pride
The soldiers of my army were pounding at the walls of the enemy base, ramming into the thick stone and metal with tanks and bulldozers. There was little left on the interior of those walls, having been blown away by mortar shells or destroyed by howitzer fire. The few buildings that retained anything more than a foundation were scarred black and had walls that had fallen in. The base was completely lost, or so I thought. I was in command of the regiment that destroyed the base. I thought myself a master strategist and fancied in my head all the medals and honors and parades that would be held in my honor. In all my smugness and confidence, I had underestimated my opponents.As my men tore through the fort's walls, I felt that final thrill of victorious pride swelling wide in my chest. I ordered everyone into the base and commanded them to set up camp. We would sleep here, in our place of victory. I figured it was safe enough, the fires had burned themselves out hours ago, and the winds were kept out by the remaining sections of the wall.Near one o'clock that morning, I awoke to the sound of machine-gun fire. They struck while we slept in our assumed safety and woke us with gunfire. I was on my feet in an i
The rest had hid in the underground bunker and waited. Soon I would escape these killing fields, but a part of me had died there with those thousands of men, I would never be whole again. I took a slug to the right arm and another had embedded itself in my chest. I screamed for my men to surrender hoping this opposing commander would give us mercy in the light of the Geneva Convention. Bibliography Narative no bib. Not just the big machine-guns, but every weapon they could muster was fired at my platoon. I will never forget that it was my mistake that ended the lives of almost five thousand soldiers. We were rounded up, like sheep, and encircled by the enemies. It was then, in the middle of the rubble that I had realized my folly. My orders did nothing we had been infiltrated by a larger, stronger, and better-equipped force. I imagined fighting commanders with IQs in the teens but obviously they had outsmarted me. I couldn't come to grips with the fact that I had truly been that predictable or that our enemy was that insightful and clever. I would have liked to die that day along side the men I commanded but their sweep of the bodies were incomplete.
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Geneva Convention,
,
Bibliography Narative,
five thousand,
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Acceptance Essays
