VIRTUAL REALITY 16 ~ A Soul’s Journey…

SULLY lay spreadeagled on the hard stony ridge overlooking a desolate valley in Afghanistan. His platoon was stretched out either side of him. They could not see the Taliban, but they could hear them as their rifle fire came in irregular staccato bursts aimed in the general direction of Sully and his men. The heat was oppressive, the humidity stifling and the hordes of blood sucking flies unbearable.

Twenty seven year old platoon sergeant Ben Sullivan, better known to all as Sully, was leading his men on a sortie into No Man’s Land, hopefully to wipe out the Taliban contingent firmly ensconced amongst the sand dunes and sparse vegetation on the far side of the ridge. At the moment, the Dune Coons were winning.

Sully believed in what he was doing. He had volunteered after the love of his life, Mia, had been killed in a car accident some four years earlier. He had lost both her and the will to live, but rather than drown his sorrows in alcohol or worse, he decided to head for the war torn areas of the world and see if he could make a difference.

His Dad had died when he was nineteen, which came as a devastating blow for Sully, but eventually he got over it only to lose his Mum later. At least with his Mum, they knew it was coming. She was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer some six months before, whereas his father had died suddenly from a heart attack.

“Bloody stinking, camel rooting Arabs” he muttered to himself, “they’re all alike, you can’t trust any of the bastards.” Based at Tarinkot, he was eating breakfast just before going on patrol when Sully heard the news from headquarters that some arsehole suicide bomber had blown himself up in Kabul, taking a pile of civilians and a couple of Sully’s army mates with him.

There was another suicide bombing in Baghdad the day before that took out eight Iraqi policemen and two Yank engineers. Sully had been stationed in Iraq before being posted here and it was a tossup which hellhole was worse.

Sully heard the ‘Towel Heads’ jabbering in the distance, they were preparing for another onslaught…

Dan’s Quote: “We are here for a purpose, to experience hell on Earth,
______________so as we can appreciate heaven in eternity.”

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