Private Hale felt the silence among many obscenities of joy all around him from his buddies. He didn’t dare look in the direction of his throw, afraid to see the perfection of his hit. The ringing in his ears mocked him as if to say he had made a mistake, but he knew what it meant to be a soldier, and remembered his motto of do or die. It was defending his own honor and knowing the justification of the war that had brought him to the Middle East in the first place, and it would be these same reasons that kept him here. 

The ringing in Private Hale’s ears transitioned itself into his wedding song, and though he had forgotten the words he had never known in the first place, the tune was soft and welcoming. He thought back to the night his best friend had become his bride, and wondered whether or not her life was what she had expected, and whether or not she was happy with his. She had told him once before that she had never been more proud of anyone in all her life, and that was enough to keep any soldier fighting on the sands of Hell; fighting for all the wives and loved ones back home. He knew he had his reasons. He had a life to fight for and a homeland worth fighting for.

The music stopped and the obscenities faded. Private Hale finally opened his eyes. Being shut for so long and so hard had caused his eyes a pain that was enough to send a pair of tears across the terrain of his face, and it did. Through the watery blur, Private Hale looked down and gazed at the ugly green object in his right hand. He stared in fear as the grenade danced from side to side, as if taunting him; are you going to pull the pin?