War and Roses

War and Roses By Nathan Coles

It's been a year since the beginning of the war and since then I have not heard of anything
about my family or any one else. We have been trapped out here in this cold and wet jungle
waiting for our back up. Thinking that every twig that breaks and pretty much every other sound
is a rebel soldier. Who if we were to make one false move they would shoot us where we stand.
The only thing keeping us from going insane is the hope that the back up will arrive. This smell
of rotting corpses has to be the worst smell out of them all or perhaps it's the smell of the men
who haven't shower in the time of this war, which is scheduled to last for at least three years. I
just hope that it doesn't last that long. The food is going stale and is running low even though
the taste of it isn't really the best.

Then we hear a sound that we hope is the few men that actually can help us. Then it goes
silent as if the sound was only just an illusion. We all just sit there and listen to tell if there is
some one there. I know that I haven't told you my name or any one else's so I will. I am
Lieutenant Bernard Von Holtenburg the man in charge of the operation, that was suppose to be
an easy in and out type operation, that has went wrong all because our man in charge of
navigation got his head shot off by a rebel soldier. Then there is my second in command
Sergeant Ron Colcough, the man in charge of moral for this run a muck brigade, this is the one
person who I have to worry about the most. He says that he doesn't care to run this operation but
I know he is out to get me. Then there is Corporal Todd Ramis, the person who has been by my
side this whole entire time that we have been out here, the most decorated corporal that I know.
The rest of them consist of a few corporals and a handful of privates.

Right before we got lost we were sending out for backup when some rebels ambushed us.
They had killed Corporal Howard Donavan our man in charge of navigation and some other men


to. Then they just disappeared like they saw something that they didn't want to see. We were
lucky that what ever it was didn't kill us. We haven't saw or heard them coming back to finish
off the rest of us. Just last night some of the men heard a sound.

"What was that it sounded like gun fire?" Said one of the men.

"It was just the wind or a bird, something like that." Said sergeant Ron Colcough.

"It had to have been those rebels or worse the beast that scared them away." Said
another one of the men.

Then after that little ruckus they went back to sleep and we didn't hear or see anything.
Many of the men think that there is something out there but me myself I think not. I think that
they just wanted to leave us stranded out here with no way of direction around this jungle. That
scum of a soldier, Colcough probably is working with the rebels. So that is how we got stranded
out here in this jungle. But this next morning we kind of thought that it would be okay if we
went out looking for a way out of here and that is when me and sergeant Colcough started really
hating each other. He thought that we shouldn't go, that we would get lost. But I said that we
already are lost so what would it hurt if we got a little bit more lost. It's not like we can't just set
up camp some place else. That was when he lost it. He went out by himself looking for his own
place to set up camp. We haven't saw or heard of him coming back here since. So me, corporal
Ramis, and some other men went out looking for a way to get out of this jungle. Then we got
lost just like sergeant Colcough said we would. So we just set up camp again. The next morning
I saw corporal Ramis standing over me with a gun to my head and I notice that every one else
was dead. So the next thing I know he ends up shooting me right between my eyes. That last
thing I remember was him saying that it was him who gave away our position and that was it. I
was dead and so was everyone else except for corporal Ramis.