Award Winning War Stories
In 2004, a close friend was brutally shot in Falluja, Iraq during Operation Phantom Fury.
When he returned, he confided in me tales of the events happening overseas. I saw over 4,000 pictures. Among those pictures were people shot by my friend, as well as photos of the people who shot him, and who were then killed. It was, at the very least, a confusing feeling.
The Stories
After a year of researching, I wrote a tribute called The Silver Band and it won 2nd place in the Delta Epsilon Sigma National Scholastic Writing Contest.
The Silver Band became the first in what will end up being an eight part series, written about seven different soldiers and their journey from boot camp to coming home. The Things They Brought Home was written as a tribute to The Things They Carried and concerns PTSD, while Introduction To War is woven around my own story with a friend who the series is centered around. Since my brief army marriage, I have begun an Army Wife chapter as well.
Camp Pendleton, Main Gate Prior to Deployment. Sadly, many of these men would be lost.
Nick Ulloa, 20 years old, was in Iraq for 5 1/2 months. He's been injured twice. The second, and last time, he went into a house to house looking for insurgents. As point man, Ulloa led the way, and found himself between a locked door and a dark hallway
Excerpt: The Silver Band
He didn’t know why he prayed to God, he might as well pray to the dirt. It seemed to offer more protection than God did, and you spent much more time with it. Especially in the end. The only thing a man could respect out here was luck. It was luck that sent a mortar sailing a couple more feet to the right of you. Luck that the bullet grazed your fresh and was in some other poor son of a bitch’s skull and not your own. But just like everything else, luck runs out, and so Paul guessed that was when you prayed to God - because maybe, just maybe, God would have a little more luck for you somewhere.
Excerpt: The Things They Brought Home
The man in the back seat sat half leaning over, like an old drunk passed out, bellied up at the bar. His head was bolstered by his shoulder and a large grin contorted his face, eyes wide and dead and laughing at some private joke.
“That fucking bastard is smiling!” cried Ajax.” What the fuck, he’s god damned happy about this shit. What a fucking creep!” He stomped around the car and pointed his gun straight at the dead man’s face. “ I can’t believe this shit. What a son of a bitch, fuckin’ like watching people get shot to hell eh? Enjoys doing it. I’ll show his dumbass,” he raved.
James quickly leaned his gun against the door and stuck one arm out in front of Ajax’ chest and grabbed the back of his pack with the other hand.
“Hold on a minute there, killer. We’ve already showed him. We can’t show him anymore. Look at’im. James nodded over in the direction of the corpse. The white cloth pants and button-up shirt were soaked in blood. His right shoulder gaped open. Blackened skin peeled away from the wound and bonded with the white cotton, revealing raw tissue and fragments of bone. The right temple was still bleeding heavily. It dripped down the cheeks and into a crimson pool on the seat. On the window behind him, grey mush mingled with bits of skull and black hair oozed down what was left of the glass.
“See, he’s dead. Ain’t nothing more to him.”
The scene described in this excerpt came from a photo shown to me by an unnamed marine in 2005.
While Nick was going through his surgeries, his Sergeant would often call me to keep me updated and after he was discharged we dated. An Introduction to War is based on my relationship with him and Nick once they returned.
Excerpt: Introduction To War
At a glance it looked like a collage of colors, like an artist had painted rose petals scattered across the desert sand. Three men lay on their backs, their arms flailed out to their sides like they had fallen from the sky and broke their wings upon landing. Their faces were splatted with dark blood. If I hadn’t known what happened, I’d have thought a man was standing on the other side of the camera with a can of red paint, flicking a brush back and forth so that the drops speckled their faces and clothing. If their mouths weren’t so twisted and their eyes not so fierce, they might have just finished racing or painting a house and were laying on the ground for a rest. But, those snarled lips and burning eyes dashed any tricks of the eye. Before, I had felt angry at these men who had tried to kill my friend, had hoped nothing but horrors for them. Now, looking at them, I only felt a glimmer of anger. I couldn’t decide what to think. What I should think.
And then I remembered my mother reading the newspaper during the gulf War, hushing me, saying I would never see real war - it would never touch me. I looked at my boyfriend, snoozing contently by my side, knowing that tonight his dreams would be haunted by gun fire and screams. That I would hold him and sooth him while he shook. After all those years wrapped in America’s security blanket, I felt war had not just touched me. Now, it was a part of me. And I felt afraid for what was to come.
Excerpt: