“I can't believe we're expected to stay home.” I understood her frustration. After all, extroverts like Alice rarely enjoy a moment of silent contemplation. On the other hand, I had just left the confines of the military. As soon as I picked up my discharge paperwork and left base, I felt like I saw sunlight for the first time. The air smelled free and my shackles fell to the ground. A month later, the entire base shut down as a result of the Virus. Somehow not one sane person realised that packing two Marines into rooms that were 10 feet by 6 feet and shared the same air conditions with at least 200 other Marines was a bad idea. I clutched my discharge paperwork. It was real. I was free. Being forced to stay home did not seem like a punishment. I was on my fourth week in my parents' apartment and I was enjoying the type of extended vacation only Europeans could have. I continued my walk around the affluent neighbourhood. I lived in an apartment that was a 15 minute walk away. It was a nice, red brick, three story building surrounded by palm trees and a large pool. As nice as that complex was, this neighbourhood was another world. As you walked down the path, you stared at homes that towered and stretched in their splendour. An Art Deco house was next to a Swiss chalet as if the houses were competing for the front page of a Homes magazine. Many joggers waved to me as if I lived there so I waved back, pretending I had made it in the world. My schedule for the past four weeks was quite amazing though: 1200 WAKE UP AND WASH UP 1230 BREAKFAST 1300 READ 1400 GO ON A LONG WALK AROUND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD// CALL FRIENDS 1600 LONG BATH 1730 MOTHER GETS OFF WORK// DINNER 1800 FATHER GETS HOME// TEA TIME 1900 WATCH MOVIES//READ//SOCIAL MEDIA 0100 SLEEP I sat down on a bench and stared at the wonderful trees and the grand houses around me. My future was bulletproof. “Just you wait until this Virus leaves!” Mr James told me as he stared at the last worker leaving the building. “You'll be so busy you won't know what to do with yourself!” He laughed theatrically as he slapped his thigh. “Alright, I'm going to do my rounds. I'll see you later!” I watched him walk away before I stood up and stretched. I did a quick scan of the lobby. The once bustling Starbucks was closed and silent. The other security guard, who watched the side of the building open to the public, had already gone home. I was one of the round-the-clock security guards who watched the entrance that needed key cards. No key card? You need to sign in with me and I need to verify who you are before I can let you in. I'm sure when everything goes back to normal, I would probably never get a chance to sit and quietly read my book as I do now. I sat back down and looked at the cameras: Both freight elevators – EMPTY Both regular elevator lobbies – EMPTY All four cameras pointing to various angles of the front door – EMPTY The 7th, 9th, 11th and 14th floors – EMPTY There are 32 different cameras and there was no movement except a stray car passing in front. The mechanics and the cleaning people were the ones I had gotten to know. Everyone wore the same uniform except for the facemask. I decided that if it was my one piece of flair, then it would be fabulous. I bought them off Etsy and I loved showing them off: A “Fun Ghoul” Killjoy mask to showcase my inner emo Red, white and blue stripes for the patriotic month of July White lighting streaks resembling marble, on a black background for some mystery Black with rose-gold polka dots to show case my playful side and my serious side A skeleton with a rose on a parchment background for the gym to deter socialisation I sat back down and opened my book. It has been a few weeks since I started this job and over two months since leaving the military. I could not imagine having to wake up at 5 am to go for a run before going to work. I don't know how I lived that life for four years. I sat calmly reading my book and sipping my coffee, slightly shifting the facemask to do so. But I had begun to feel torn. I enjoyed my reading time and my laser focus at the gym. I also enjoyed spending more time with my parents than I had in years. However, I also missed going out to bars and talking to strangers. I missed going shopping or to the movies – among people it not necessarily going with anyone. Most of all, I miss my own peace and my privacy. Until I save enough money, I cannot move out on my own. “Thank you for your service!” Civilians say that thinking they've helped somehow. It's been four months and the Veterans Affairs office is no closer in helping me get my disability check for my injuries sustained in service. No check, no moving out. I try not to think of all of these things because they spiral me into depression. Instead, I quietly read my book and escape into different worlds.
Iraq 2004 Sunday Morning We were running four or five route clearance missions a day. We were awake and receiving our briefing by 0430, and on the road by 0500. Our first mission today was to take us up to the palace on the far side of Mosul and then back route Tampa to camp Marez. The second half of the mission took us through the heart of the city where the buildings were clustered together and averaged about four stories in height. The main route was crisscrossed with alleys that disappeared down winding back streets. This made it a perfect spot for an ambush as enemies could fire on us and retreat into a maze of buildings that were even more dangerous to follow them into. That was not their plan today however. I remember noticing how quiet it was. Sunday morning is not their holy day, so there should have been more cars out by the time we got there. Still, it was before 0700 and still early by most people's standards so I kept a sharp lookout but took no other action. My vehicle was the lead vehicle so the first RPG was aimed at us. I heard the explosion as it hit a dump truck on the other side of the street. I did not see where it came from, and I quickly checked my team to see if anyone else had seen it. I confess that I really wanted a chance to engage the enemy. We had been playing games with IEDs for a long time and rarely got a chance at actual combat. The presence of RPGs meant that the enemy would likely stand and fight at least for a minute or two, and I really wanted that chance to shoot back at them. I ordered my driver to slow down to allow us to see where the enemy was and to give my gunners a shot at him. Two seconds later an RPG ripped into my Stryker, and we never got a shot off. My gunners were stunned by the impact, and we were engulfed in smoke. I yelled down into the hatch for the status on my crew. I got a thumbs up from the gunner and my driver. One of my soldiers was banged up, but everyone was going to be fine. The Stryker had shrugged it off. We had lost the bustle rack and some equipment that had been blown off in the explosion. I went to radio our status to the platoon leader, and the radio was dead. As I started yelling down to get somebody to fix the radio I heard the distinctive sound of bullets flying by my head. I looked up and saw the flashes from four gunmen on the rooftop above us. From the position of the flashes, I could tell the gunmen were not even looking down. Instead, it looked like they were just pointing their barrels over the edge of the roof and firing blind. At the time, I remember thinking how stupid that was, much later however, I realized how lucky I was. I responded to the hail of bullets by yelling to the gunner to target the roof and telling the driver to move out to the rally point. Under the circumstances proper English suffered greatly and it came out as a rush of obscenities punctuated by commands. Then I started yelling about the radio not working until one of my soldiers poked his head up and told me the radio was toast. Then a quiet calm settled on me. I watched as the gunner opened fire on the insurgents and cleared the rooftop. The Styker surged forward as the driver stepped on the gas hard. I became slightly worried as I saw the rest of the platoon falling behind, but I was not about to tell the driver to slow down a second time. We reached the rally point some 200 yards away and I had the Styker turn so that the gunner could lend covering fire for our platoon as they approached. No sooner had we stopped however then we came under fire again. They were just bullets and no RPGs so I ignored them until I could see the platoon heading our way. Besides, my gunners were returning fire. When the platoon got about 100 yards away I ordered the driver to continue mission. We drove for over a mile under enemy fire the entire time. Finally, we got out of the buildings and into open fields. I had the driver hold up and wait for the platoon. When they got close enough I gave them hand signals to indicate that we had no serious injuries so they could radio it up. Then we headed back to base. That ended my first real mission as a squad leader.
