My poor attempt at writing...

[Tai-pan]

This is my first attempt at some serious fiction writing. Nothing here represents me or anyone I know in life. All characters are purely fictional.

Basically, I wanted to just try my hand at the 'survivor' genere of stories. I want to see if I can pull off a story people may want to read. Anyway, I'm up to chapter 4 so let me know if I should post the next few here... This is NOT meant to be an Anti-War story. I just want to head that off before any debate starts.

The Survivor Chronicles
by Tai-Pan




Chapter One - Beginnings

As far back as I can remember I have had a deep seated patriotism for my country and perhaps that is why I would never have seen this coming. If I had to pick a time of my when this started I could probably narrow it down to one Saturday morning, while most kids my age had been watching cartoons or playing outside, I road my bicycle down to my grandfather’s home after watching “The Great Escape” on cable. I knew he had seen battle just by what my mother spoke about so I wanted to see if he would tell me his war stories.

That day I listened to many tales of his life, not just about the wars but also his everyday life. When my Grandmother arrived home from the grocery story she added a few of her own stories or added to Grandpas. Each story was like looking through a window into the past. As young as I was it was amazing how wonderful the tales that were told were and how much more fun this was than wrestling with my friends or playing the new Nintendo I had at home. When I said my goodbyes late in the afternoon, I left feeling as though I had watched a dozen movies.

After that day I visited nearly every day after school and spent my Saturdays and Sunday afternoons with them. My parents had no objections on my visiting my grandparents, as long as all my chores at home were done first and I came home for dinner.

It was about the time I was 14 when my grandfather started to open up to my questions on battle and serving in the military during WWII. From that point onward, I learned a great deal about the military and what it was like to serve. It was also from that point on that I saw my Grandfather in a new light…and learned that Edward Hamilton (or Ed as he liked to be called…even by his grandkids) was much more than he seemed.

It was a month after school had been let out for the summer when Grandpa Hamilton, Ed, let me see his dean where he kept most of his military pictures…something even my mother had not be allowed to see. I learned that day that my Grandfather had been an Army Ranger that served in the 5th Ranger Battalion in WWII and fought on D-Day. He served in the 4th Ranger Company in Korea and was an instructor at the state-side Ranger School in Fort Benning during Vietnam. He retired shortly after the war was over, feeling that the world and the Army had changed in ways he did no care for.

It was his sense of duty and patriotism that struck a chord in me as well, and I guess it was mine that allowed him to let me into his world. From that day forward he told me stories of his time in the Army and I eagerly memorized all I could. I drilled him on every little detail and after I expressed my thoughts of joining up, he started drilling me on military protocol, critiqued my knowledge of the service, and instructed me with nearly all the lessons he used to teach at Fort Benning.

When I graduated high school in 1997, Ed was the first person who I told I had signed up for the Army. He just nodded saying he knew I was going to the moment I said I was thinking about it four years before. He added that I would make a solid soldier should I stick with it. On the home front my parents were not at all happy about my choice since they had planned for me to attend the local state college. I let them know that I wasn’t going to be what they planned for me and I made my own choices. As you can guess, the parting was not on the best of terms.

I had enrolled as 18X, Special Forces, hoping to make my Grandfather proud as a Ranger. After the stories my grandfather, and an active Command Sergeant Major that served with my grandfather years before in Korea, had told Infantry OSUT (One Station Unit Training) was not nearly as tough as I thought it was going to be.

I was in excellent physical shape from the workouts that my Grandfather had suggested I start doing so many years ago and because I already knew what to say to the Drill Sergeants I was never singled out. My time spent assembling and disassembling an old, worn M-16 kept at my grandfather’s home gave me the natural edge over all the other recruits when it came time to speed clean and assemble our weapons. I also scored a perfect 30/30 on my rifle proficiency test which also was because of the patient but firm training of my Grandfather over many years.

After graduation, I attended Airborne Training at Fort Benning, GA and after ‘jump school’ a 4-week Special Operations Preparation Course at McKenna MOUT site at Fort Benning waited for me. I graduated from both jump school and MOUT training with the highest marks.

