Tanja Beer and Jan Valnoha

 

Loyalty. Duty. Respect. Selfless service. Honesty. Integrity. Personal courage

                                                   The seven values of the American army

 

 

I am dying.

 

I am of a higher rank than you guys and I have always told you to follow my lead. You would have done anything for me, even though it would have meant that you could die. You would have given your life away to serve our country as I have.

 

This village was so peaceful before we got here, but now everything is destroyed. Children were playing the drums in the street and women did not have to fear for their lives. Now, their houses are bombed, shops closed and the streets are empty. Death everywhere. What happened? We only were supposed to kill those guerilla soldiers and now there is war. They started gun fire and we had to call for reinforcement. This has been going on for too long already.

 

This morning our mission failed. I got the order that we had to go there and nobody was not sure what was going to happen. I have been honest, you can never know how many of us can make it out alive. We were ambushed. There were too many of them. Three of us already got killed, so we had to get out of there. We started running. We ran into the woods and the bush was so thick that we had to split up. We were a perfect team. What happened to us? How could something like this destroy our brotherhood? It was my duty to get us back home safely.

 

We all joined the army for different reasons, but getting to know you guys has been something that shaped me. Some of us needed a job or money, others just wanted the adventure and get away. We are all from different places, but still we somehow managed to leave our own past behind and cooperate. To create unique uniform integrity. Now that we are separated we have to rely on our selves. One man for himself. We have been trained very hard for this kind of situation: we can run for miles, we do not need to sleep or eat, we can shoot precisely and fight until the end and every one of us muss possess personal courage to survive in this world of war.

 

I do not know if it was the right decision, but I had no other choice. Orders are orders. You respected it and that is why we are in this situation now. Please forgive me. I am laying here, you are trying to help me. I was wounded and fell into the water.

 

You remained loyal to me, even though i failed you and died... Now...