Running Header: THE VALUE 1
The Value of Life
Jonathan Roosenberg
Davenport University
ENGL109
Mrs. O’Leary
September 19, 2011
THE VALUE 2
The Value of Life
I lie in my bunk in Afghanistan sleeping like a baby. Then that god awful sound, the alarm clock, beeps steadily getting louder and louder until I reach up and shut it off. Finally silence again. So I through on my Army Combat Uniform (ACU’s) and carelessly head for my duty station thinking about how nice it would be to just get a day off. The thought of rocket attacks on everyone’s mind.
As I walk all the sudden there is loud whistle, sounding like the whistle of fireworks before the bang, out of nowhere. Then there came the loud bang. Instead of air raid sirens we could hear someone over the loud speaker saying the rockets are coming in take shelter, kind of late for that. Everyone is running and climbing into bomb shelters built out of those cement expressway dividers with sand bags stacked on top of them. They were damp and had spider webs in the corners. More rockets continued to come. One person comes in covered in dirt yelling “that last one was close; I got hit with some flying gravel”. He pulled up the sleeve on his ACU top and all he had where some red marks that looked like fire ant bites all up and down his arm where the gravel had hit him. He had a look of terror on his face but then started to calm down once he realized he was ok and safe in the bunker.
Not everyone was so fortunate that night though. We could hear yelling on the other side of the compound. I didn’t sound good. Once the all clear had sounded I went in the direction of the yelling to see a shed that had been blown up just like you would see in the movies. It was in metal pieces all over the place. The medics had already gotten their to find one dead and another with his leg missing....