Personal Narrative: My Last Tour In Afghanistan

Twenty four hours and a two plane rides were the only obstacles standing in my way…. Oh, and about three-dozen insurgents.

It was supposed to be my last tour in Afghanistan, I had been over here for about three years now. The last time I saw my little girl she was just learning how to walk, now her mother tells me she’s on the kindergarten soccer team. I think that’s the worst part about being in this situation. Not being able to be a dad. Helping with math homework that is due tomorrow, giving a referee an ear full at a little league game, or scaring the living shit out of a teenage boy who brings her home a little too late are just a few of the perks of fatherhood I will never get to experience. It’s really too bad that it had to end this

Sammie had woken me up a few minutes before the second plane made contact. We watch in horror as the buildings fell to the ground. Seeing this all happen on the live news broadcast had been the scariest moment of my life, but the news I received from call from my father an hour later was just as scary. He had told me that he found my grandfather on the floor suffering a heart attack that same morning. Rushing over to the hospital my grandfather was at, I got another call from my father. “He’s gone Travis” is all my father said as he cried his eyes out on the other side of the line. I couldn 't have stomped my foot on that break any harder, screeching to a stop in the middle of an intersection I started to ball. This is the moment I thought I was never going to have, the moment that my grandfather had witnessing the Pearl Harbor attack, the moment I realized I had to fight for my

Your days consist of walking, running, and shooting, but in these three years I have been thankful enough not experience a whole lot of shooting. I’ve tried to stay out of trouble and keep safe for Sammie and Faith’s sake. That is, until my last day over here. I was supposed to be out of Afghanistan in twenty-four hours, all I had to do is lead one final convoy through a village. Coincidentally it was the same village I had watched Tom Butler die in four years prior. A group of five soldiers and I were guarding the last humvee when we fell far behind the group. Segregated that’s when the insurgents say their opportunity. They threw two grenades at the vehicle and blowing it up. The heat felt from the flames of the wreckage were unbearable. I managed to get the five guys and myself into a small food store before the thirty plus insurgents came out of the surrounding buildings. I put a call in to base giving them the coordinates of where we were. The officer on the phone told me he couldn’t get someone out there for at least five minutes. Five minutes went by when I finally heard the sound of the chopper’s blade in the distance. As soon as they heard the helicopter, the insurgents started to close in on us. No one in my platoon would make it out alive if someone didn’t do something. I saw only one way out for the majority of us, and it didn’t end well for me. I grabbed my pen and paper from my pack and