I love sour candy. Ecspecially candy bowls of it.. That nasty, sweet taste, Mmmm, God!

There's nothing like a little insanity to wake up to in the morning, you know? The screaming,
clawing, possible eye gouging. All good and fun, obviously. Unless they're crawling on the
fucking wall like a spider. Then you scream and run, because that's not normal..

Well, my insanity starts waaay back. Well, not far back, maybe a year...though it could've been 
fifty. My good sir, fetch me the tea. I love war, its so much destruction! Oh, that reminds me
of our story. I had just finished boot camp, I was fresh out the oven. I was being deployed
to a firebase just behind the front line, I can't remember the name, foreign fucking names.
We were the last resupply dump before you came under fire and the first place you came if
you lived through that fire. It was hard to sleep, you could hear every gunshot out there,
and every time you heard one, you knew someone had died. Personally, it gave me nightmares.

Well, every now and then, stranglers from some enemy unit would wander our way, and we would laugh
and take turns picking them off with a sniper, since they were dazed and confused from the desert
heat. That would come back to us in our sweet time.

Days would go by, and we would just stand around in whatever shade we could find until
an Allied troop transport pulled in "lookin' for some last minute ammo" before they hit the line.
I also enjoyed watching the tanks roll down our lonely road, the squeak of their tracks and 
the rumble of the ground and air as their massive engines pushed them along.
Ah, I always wanted to be a tanker, but they wouldn't let me. No idea why. 

They kept fighting, the line unmoving. Long ass battle for some desert land. To many people died
just for this sand. Strange. I bet if i went out there today and dug a hole the size of a basketball, 
I'd find the bones to aleast 30 people. In that one spot. Tiny spot. All the hulls of vehicles are
rusting away out there too. Sad, but strangley beautiful sight. I remember a particulary beautiful
wreck, an Apache with the tail end stuck into a dune. The Apache's nose would point at where the sun
would be at 6 'o' clock in the afternoon. Brilliant.

Back to the story. Our troops fought hard, a lot of them died yeah, but they held the line.
But one day, a very hot day it was, someone on the line goofed and the enemy broke through.
They flooded in like water and surround our boys from front and behind in so many places,
and just annihalated them, completely. So many units stood no chance. A bunch of our
tanks managed to get out, along with most of our air units. They fell back to the firebases
just behind the frontline, which my firebase was one of. 

We helped resupply them quiclky, since the enemy only had to regroup and then launch the offensive.
Our troops begin to pour in, so many were at our firebase. We all talked, since the baddies
had yet to attack 12 hours after our retreat. We were eating lunch the next day, 24 hours after the retreat.
And then it hit us.

Artillery rained down on us. I think I might've been the first to realize, since I looked up just before it
hit. I had heard a sharp whistling from above, I thought it to be quite strange, and I looked
up, like I could see through the roof. It burst in, tearring through with ease.
It was horrible, there was four men sitting at the table it hit directly. It blew up in their
faces, tearing them into shreds. It blew everyone else in there off their chairs and into the floor.
Everyone jumped up and scrambled, because more would be coming. And more did come.

Most of them hit the base part, leaving our vehicles intact. I guess they thought they could
kill enough troops at lunch time to stop our trucks and tanks. They didn't completely succeed,
but they took out twenty troops and wounded ten more from our staggering total of 200.
Tankers ran to their tanks and everyone else grabbed a weapon and jumped into a Humvee, 
including me. I got in the passenger seat of one of the Humvee's and then more soldier hopped
into the back seat. About three of them, since the Humvee could only carry five soldiers
comfortably. We tore out of the base and down the road, towards the enemey I guess,
I have no idea where Driver thought he was going. Down the road aways, since the land 
was mostly flat, I could see the tank collumns that would tear us to bits moving forward.
We turned back, Driver almost flipping the Humvee as he turned quick. It was starting to turn into
another front, except this time I wasn't back in the firebase trying to sleep.
I was here, getting shot at, and I didn't know what the fuck to do. 

Our tanks rode fast down the roads to meet the enemy tank collumns. A large number of Humvees were behind
them, serving as anti-personal or maybe to help take out tanks. I don't know, but Driver
decided to join them. 
We raced down the road at the enemy tanks, closing fast. They quiclky began firing and scattered.
Our forces scattered along with them. We road around, somehow avoiding getting hit.
The gunner took out quite a few guys and shot some Tank Commanders from their tanks, he was
good.This was nothing like what I had read, there were no formations, no tanks getting hull-down
positions, nothing! Just pure chaos. Missiles and bombs seemed to explode everywhere, wrecks 
seemed to suddenly pop out of nowhere, a burning Humvee flew over over hood and almost killed us all.
Tanks seemed to blow their tops everytime a few AT rounds penetrated them, and it was brilliant
as the fire roared upwards underneath the tanks turret and the shockwave seemed to form a
perfect half-sphere around the now wrecked tank. And while I watched a tank die like that,
our luck ran out.

A AT round tore into the rear right side of the Humvee, sending it flying into the air.
Gunner and the rear right passenger died instantly, I know that. I don't know if Driver did, I remember his
busting his skull in on the steering wheel, and I have no idea what happened to the guy sitting
behind me. He might've been the one that saved me. I rememeber clearly though, it was so
loud and the inside of the Humvee got sooo hot. Just from the intial explosion. 
The Humvee hit the sand nose first, and I flew forward and hit the dashboard pretty hard. I guess
it knocked me out. I don't know what happened next, because the next thing I remember was
waking up in a hospital back home a week or two later. They told me our boys had pulled through
and beat back the enemy tank lines. Some guy, who I'll never be able to thank, pulled me from the
burning Humvee and carried me to some other Humvee, which I guess was pretty far away. That Humvee
took me to a med-camp set up not to far away. The man that pulled me from the wreckage
hopped back in another Humvee's gunner turret and managed to take down a bunch of enemy troops
before his Humvee ran head on into a AT shell fired from a tank they didn't realize was there.
He sounds like he was a good man. And I really wish I could have met him..