Five Reasons

Video Log 1

Specialist A. Morrison reporting. Time stamp 0500 hours. Date...

Date: June Fifteenth, 2020.

Status: Active Duty since February Fifteenth, 2016.

Is that right? Has it been four years since I got shipped out? Since I hopped on the plane that landed me here?

It doesn't seem possible. It doesn't feel real. There's no way.

But, of course, there is a way. It's called enlisting at the age of eighteen in hopes of finding your way through life without losing your mind. Most teens enlist with the comfort and knowledge that whatever they get into, it won't be active deployment as soon as they're done with basic. For me, though, I regret to say that I enlisted with the hopes of being sent far, far away.

And, clearly, that's exactly what I got, based on the clear shot of the mud-clay walls behind me and the rope-netting of my bed, here.

We were already fifteen years deep into a "self-defense" response over here, so somewhere in the back of my mind we were just going to come in for a few weeks, maybe a month or two, and things would be settled and we'd be on our merry ways back to the States.

But, here I sit, four years later, not even fifty feet from enemy lines.

Corporal Stinson suggested that we all take a moment and record a message of some sort. Maybe one to family or one to our surviving troops. You know, just in case we have the worst luck out there in a few hours.

I pressed record with full intentions of saying something to the cadets in basic. Not necessarily words of encouragement, but more of a "get out of jail free card." I was gonna tell them to bail now, while they still have the chance, so they won't be considered AWOL. Or so they won't be a POW.

But now that I'm actually sitting in front of the camera, I have the sudden urge to share more of my story than just what's happened in the four years I've been here.

First of all, my name is Specialist Alexandra Louise Morrison. I've been enlisted in the army since I was eighteen. I have been promoted three times since finishing basic. I have been stationed all over Afghanistan and Iran during this act of "self-defense" against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. In the past four years, I have been on American soil five times. And, sitting here, listening to my troop members telling their kids about their lives and how much they love them, I can already account for an equal amount of reasons I will never have children of my own, all thanks to my experience here.

If I don't die in this battle today, I will gladly share why children will never be in the cards for me. I will tell the world about the horrors we've faced here in the last four years so that no one will ever think deployment is the better option.

If I do die in battle today, remember that I told the cadets to bail. Remember that I told you the system is rigged. And when this message doesn't make it anywhere past the hands of my commanding officers, I hope they remember what I died for, because it sure as hell wasn't "self-defense."