The life of a soldier

I have been in the army for 5 years now, I started right after I graduated school and I really don’t regret it to this day. The army always seemed like the perfect choice for me. I haven’t had much going at home. I mean I do have my family, my mum, my dad and my younger brother but I would lie if I said I actually missed them. My parents worked a lot when I was growing up, so I never really saw them, not that that really upset me but I still think that it impacted our relationship . I liked being alone at home. It was very quite and everything worked as I wanted it to work. And my brother, he was born 12 years after me, that’s another reason I was not interested in him because he was always way to young for me.

I never really had a good bond with any member of my family and to be honest I always found the whole “All you need is your family” concept quite absurd. In fact I don’t think I ever needed anyone else besides myself. I don’t need those emotional bonds. I’m very good on my own and that’s another thing I like about the army, we are all a team but we don’t have big emotions towards each other. At the end of the day, it is a job for all of us and if somebody is gone you have to keep going because that’s our work, that’s what we do. 

After the 10 days I spent at the boot camp doing the basic military training, where in learned the military discipline, the drill and the ceremonies and everything that would prepare me for my future life in the army, I got stationed in Germany. I liked Germany, it was very calm and there wasn’t much to do. I spent the years doing random stuff and I mainly just focused on myself. I enjoyed the time while I was there.

One day, I got the news that I would be deployed to Krakow, a city from Poland to perform a military mission. I told my parents about it and they insisted on seeing them before leaving. In Krakow, I met my teammates that I got deployed with. The atmosphere there was unpleasant because everyone in the team was talking about how they miss their families and developing some sad feelings to the squad that I considered that it shouldn’t exist. Our mission was to hunt down an Al Qaeda leader and stop him from planning other attacks, not to talk about our emotions. The next day, we were tracing down our target and suddenly we got surrounded by Al Qaedas terrorists. The team was shocked and I tried to put my feet on the ground and take the lead of the squad but I panicked so hard that I lost the control of the situation. It was the first time I didn’t know what to do and I felt scared an ashamed of myself. I firstly thought of my family and I felt guilty that I hadn’t spend more time with them. I also thought about the fact that I wouldn’t see them again. I regretted not helping my mom preparing the food or helping my dad repairing the car or playing with my little brother. At that moment I realized that being strong implies feelings as well but I had to get out of this situation alive to repair the things I had done in the past. The terrorists threatened us to put our weapons down. As soon as I had put my gun down, I pulled a smoke grenade. The smoke covered us completely giving us the advantage to hide and take over the ground. Al Qaeda started shooting at us but somehow we managed to kill them and get away with that. I was happy for the win but I realized that i was wounded at my stomach but I didn’t feel any pain. The image was blurry and I could be barely heard my teammates calling my name. Suddenly I woke up in a hospital bed.

Once I woke up in the hospital bed I realized all my mistakes. My family came to see me. I was so glad to see them. I hugged them all and tears started running down my eyes. Seeing my family made my recovery very fast and I left the hospital a week later. I returned home with my family and lived happily ever after but sometimes I still wake up in the middle of the night screaming and having nightmares.

This short story was created by Krisi from Bulgaria ,Lucas from Germany and Alexandre from Romania for the project ERA+ Integrated learning challenges.