When Things Go Wrong

Here I am, standing with my three good friends behind me as I receive the Medal of Honor from the President of the United States. The past week was the craziest week I have ever had. But before I get to that part let me tell you how it all started. My name is Brendon Wells, I have light brown hair, I am six foot, I am a fast thinker when under pressure, I am very smart when I need to be also very aggressive when I need to be, and I am United States Navy Seal. It wasn’t my first intention to become a Navy Seal, at first I wanted to be a marine biologist. Ever Since I was a kid I have been judged, made fun of, and just always felt out of place. I was born in Florida but moved about every year, I have been to maybe at least ten times. I finally settled down in Orlando, Florida at a school called Springfield middle school. I have been going to that school since the fifth grade and all the way through twelfth grade, so basically my whole life.

Ever since I was little I had been called fat, retarded, I would never do anything in this world, that I am worthless, and so much more. Not everyone was so bad I did meet some good people. Their names were Matt Domico, Josh Smith, I met them when I first moved to the school district, they were in my fifth grade class and ever since then we have been good friends. Three years later in seventh grade I met another person that became one of my good friends. His name was Erick Thomas, he got held back a grade because his parents didn’t think he did a good job in seventh grade so they made him retake the seventh grade. As the year’s progress I started working out and playing a variety of sports, in the tenth grade I had reached the weight of 160. That is pretty good amount of weight for a sixth foot tenth grade boy that was a little bit over the weight he should be. In the twelfth grade I had put a lot a muscle on and even grew out a four pack. After high school I went to a college called Westpoint. It was a military college for people who wanted to join the army, marines, air force, or army. My intention was to become a marine, but I will tell you that story later. I had graduated from Westpoint with the top grades of my year. I am now at a training camp in Georgia, where I will show that I have the ability to become a marine. When I show up there I had seen something that shocked me. My good friends from school that I haven’t talked to in years were here at training camp as well.

I wasn’t the only one that changed since the last time we seen each other, they have gotten a lot taller since I seen them and put on a lot of muscle. Couple of months in and training is pushing us really hard we are seriously dying after our daily routines. But then one day Josh, Matt, Erick, and I got called one day after our daily routine of shooting and running obstacles. Then we get an unexpected guest, it was then general from one of our military basis. He told us to call him General James and then asked us question. He asked all of us if we wanted to become Navy Seals, he said we were the top four cadets at our camp and that he wanted us to become Navy Seals. We thought for a minute then each one of us told him yes.

Becoming a Navy Seal was a lot harder then becoming a marine. We had lots of tough encounters through our training, but we made it through and we were now Navy Seals. It is now the year of 2028, Josh, Matt, and I are 28 years old and Erick is 29. In this year we are at war with the Koreans, this happened a couple years ago when they tried to kill our president. As Josh, Matt, Erick, and I are relaxing drinking a couple beers and playing pool waiting for our next mission General James shows up with another guy next to him. He came to tell us that we are getting another member to our group his name is Troy Boyd, and that we just got a new mission and that we will be leaving tomorrow morning. We were all pretty happy to get a new mission because we haven’t been on one in a while after General James leaves we continue to drink beer and finish our game of pool.

The next morning we awaken around 8:00am, and we pack up all the supplies we need. Matts weapon of choice is MP5, with a side arm of a Beretta M9. Josh is equipped with a Colt AR-15, with a side arm of Colt M1911, and Erick is equipped with Colt M16A2 and a side arm Five Seven. I am equipped with a Colt M4 Carbine and a side arm Colt Anaconda. I don’t know what troy favorite types of guns are or what he is best skilled with. After we got all our guns, ammo, food, and water all packed up we went to go speak with the general. He told us it was a mission to get some intelligence on where General Chong will be located at (General Chong is the president of Korea, and also the military leader) so we can hunt him down and finally capture or kill him. General James handed me the folder with all our Intel and things we need to know about our mission. We boarded a plane which was taking us to Korea, we will be parachuting onto a beach out of anyone’s eye sight and range.