I'm a plusize 50 year old housewife from Llanelli Carmarthenshire South Wales,i am a novice writer with aspirations of becoming a well known writer of poetry and short stories,coffee break stroies to be exact,i like to say it as it is with no frills and crimped edges,my mother brought me up as a devout Christian alongside my 3 siblings,two bothers and a sister,growing up for a time by a fram which gave us a love of the outdoors,memories of riding on my neighbours horse Betsy overlooking the whole of Burry Port we liked tocall Lookout we had a middle class upbringing,my father a photographer in his spare time and a Garage Proprioter and my mother a small business woman selling second hand clothes in her shop in Pembrey she always used to say what a clothes horse i was as i was only 2 at the time but had racks of clothes to choose from,after battling with alcohol for severl years my fatherdied when i was just 12 years old leaving us his estate a house and land adjacent to it,children of the manor and spoilt for space we enjoyed picking from our fruit trees in our lawns and fields,my grandmother who owned a limosene company before she passed away 8 months before my father was a woman of substamce who loved to go to auctions and buy the picks of the day from under everyone elses nose,etiquette lessons from my bygone era wernt needed when i grew up as my grandmother maud was from the victorian era,then on the other side of mymaternal family my grandmother who was the lovechild of Josef Stalins son Benjamin who as research goes must have been illigitimate,after my great grandmother died after being shunned from the little village of Rhandermwyn in Llandovery her father Benjamin placed her in a convent to be brought up by nuns afterward he retured to rejoin the war effort,my grandmother then moved to South Hampton and she herself became a military nurse and became an SRN, at her time there she met my grandfather an army officer and they gor married,after having 3 children and one who sadly died at birth anmed Dewi the 3 chilkdren were brought up in Hendy Pontradulais West Glamorgan,my motherthe youngest of the three was a war child born in 1942,Colin my uncle then became a Royal Marine and served abroad,i often helped my grandmother to work at Industrial supply a rag factory cutting rags for industries in Wales for cleaning purposes,i grew up for the most part in Burry Port Carmarthenshire and attended an all girls school,making friends with girls i am still in contact with now thanks to facebook,my mother fraught wuth health problems has battled through 3 heart attacks and 3 bowel cancer scares,now 76 years old i pray every day that she reaches 80 and we'll see where we go from there,i got married to a man from the Bryn Llanelli part of a Catholic family the youngest of 9 siblings,a factory girl from the age of 16 i worked in Parsons Pickles , Swansea Components and Microloom L.T.D,amongst others,after getting married to Kevin at the age of 21,we settled down to family life as i had our first child in August of 1990 a son named Martin,then in 1991 i gave birth to our first daughter Kimberley,then in 1993 Rebecca came along our third child, and after 8 years Rhydian appeared our fourth and final child,struggling financially we worked hard to make ends meet byme working as a cleaner in Trostre works and Kevin working alongside me as a cleaner too, Llanelli being a black spot for jobs at that time we found ourselves living off the state for around 8 years,everyone blamed the unemployment on Thatchers Conservative rule, not being political myself i went deeply into the faith i had been brought up with and started to studythe scriptures,after 4 years studying with a lovely lady named Mabel one of Jehovahs Witnesses i got baptized in November of 1992 witnesses by my husband and two children by the poolside,protected by the congregation we found the struggle easier to bear,after Labour got into powere things were looking up,again not being a political person i put no hopes in the Governments as i was a concientious objector and still dont beleiev in taking part in the war effort unlike my previous family members some of which became Jehovahs Witnesses too,not wanting to talk about my bad experiences i will say just this , that in 2012 i was taken from my home by black -ops military Police and taken on a mission against my will and was gang raoed aboard a boat full of illegal black African immigrants,i got pregnant and gave birth to triplets 9 months later all insecret and kept quiet,the babies were taken away from me at birth,so now to summerize i am still living in Llwynhendy with my husband and two sons,my daughters having moved out to bring up their own familes,i have six beautiful grandchildren,i have a small business that i run from home jus eeking out a living my goal is to become a recognized writer of Coffee break stories and poetry,i'm entering this competition with the hope of winning the prize to spur me on
