The Platoon-Personal Narrative

The Platoon Leader would barely survive. In fact he flat-lined for 10 minutes. Later that night, I carried my mentor and friend to a Blackhawk for his final flight out of there.

Two nights later a memorial was held for our fallen comrade. I had never seen a group of
Battle hardened men cry like this before. I guess we all were so caught up in our self-pity and anger over this deployment, that we never realized what he meant to us and our Platoon. He was the glue that held us together. We had no idea what we would do without him. The Platoon cried their sorrow out and mourned for our friend for a short time. Then we dried our eyes and geared up. Only hours before the memorial, intelligence had surface about the

Why not, he deserved it. It was at that moment, I thought of my mentor and what he would’ve done. It was at that moment that I finally began to realize what he was all about. I decided to spend the rest of my career attempting to emulate and make him proud. After we secured the sniper, he was taken to the nearest FOB.

-5-

OUTCOMES

This Scout Platoon would be like no other that I would ever serve in again. After our mentor died, a part of all of us went with him, but what we would gain in the end was immeasurable.
We learned just how close we really were, all of us came together by the likes of nothing that
I had ever seen before. We gained a new fire in our bellies, and finished the deployment strong and did our best to follow his teachings. Everyone thought they were strong, what we had no clue about, was just how strong we could be. This platoon became so strong and tight knitted that when our Platoon Sergeant was flown out a few months later, the platoon was successfully ran by just Staff Sergeants. Never again in the deployment was a purple heart awarded and everyone returned home safe and sound. All of us could look deep in ourselves, and with a teary eye, thank our Senior Scout for his