1. KEEP OUT – DO NOT TOUCH

2. Dear Diary,
Things have been going downhill lately. While I was fighting the Afghan
War, my “younger sister, Courtney, had been badly burned in a house fire”
(200). When her conditions had just finally took a turn for the better, I
received news from a friend in the Army that something bad had
happened to First Platoon on Rock Avalanche. He wouldn’t tell me the
truth or meet my eyes. It took some digging around but I “finally found
out that Rougle, Brennan, and Mendoza were dead” (200). They were
such great men and now they are gone. Gone forever from my life. They
told me that First Platoon was the first to be ambushed by the Taliban
fighters. An enormous firefight had erupted and my men were caught in a
wall of lead. While they were out their fighting for our country, I was
resting by a hospital bed. I feel like I should’ve done something to save
them, but after all, I couldn’t have left my sister to die could I? I’m not
sure if I should go back but I have to. “Those are my boys. Those are the
best friends I’ll ever have” (202).
O’Byrne

3. Dear Diary,
Today the Taliban tried to attack us again and we fended them off once
again. That was all no surprise because we had eavesdropped on their
radio communications and we had saw it coming for a while now.
However, a few hours after the battle, the Scouts had radioed in and said
that there was a single lone Afghan fighter without legs crawling around
on the mountainside. They said that the man finally bled to death on the
mountainside, searching for his legs. When we heard this, the whole of
First Platoon had cheered wildly. I contributed my own cheers but
something didn’t feel right in my body. My friend Steiner told me that,
“the cheering comes from knowing that that’s someone we’ll never have to
fight again…we were cheering because we just stopped someone from
killing us. That person will no longer shoot at us anymore” (236). I
suppose he is right and I should be happy that that is one less enemy to
deal with. Still, it didn’t feel morally and ethically right to me to cheer for
the death of somebody else. I feel like my body is lost in confusion.
O’Byrne

4. Dear Diary,
I don’t know if I should stay in the Army much longer. I would never
admit this to anyone but the catch phrase before every patrol, “’Okay,
who's going to die today?’” (271), really scares me. I mean nothing scares
me, not even combat or fighting scares me. Hell, I pick a fight when I get
bored. But for some reason, not knowing when and where you could die
really frightens me. I’ve been in the Army ever since I got out of lockup for
attacking my father. Only now, with so much death around me, I’ve
realized how easily I could have died. “You think you are a badass until
you’ve seen a fallen soldier laying there not breathing anymore and then
it’s a different f***ing story” (277). The truth is, I don’t want to die right
now. If I die, the last memory that my sister will have of me is by a
hospital bed, weak and depressed. I could have easily quit the Army long
ago but I don’t think I’m “ever going back to a civilian life” (277). It’s just
unthinkable. And right now, I’m scared that the unthinkable will happen.
O’Byrne

5. Dear Diary,
Everything just gets worse and worse. I’m no longer the only one scared now. All
of us in the First Platoon are seasoned war veterans but I guess the thing is, until
you experience actual death inches away from you, you don’t realize how scared
you actually are. Earlier today, my friend Steiner “had taken a round in the head
and slumped to the ground with a hole in his helmet and blood running down his
face” (298). Everybody, including me, thought he was dead, but after a while, he
sat up and looked around. Turns out, “the bullet had penetrated his helmet to the
innermost layer and then gone tumbling off in another direction” (298). We were
all laughing while in combat, but I think we only laughed to cover how we were
really feeling. After the battle Steiner had come up to me and said, “’What if the
bullet-’ and I just stopped him right there, I didn’t even let him finish. I said ‘But
it didn’t. It didn’t” (300). I had refused to let him go into something that military
psychologists called ‘anxious rumination’. If he kept about how he was inches
away from his death, he would have an entire lifetime of trauma. “I had promised
my guys that they would all go home, that I would die before they would” (300).
But when I saw Steiner get shot, I realized that some things are beyond my control.
“That’s the worst thing ever: to be in charge of someone’s life. And then you lose
them? I could not imagine that. I could not imagine that day” (300). All of this
just keeps going on and I guess we should all be fortunate that we are still alive.
“Lives measured in inches and seconds and deaths avoided by complete accident”
(300).
O’Byrne