We are on the plane I start asking troy some questions. I asked where he is from, his skills, and why he decided to be a Navy Seal. After he answered all my questions he started asking me questions like where I was from, and if I had a girl back home, and a couple of other questions. Then he asks the big question, “why did you decide to join the Navy Seals” he said. I never even told my own good friends why I wanted to be a marine let alone a Navy Seal, but I couldn’t leave him without an answer so I answered him. I was now telling everyone why I wanted to join, I told them, “It all started when I was a young boy, as I was growing up my life wasn’t the best for me, I moved around a lot didn’t really have a lot of true friends, my parents turned into big drug addicts when I was 8 and just life was so tough, after a while my mom left my dad and I, and we didn’t speak much until I was 11, she had a new husband then and he wasn’t the nicest of people, he would call me fat, and ugly, and just say I was retarded and wouldn’t ever accomplish anything, when I was in school because I was a new kid everybody left me out of things, the treated me like an outcast, they called me names and beat me up a couple of times to, I wasn’t mad though I wouldn’t of been friends with a weirdo like me anyway, but one day I found these guys and they made my life better, but the reason I wanted to join was because I want people to respect me and know that I wasn’t such a bad guy and would risk my life for this country and for everyone else so they can keep on living, and I don’t care if they didn’t know I joined as long as they keep respecting all of the soldiers that are serving in the war then that means that they are showing me respect as well”.

Everyone was pretty shocked to hear the story, especially my good friends because I really never talk about my past and my emotions and stuff. We almost everyone was in shock, after Josh heard the story he did a little laugh and said, “What a girl scout”. A couple hours later we jump out the plane and land on the beach safely no one even knew we were here. Shortly after us a helicopter dropped us off our jeep that has all our supplies in it and we will be riding to our camp destinations out in the jungle. We let Matt drive which was always a bad idea because he drives a little crazy but nobody else wanted to really drive. We arrive at our camp site and we start unpacking and setting the tent up. The tent was just one big thing where 10 people could fit in it, and we just slept on sleeping bags that we packed. We were going to be starting the mission tomorrow night so all we did was set up a little campfire nothing big because we don’t want people to see the smoke, and we just ate some food and relaxed.
As I lay awake in my sleeping bag I glance over at Matt where he is snuggling with his pillow, Josh is over there talking in his sleep about his girl and how he misses her, and Erick over there dreaming about something stupid probably. But there was something strange, I didn’t see troy anywhere he was gone I got up and crept to the entrance of the tent to see if he was outside, he wasn’t out there. I left the tent to go look for him, “he was probably nervous for the mission tomorrow” I thought. All of a sudden I heard something in the bushes behind me so I hid behind a tree, It was troy that emerged from the brush. He looked weird he was smiling, not like a regular smile more like a malicious smile an evil smile like he was plotting something, but I can’t be jumping to any type of conclusions. I leave him be and let him go to bed shortly after I come into the tent and fall asleep as well. It’s the night of the mission, it is midnight and we are all ready to set off on the mission.

I open the folder and reading aloud all the details on the papers. It was a stealth mission to find information on General Chongs location. We park the jeep about a mile away and we make the rest of the way on foot. We make it to our destination, when we get there it absolutely quiet and only a couple of the huts were light up with the light of a lantern. We sneak around the back end of the huts to try and find which hut has the Intel that we need. As we sneak around the back it is still very quiet, and now I am getting very nervous. “Where is everyone” I thought to myself, then I l started to remember troy walking out f the woods with that big smile on his face. I turn to look at troy and for some reason he looks really anxious and jumpy. Not like a nervous anxious or a jumpy scared nut like a hyperactive child, like he is ready for something to happen. As soon as I turned back around a cry of a angry Asian dude was heard, and all of a sudden we were in the middle of an ambush.

We hurry into a nearby hut, the wood isn’t so tough to absorb a lot of bullets but it’s the best cover we got right now. As we are pressed up against the wall getting a lot of heavy fire, so we start firing back. We lay down a lot fire and take down a lot of them. There still a lot of them left and if we stay we are going to die. We decide to exit through the back way of the hut and headed to the next hut. When we get inside we find a desk with a bunch of files on it. I dig through the papers to try and find anything about General Chongs where about. I find a file about the next place he will be heading out to for hiding. “Yes”, I say we found it now we just have to get out of here. We soon came up with a plan where someone will have to draw there fire somewhere else, and I offered to go as the decoy. We argued for a moment and josh says, “Why don’t we just throw troy out there we don’t even know the guy”, I said “ we can’t do that he is a part of our team, besides he doesn’t seem like a bad dude we can’t just throw him out there”.

