. take one to the chest, hearing the ping of the round hitting his ballistic plate and watching him scrambling back into cover made my rising panic die down.

For some reason, I just stood up… I don’t know why. I didn’t have time to contemplate my choice in the matter. The first thing I felt was the brute force of the round hitting me square in the back, the air being forced out my chest by its shock wave, and the sheer pain that then followed. For some reason I found myself chuckling in my head that I heard the round "dink" against the inside of my plate. The sound around me was drowned out by the pain and shock. Collapsing to my knees I felt one of my brothers in arms grab me and pull me back into cover, behind this massive boulder that we have sat behind for what seemed a lifetime. I floated in and out of consciousness, seeing a fellow SEAL team members face then the ground, my hearing drifting back and forth, hearing the chug chug chug of the militants PKP. I guessed that was what put me in my current state. For some reason you would expect blood to feel warm trickling down my back and front under my plate carrier, but it just felt like cold gushes… but then again I never really got a glance of how much I was bleeding. I just gave in… all my energy drained, all the hopelessness was too damning, the faint beating of the rotors from the too familiar friend of the fight, the CASEVAC chopper, but I didn’t care. I had fought my fight. I was done.