The Special Forces Assessment and Selection Program at Fort Bragg, NC almost ended my dreams of becoming a Ranger. I passed all field training however a pulled hamstring near the end of training during a 30km woodland training exercise. I sucked up the pain and Charlie Miked. That’s “Continued the Mission” in Ranger-speak.

It was the Special Forces Qualification Course that truly tripped me up. To be specific, I was able to pass my Individual skill phase, the MOS Qualification Phase (which 18C, Engineering Sergeant I was best suited for), the Collective Training Phase (Robin Sage), and Survival Training (SERE). It was the Language Training which I was not able to pass and my enlistment was renegotiated to Regular Infantryman (11B). For some reason I couldn’t grasp even Spanish at a 0+/0+.

After this disappointment, I requested Pathfinder training which I was able to complete with ease by using the knowledge from my 18X training. Some consider Pathfinders as the ‘failed rangers’ or ‘baby rangers’ however I never took it personally.

After over two years of training, I was assigned to 2nd Team, 2nd Squad, 3rd Platoon, A Company, 1st Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment as a Corporal (E-4). I was 11B1PF7 or Infantryman, Skill 1 (Corporal or below), Airborne Qualified, and Pathfinder Qualified with 10 total parachute jumps; Six from fixed wing aircraft and four from UH60 Blackhawks.

By November 10th, 1999 I had completed all my training and was permanently based at Fort Bennings, GA the stomping ground of my Grandfather, which I took this at first as a promising start to my career, as did he.

It was in May of 2000 when I met Stacy at a local baseball game and everything I heard about love, which until that point I thought was romantic nonsense, became a reality. She was what some would call plain, with an average build, brown hair and eye and an unremarkable face, yet there was something about her that I just fell in love with. She was very warm, kind, had a very big heart, and an unerring amount of understanding and patience. She was thoughtful and very soft spoken which struck a deep cord with me.

What see saw in me I cannot say as even her parents were not thrilled with an Army Corporal courting their daughter. They didn’t see that I had a future which would allow us to live comfortably later in life, and I didn’t see what she wanted with this wet-behind the ears soldier nearly off the Midwest farm. Whatever it was, nine months after meeting we were wed by the base Chaplin with most of my Platoon in attendance and immediate family only. While her parents bit their tongues and smiled tightly while my Grandfather merely told me to “Do right by her and she will be there when you need her most”.

It was after Stacy and I returned from our week honeymoon that I took my MOS even more seriously. I wanted to provide Stacy with a good life and was fairly certain the only way I could do that was to be a ‘mustang’ (an enlisted man that becomes an officer) or become an enlisted lifer. My grandfather pulled some strings with his active duty pals to help steer me on that path and I used every opportunity to further myself along.

Stacy slow adjusted to life on a military base and as a soldier’s wife. I tried to help her ease into base life by taking her on our bi-weekly date night at the NCO club for a nice meal and some dancing. We limited ourselves to never more than two alcoholic drinks each per visit and saved any serious discussions for home. To bide the time while she was looking for work, Stacy took up pottery lessons at the Hobby Shop while I activated my active duty tuition assistance program and started taking night classes at a nearby college for business management.

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[Tai-pan]

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By August, 2001 I had signed a renewal for an additional eight years and was soon after promoted to Staff Sergeant (E-6) because of exceptional performance. Stacy was working off base as an accountant during the week and on the nights and weekends she was creating amazing pottery pieces which she sold for $20-$50 each, depending on the piece. She was currently backordered by two week and had just hired an assistant to help her organize this new passion. Life felt right on track.

On September 11th 2001, that illusion shattered…not just for us but for everyone in the country. Talk around the base was of anger and vengeance to whomever had done this to our country. It was an unspoken certainty that we were going to war with someone very soon and true to these thought, a few months later I was on the ground in Afghanistan helping to wage ‘the war on terror’. It did not hit me until I was on my second tour in Afghanistan that I was living my war. My Grandfather had his wars, and I had mine, though most of my time was spent standing around doing much of nothing beyond directing my squad (The Deuce as we were known as), and patrolling areas with nothing to see but rocks and more rocks. I, nor my squad, fired a single round at the enemy during our deployments nor had one fired at us.

