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Kellanium wrote:"Shit, man, it's all fucked up," he said. All fucked up was right.

We were sitting in the briefing room. It was hot and humid. We had just gotten word the states were blown away. The president was alive (thank god), but D.C. Had been toasted.

Estimates had put American casualties in at around 50 million. Men, women, children, all gone in an instant. Vaporized.

And all he could say was "shit, man"
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I guess everyone has their own way of grieving, but he didn't seem that disturbed at all. He acted like someone who'd heard a shitty tune.

What's the point of having a no-use policy with 1500 nukes lying around?

Peace, what's it good for? Without war there is no peace. But war isn't good for shit, either. There is no meaning to life. We're born into our graves.

We shipped out on the USS Lexington, a brand new carrier, because the missiles were still flying. It's easy to shoot down a C-5. It isn't so easy to sink a Ford-class carrier. My living space consisted of 42 cubic feet. A bed in the baracks or whatever the fuck they call them in the Navy.

I was a lucky one. I got a proper bed. A bunch of other jarheads had to sleep on the flight deck in tents. That's how packed the ship was.

We reached the Korean Peninsula on April 27 at 03:00 hours. I remember the time because I thought to myself "This is my end." We got off and were immediately shipped to the front lines. They weren't on the DMZ, but in Seoul. We arrived the next day.

Our first encounter with the enemy happened on the very first day of duty in the city. We were on a mission to find and eliminate any NK soldiers we could find. Seoul was deserted. Not a face in sight.

We were passing an electronics store when it happened. It's funny how a little piece of copper and lead can change your life forever. Out of nowhere, a gunshot. Our CO was down. KIA. One of the first in the war.

He had been hit in the eye, it traveled through his skull and scrambled his brains like an egg.

He was dead before he heard the shot.

The responsibility of CO fell to a squadmate of mine we called "Riddler," because he always spoke very mysteriously.

They came out of the alleys with AK-74s blazing. People always think the 47 is what everyone uses, and they're half right. But the pros use the 74.

I got 3 purple hearts that battle. One for a graze wound, one for a broken finger, and one for a broken nose.

I could have won more medals if I wasn't such a coward. My pal, Barney, won the Medal of Honor for jumping on a grenade. In the instant between him jumping and his skull cap landing on my foot, I thought "how clichéd".

Then he exploded. He wasn't vaporized or thrown like in the movies.

He exploded. I saw limbs, intestines, parts of his head.

I didn't vomit until later. In war, there isn't time to vomit. There is only time to kill or be killed.

I was 19, and In the first skirmish of World War III.

I had an M16A4, ACOG sight, desert camo. It was an old weapon, long suprceeded. But the corps liked the old 16. It jammed like a mother fucker but they loved it.

If you've ever seen the movie Full Metal Jacket, you'll remember the prayer "This is my rifle, there are many like it but this one is mine." That was going through my head when I made my first kill.

I saw a boy, he must have been about 16, probably conscripted, and he was coming at me. He would never have made it to me, he was charging with a bayonet for whatever reason. I put the rifle's sight to my face, and squeezed the trigger. I felt the recoil as the three-round-burst fired. 17 rounds left. He got hit in the chest. His lungs, his heart. He screamed for a few seconds and fell to the ground.

Some soldiers talk about guilt. I have none. Guilt is for criminals, not soldiers. He would have killed me, so I killed him.

I ducked just in time to miss getting shot. I heard someone running up in front of me and I stood up and took aim. I felt the wooden buttstock of the AK crush my nose. I'd never felt pain like that in my entire life. But they don't medivac you for a broken nose.

An M16 isn't good for close-combat. So I took a low blow and kneed my attacker in the groin. I drew my USP45 and shot him in the temple as he lay on the ground, moaning.

A bullet grazed my right arm. That hurt like fuck.

The CO gave the order to advance. I obeyed, the good soldier. A few of my squadmates did not. We were kids, a year ago we had been attending prom and drinking our asses off. Now we were blowing away North Koreans.

I fired my M16 at a reloading soldier. I got him in the legs. He collapsed. 14 rounds left.

As I advanced, I fired three times. I missed, mostly. 5 rounds left. We made it another block before the next KIA. This time it was Silent Bob. He never spoke much and had a goatee just like the guy in the movies.

He got shot in the chest and it severed his aorta. He bled out in less than ten seconds.

I rain quickly, looking back at Silent Bob. I hit a wall and broke my left middle finger. So none of my purple hearts were for anything particularly heroic.

Our mission was to seek and destroy; our purpose was to survive.

The battle had died down a bit by that point.

There was a bookstore, our CO gave us orders to clear it out and dig in there. I took point.

I have never felt so paranoid in my entire life. I flashbanged the bathrooms. No one. The staff room, not a soul. But the storeroom was locked, and I could hear voices. I called in a shotgunner.

His nickname was Shortstop. He was about 5'4". He carried an SPAS-12. He loaded it up with a lockbuster, took aim, and fired.

What I did next was very, very stupid. I ran in, and fired twice. The first time all three rounds went off. The second time I heard two followed by a loud click. Fuck, I forgot to reload.

And I was under fire.

So I ducked and ran back to the doorway. I got out and hid behind the threshold. I dropped the empty mag, put it in my bandolier, pulled out a fresh clip, and jammed it into the rifle. Shortstop was busy reloading his SPAS. I said to him, I said, "you gotta help me".

Shortstop nodded and pumped his shotty, chambering a shell.

"Lets do this" he said. We went in, I switched my rifle to single-shot, and started to pick off the enemy from the doorway.

Shortstop had a different strategy. He'd duck behind stacks of books and wait for the other guys to come to him. When they got close enough he'd pop out and fill their stomach with buckshot. It took us about ten minutes to clear the room. After which were both panting and covered in sweat.

It had been quite a morning. We called in the rest of the squad and settled down.

We found a working coffee machine in the Cafe of the book store. Made damn good coffee, too. We set up Hawkeye, our marksman, on the second floor, with his M14 DMR.

Apart from him, we all had a good time. For a few hours we were just a bunch of kids, recounting stories of prom, how our girlfriends had the perkiest tits, or how we got wasted in the loading bay behind the school. It was good.

But there is no rest for a soldier. Around noon, we heard the crack of Hawkeye's M14 and knew there was another wave coming.

I reloaded my rifle and my pistol, and prepared to die. That's all there really is in war. No fame, no glory, just death and preparing to die.

Obviously, I was lucky. I survived. But not really. War takes a part of you. Be it physical, an arm, a leg, a nose, or an emotional part of you. It does take something. Something irreplaceable.

For me, it took my faith. When you see a 14-year-old throwing grenades and laughing, you know there can't be a loving god. There is only brutality and malice.

Three of my squadmates died that battle. Shortstop was one of them. Poor bastard god blown away by an NK sniper. Didn't die instantly, either. He got shot in the spine, before the sniper took his head off.

I cried that night. I cried harder than I'd ever cried before.

Then I lay down, and slept. In a bookstore. In Seoul. Thousands of miles away from my burnt cinder of a home in Boulder.

Shit man, it's all fucked up.

smile_man wrote:I like it. the naming of the weapons makes me think of COD though.