As I run out and draw there fire somewhere else everyone else starts running the different direction. As I am running one of the guys noticed them running and they shoot at them, as they are running matt gets hit in the side. I shoot the guy that shot Matt before he could tell anyone else about the plan, than I keep running. I run all the way I could till I reached the water, they are closing in on me fast and there is nothing else I can do but try to swim away. As I jump into the water I start swimming outward, right before they seen me in the water I dived down deep and kept swimming but this time to a part of land where the shore is far away from the Korean base. I make it to the shore dying for breath of course I came back up but those currents where very hard to swim against. I look around to see if anyone noticed me good thing no one seen me and then I headed off to our base.
I make it back to our camp and my feet and body are so sore from swimming and walking. When I get back they are in the tent trying to help with Matts wound. They were able to remove the bullet and stitch him up, Erick was the medic of the group so he did all of that. As Erick sits in the tent and cares for matt, josh troy and I are outside sitting around the fire. We sit out there for a long time just in complete silence. Then Erick comes out, he tells us, “Matt will be fine he just needs to rest but tomorrow we really need to get picked up and brought back to the home base back in Georgia”. I get up to call General James and tell him that we succeeded and we will need immediate pick up tomorrow. Here we are again in complete silence sitting around this campfire. Then we started talking on what happened tonight. The first question that came up was “how did they know we were coming”. Nobody knew the answer to that question, but then I remembered when troy was in the woods and had that giant smile on his face. Then Erick brought up, “Maybe one of us are a spy” in a joking manner. Then all of a sudden we all hoped up and pointed our handguns at each other.

Here we are me and a couple of my friend pointing our guns at each other. I try to calm everyone down and to put their guns down but nobody was listening to me now. Josh suddenly screams out “If it is any of us it has to be troy we don’t even know him”. I told him to calm down and that troy couldn’t be the traitor he didn’t look like the type. After like five more minutes of each other yelling I was finally able to get everyone to put their guns down. Right when we put all of our guns down we hear a faint sound of engines coming our way. Right when we heard we immediately got our stuff that we needed and put in the jeep. Then I call for an immediate pick up, good thing to because there was a chopper close by. After getting Matt into the jeep we start driving to where we first landed here, on the beach.

We are driving sixty miles an hour down this dirt road and we can see lights maybe a mile away from us getting closer and fast. We arrive at the beach and the helicopter isn’t here yet, we all get out of the jeep getting ready so when the chopper comes we can leave as soon as possible. Now the guns are back up again, there is definitely a spy among us, but we don’t know who. One of us didn’t just sell us out and get us caught in the middle of an ambush, but also got a man wounded and now we have a whole bunch of angry Koreans coming our way. All of a sudden Josh screams out, “I am going to drop this girl scout” pointing his gun at troy. I kept telling him, “Just calm down we don’t need to do anything stupid, right now if you fire that gun they will know exactly where we are at”. “And you can’t keep blaming other people, what if they knew we were here already, what if they seen the fire smoke, what if you’re the spy”. Josh suddenly got mad and screamed. “What do you mean I could be the spy, we have known each other since we were little kids you know I wouldn’t do such a thing”. I know josh isn’t the spy I want to see if anyone reacts to me calling out Josh. “I am going to fire” he said. I stepped in front of his gun and told him to just put it down. He wouldn’t put his weapon down so I had to put it down myself.

I was able to take his gun away from him and put him on the ground very easily, Josh wasn’t much a hand to hand combat type of person. I know sit here with my knee on his back restraining all movement from his body. Then I hear a loud thud behind me and the jeep door open. Erick was knocked out on the ground and matt had troy as a human shield. Matt was so weak he could barely hold the gun. I told Matt to drop the gun. “He is the spy Brendon” he said. “We have to kill him here and now” he said, I think for a minute on what to do. I told Matt, “We don’t have to kill him we can take him in and find out information about the Koreans”. Suddenly we heard a whole bunch of noise on top of the hill heading into the forest. And when I turn back around to look back at them, Matt was the human shield. I now was in a life and death situation for me, my friends, and the whole United States.