Luna's Marine

It has been a long day patrolling with my unit. I was hot, tired and I wanted nothing more than to head back to base, get a shower, clean my rifle and sit in my air conditioned baric. But life sucks and I still had an hour of patrol left. If you haven’t guessed yet I’m a US Marine stationed in Afghanistan. I’m also a brony, and my favorite pony is Pinkie Pie. When I told that to my other brony friends… It suppressed them to say the least. Mainly because of the music I listen to. Rob Zombie, Marilyn Manson, Ozzy Osborn, and exedra.

My unit was on patrol and like I said everything was going fine. We were having conversations with each other about different things. I was in the passenger seat talking to the driver about which is a better car, a Ford Mustang or the Chevy Camaro. I was going with the Ford and the driver was going with the Chevy.

Three out of the four in the back were talking about their home. What they were going to eat, what they were going to do with their friends, families and girlfriends and about the time the spent before leaving. One wanted to go and see his grandmother who is near death. The other wanted to marry his high school sweet heart. There was one guy who was not talking to anyone. His name was Drake White and he was disliked in our unit because he has a huge temper problem and whines about everything.

“How long until were back at the base?” He asked in his New Jersey accent. “I mean, we’ve been out here for hours.”

I couldn’t stand this guy. All he does is complain about every little thing. He never shuts up about how unmanly it is to watch a show for little girls and that we’re gays and need to be discharged.  “White, you sound like a child asking ‘are we there yet’ every five minutes.” I yelled. “If you would watch the show and not be a closed minded dick… then you would understand why we like it so much.”  Our whole squad stopped. They were all staring at the two of us, waiting to see who makes the first move.

White threw his hands up almost hitting me. “Well fuck you too, and if I remember correctly I outrank you, Sergeant Jonny Hartman.” He was getting ready to do attack me I could see it in his eyes. I don’t get why though, soldiers can’t hate each other. It not only agented the law, it’s very dangerous. If two soldiers are fight who’s to say one won’t go to the other side to kill the other. As unlikely as that sounds it’s a possibility and the government gust loves going on possibilities.

“That’s enough you two.” The commanding officer of our unit stepped between us. He was an older man. His skin was dark and had signs of stress everywhere. He looked at me then at White. I could tell he wanted nothing more than too beat our faces in. But he couldn’t so he settled for yelling at us. “I don’t know how many times I’ve told you two to get along.” He closed his eyes and sighed. “This is the last straw.” He opened his eyes and restarted. “One of you, if not both will be leaving.”

White wasn’t stupid, but he was a head strong. “If anyone should leave, it’s him!” He pointed a finger at me. “He’s a fucking brony and he should be out of the Corps of liking that faggot shit.” ‘Faggot shit.’ Can no one in New Jersey use proper grammar? (take that joke with a grain of salt if anyone is reading this from New Jersey.) He kept ranting on about how bronies are nothing but fag’s until someone else in our squad spoke up.

“Sir I think I just saw a hostile go into that building.”  One marine said. I looked for myself. I saw one man with something, what looked like an assault rifle of some kind. As always, I checked if my rifle is loaded as rest of the marines did. The machine gunner aims at the man. The air feels thick and hot. A beat of sweat runs down my neck as I wait for what will come.

The man turns around and sees us. He looks shocked and starts fumbling around with his rifle. He ends up dropping it and then starts to feel around in his man dress. He pulls out what looks like a detonator and hits it.

There was a loud exposition and the shrapnel and shock wave hit the Humvee. The vehicle managed to protect me and the other marines. Well most of them. When I opened my eyes I saw our support gunner on the ground. From his head to the bottom of his chest is gone. There’s blood everywhere and to this day I swear the first few minutes were in slow motion. Once the shock wore off I heard gun fire coming from outside. I look through the cracked window to see insurgents all armed to the teeth. My captain was yelling at everyone to take up suppressive firing positions. I was one of the first to hear him so I went to the opposite door and tried to open it. But it was jammed so I resorted to kicking it down.

I kept at it until it finally gave up. I managed to make it out first so I went to the side of the engine block and started to fire back at the enemy insurgents. Once the rest of the men were out I left the engine block for better cover behind a large rock. Once there I started to fire. Behind the rock were White and my captain. I scoffed under the sound of gun fire. The last thing I wanted was White covering my six.

I looked to my peripheral vision to see him yelling something, but I couldn’t hear it nor did I care. I look back at the enemy, there was at least twenty of them. I shot one and moved to my next target. Once we killed most of them White got cocky and charged over the rock yelling something. It was a stupid move because when he got ten feet from us, he was shot in the chest.

“Shit!” The captain yelled. “Jones, Hernandez, Hartman give me covering fire I need to get to White before he dies.” The captain was not that fast. He was in his late 30’s and was going to retire with his wife in two weeks. I couldn’t let him go, he was going to get shot and we are just barley holding off the enemy. Besides, my life is worth as much as a pile of dog shit. I took a deep breath. I was one of the fastest runners in Afghanistan, but I knew that I could die while trying to run to White. Once I felt I could, I bolted for it.

