Not all heroes come home

Just another soldier

That's how they see you, just another soldier for a war that never ends. Children barely old enough to hold a rifle above their shoulders, that's what we all were, we thought we were heroes, how wrong we all were. A whole month of training qualified us as soldiers in their eyes, you didn't know until you faced war that you weren't ready.

We all remember that first day, our first assignment. It was a scouting mission, head to the nearest town and then wait for orders, and so we did. We all had a formation, I went ahead of everyone to check for signs of enemies and alert our squad of any explosives or an incoming ambush. We almost never saw them coming, we were so paranoid we sometimes resorted to friendly fire, not on purpose, but we always fired a warning shot in case it wasn't an enemy.

There was always four of us in each squad, any less or any more there would be too many or too little of us to get the job done. I was twitch, you could probably guess why, Yancey, the leader of our squad was snake, he could fit into any small place he found, if he wanted to kill you you'd never see it coming. I wasn't anyone special in our squad, I was just the scout in our group, that's about it. Donovan was sonic, he could run like hell, we all made fun of him and one day snake called him sonic and it stuck, of course him being the squad medic you didn't want to piss him off.

The last person in our odd little group of soldiers is Sarah, we call her puffer. A nickname like that sounded really funny, whenever she got mad she puffed out her cheeks and her face got all red.

Scouting went like this, you only watched, never shot unless you had a death wish. It took hours, these guys were cautious, but never cautious enough. We were focused on one building, one that a lot of civilians coming in and out of. All of them wearing something over their head.
It was better to be paranoid than dead, that was the only way to justify killing anyone.