My world changed when President Bush gave the order to begin the second Gulf War and my squad was ordered to help in our own small way to be on the front lines, directing fire and ferreting out a path for which our main force was to take, informing of enemy positions and movements if we saw any. In March 2003, we did fire against an enemy and I lost my first friend to combat. I still deeply loved my country and felt honor to serve as a soldier for my country but something felt wrong about the war. I personally didn’t believe the different reasons given on why we were in Iraq and it left me personally confused. Of course if you ever had doubts you kept them to yourself so I never voiced this thought. My job was to ‘keep the fucking cats herded’…meaning keeping the ten men under my command alive and focused on their jobs and if I showed any hesitation or wavering in my steadfast belief in the service, it would give them hesitation and someone would end up being killed.

We had our battles and did what was required of us in exemplary fashion, however the victories seemed hollow and the resistance later on made me wonder, privately, if this was another Vietnam. Perhaps Washington and Jefferson were right when they both vocally opposed American meddling in foreign affairs. Oh I knew we were doing our job by helping some of the people where we were located at, restoring order and allowing people to start to hope that the tyranny was finally over, but as often as I saw a smiling face I would see another that wasn’t smiling or one that smiled but mouthed things behind my back. We were an occupying army and I know how I would feel about that on American soil…so I could understand that some Iraqis hated the idea of anyone, even those that wanted to help, occupying Iraqi soil. It was the anti-war sentiment back home which might as well been anti-soldier as it had the same effect on morale. While people said ‘We don’t support the Government but we support our troops’ the video clips of how some random soldier did something stupid and ended up on the nightly news, or being shown video after video of IED damage on national nightly news shows…it was hard on moral than if people were spitting on us when we returned home.

It was in 2004, my fifth year of marriage to Stacy (civilian time, three years military time), my world crashed down around me. The letter from my parents via the Red Cross stated that Stacy had been diagnosed with small cell lung cancer and was given two months to live. Since I was dug in at a remote firebase, the letters were five weeks old. I immediately put in a request for Emergency leave with the First Sergeant citing that my wife’s terminal illness. Thankfully, my service record was spotless and the First Sergeant took care of his men.

My leave was granted five days later and I arrived at the hospital two days after that. By the time I finally saw Stacy it was nearly more than I could take. Tubes were running to and from her, and there were machines near her that I couldn’t identify but it added to the feeling that she was near the end. We were able to say our goodbyes and how much we loved each other. At 4AM September 14th, 2004 I openly wept for the first time in over 12 year as I held Stacy’s hand and her heart slowed and finally stopped.

The next month was hard as I tried to adjust to the gaping hole that had appeared in my life. After the funeral, I returned to Iraq per my orders to complete my tour with my unit. I passed the psych test which was given by a bored-looking civilian, but deep inside I should have know I wasn’t ready to return and the trouble that followed was my solely my fault.

I was not in Iraq for more than a week when my squad was ordered for a sweep and clear of a suspected insurgent base of operations. During our traveling I made a mistake and told the driver, Private Malloy, to turn left when he should have turned right. For that mistake a roadside IDE exploded next to the Hum-vee not more than a few hundred yards down the road just when I was mentioning that I think I had goofed on the instructions and we missed our turn. My facing away from the windshield when the bomb went off is what saved my life.