I got to White and dragged him behind the Humvee and tried to medically help him. Witch wasn’t much considering all I could do was to apply gauze to a wound. I looked at his chest. The bullet hit him next to his Beretta M9. I felt or saw no blood so I pulled the cord on his CIRAS vest. His vest caught the bullet but the shock of it is what got him.

“White, are you ok?” He didn’t answer. “Damn it White, talk to me!” I yelled. I started to shake him. I was worried that he was dead because of the shock. I stopped shaking him and his head started to move.

“If you shake me again I’ll kill you, ya’ fucking brony.” I started to laugh at the fact that he was all right. Although a part of me wanted him to be dead. He looked down at himself and looked more pissed than a Rottweiler when he sees his master attacked. “You took my vest off! I can’t believe you did that in a fucking fire fight!” he looked around for something but couldn’t find what it was.

“Where’s my rifle?” White asked. You know it’s really strange on how he can ask so many questions during a fire fight. He looked over to where he was shot and there was laying a M4A1 assault rifle. White turned back to me. “You left my rifle? I can’t believe you left my rifle. That is the one thing a marine needs and you left it!” again he was scolding me during a fire fight.

“It was either the gun or you.” I said as I was starting to regret not getting the rifle instead of this whiny thing they call a man.

He surged, “Good point.” He reached for his vest and pulled his side arm out of the holster and took better cover behind the Humvee. We started to return fire at the enemy. White and I were working as a team for once. Not going at each other’s thought, but working together at a single goal.

“On your right!” I yell as I enemy came out of cover.

White shot him. “He’s down.” He fires two rounds and his slide locks back. He goes back under cover. “I’m out.”

“Here,” I say tossing him one of my spare magazines for my pistol. He accepted it and topped off his weapon. I came out of cover and shot one guy. I move back to cover and reloaded my rifle. “White, I’ll move to that rock.” I point to my left. He nodded and started shooting. I ran to the as fast as I could. The sound of bullets zipping past me… I can still remember this day. Once I was behing the rock, I returned fire. Two enemies went down. My rifle jams and I cures at the gas impingement system, wishing I had a piston rifle in this desert.

I took out the magazine in the rifle, pulled back the charging handle back to clear the jam and reload. White ran out of ammo again and I saw him reaching for a fresh mag in his vest. Why he didn’t leave it on his belt? I have no idea. I look down to see how many magazines I had for my rifle. I had four out of the six on my vest and the two spare on my belt. I went back up to see that there is ten left and two more came to support their allies. I smile to see that we are getting more of combat. I know most people find killing people wrong, but these men killed civilians and my fellow marines. It was right time to face judgment for their actions.

The other marines moved up to us and fired at the enemies. Two were shot in the head and another enemy was shot somewhere in his mid-section. I didn’t get a good look. The captain moved next to me and started to fire. “Hartman, if you do something as stupid as that again, then I’ll kill you personally.”

I smiled at the fact that he cared for my wellbeing so much. I took a quick glance at him, he almost looked angry at me for going after White instead of him, but he looked relived too because I was safe. I looked back to the battle. There were five men left. One marine to my side shot one man and the captain shot another one in the head.

My rifle ran dry and I switch to my pistol. I fired it twice and one enemy went down. I got back behind my cover to catch my breath. I reloaded my rifle and went back up to see only two enemies left. I raised my rifle and fired. I missed the one on the left of me. The men to my right fired and killed the last two men.

After my adrenaline was down, I had to take a leak. So I went off the battlefield. Once I was finished I was buttoning up my trousers when a man tackled me to the ground. I was way from the squad so they didn’t see me get attacked. He got on top of me and started to hit me multiple times in the head until if felt unconscious. My last thought was I was finally going to get what was coming to me.

When I woke up, I found that my hands and feet were tied together with duct tape. There was barely any wrapped around my wrist so I could rip. The work is sloppy like they let a rookie tie me up. I decided to wait until I know my chances of escape. I looked around to see that I was in the back of a pickup truck. We were going extremely fast, as if they wanted to get out of the open. I started to look around the truck. On both sides of myself there were two men. They both carried AK-47’s and some kind of pistol, it looked Russian.

I decided to wait for an opening so I could overpower one of the men and escape. They were in deep conversation talking in Arabic. I looked around again to see if I didn’t miss something. On my third look I saw that the back window was tinted so I couldn’t see inside. I looked back at the man to my right. His holster was on his left side and the pistol grip was sticking out of the front. We hit a bump on the road that sent me on my back. We must have been deep in the mountains.

I decided that it was now or never. I ripped the tape that was holding. I quickly sat up and hit the man next to me in the balls. It was a bitch-like move, but I had to get him on the ground. I grabbed his pistol and shot him in the heart then I turned to the other man and shot him in the head. The sound of the truck must have muffled the pistol going off. I feed myself and took one last glance at the men who I just killed and jumped out of the truck.

Hit my leg on the truck and because of that I hit the side of my head when I hit the ground. I saw the truck get smaller and smaller as my head became lighter and lighter. I was going to die. After all the shit I did this is how I die. It’s fitting, you know. No one to bury me and my corpse will probably be eaten by wild animals. I closed my eyes as I felt something warm surround my body. It didn’t feel bad. It felt safe. Like it was going to save me. That was my last thought as I fell unconscious.