After the initial shock of the explosion, I was able to push my driver out of the wreck and pull myself out as well. It was the training that took over, keeping me from panicking. As I egresses out the driver’s door, I could see out of my left eye that PFC Rodriguez was KIA however Specialist Tanbrooks was unconscious but breathing. The radio which sat between them was obviously non-functional with a smoldering piece of metal jutting from the side. When I rolled onto the pavement, rifle rounds panged off of the passenger side of the Hum-vee like hail. I was able to pull Private Malloy’s M-16A3 from wreck, as mine had a dented firing chamber, and I returned fire on the few insurgents who were using AK-47s. It was very hard to breath and since my right eye was blinded by blood and my left arm had a sharp shooting pain, letting me know it was broken. I had to try to fire using my left eye in a very awkward position, reducing my accuracy greatly. Thankfully, a few rounds whizzing over the insurgent’s heads was accurate enough to allow me to drag Private Malloy into a shallow ditch next to the road then return for both PFC Rodriguez and Specialist Tanbrooks under minimal fire. For the next 30 minutes I exchanged rounds with the insurgents. I know that five had fallen under my fire but it wasn’t enough to stop the advance. They knew only one rifle was firing on them so either we were wounded or we only had one weapon. Either way it was only a matter of who would run out of ammunition first or if they would take us in a rush.

That was until another US Humvee skidded to a stop behind my wrecked one and few bursts of the Marine .50 cal ended the debate. I let myself pass out at that point.


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[Tai-pan]

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Six weeks later I woke to find myself at Fort Bragg’s medical center with a deep scar on the right side of my face, lining vertically from my jaw line to just over my right eye brow, multiple shrapnel punctures to my back and first to second degree burns on my right arm. Two ribs and my left arm were broken. I also had taken a through and through round high on my right arm and one round in my right leg. Private Malloy, the driver, lived though they were still pulling glass from his eyes. It was also the first time in many years that I had time to do nothing but think, or more accurately…brood.

It was three days after I woke that I learned my Grandfather had passed away of a sudden heart attack while I was being shipped to Germany. That, coupled with the loss of Stacy and the possibility that I was going to be deskbound for the rest of my military career, I honestly wondered what I had done to piss off the man upstairs, or if it was even worth going on anymore.

The next two months was spent recovering physically, emotionally, and spiritually. For my actions under fire, I was awarded the Bronze Star for Valor, and the Purple Heart for wounds received in combat. Though my parents and friends were proud, I couldn’t stand looking at the awards. They were reminders of how my failure ended up killing one man and leaving another blind for the rest of his life. How could I wear the ribbon on my Class-A’s or display the medal in my home? It represented failure, nothing more. It was my duty to protect my men and while I did that by removing them from the danger of the advancing Iraqi’s I wouldn’t have needed to do that if I had paid attention and focused on the mission.

When declared physically healed, I was given an Honorable Discharge from the Army just over eight years from my enlistment date.

After I was discharged, I stayed at my parents’ home in for a few months. Money was not the reason, as an E-6 with seven full years of service I was making a base pay of $2519.40 a month coupled with the bonus pay for being Airborne Qualified (jump pay), Pathfinder Qualified, Expert marked with the M-16 and M-4, Combat Pay, Re-Enlistment bonus, Hardship Duty Pay, Hazardous Duty Pay, and add the $21,167 involuntary severance pay, I was fairly well off.

True to her nature, Stacy had made every penny squeak before letting it go, and set up a nice nest egg for us at just over $290,000. Though I didn’t like to think about it, I was also left with a $500,000 dollar life insurance payment from her death. It actually sickened me to think of spending money given to me because my wife had died…let alone enjoying anything gained by that money but bills did need to be paid. It added to the trauma of that time in my life, and probably is what pushed me to the edge. I began to fall into the bottle and concerned for my well-being, friends and family formed an intervention and helped me face and finally cope with my misery. It was during that time I realized how lucky I was to have so many people care about me, in and out of the service. It also allowed me to say goodbye to Stacy and to move on with my life. A new beginning which while loaded with uncertainly, I was actually looking forward to starting.

[superstoned1]

I think you could have ended it a little better. The money from the insurance policy just seemed kinda amateurish to me. Some more metaphors and imagery will help you out, the writing sounds a bit closed form narrative. All in all I enjoyed the story and that's all that matters. Hope you dont mind my constructive criticism.