It's dark.

 It’s dark.
It’s dark, my eyes are closed.
I’m drifting.
There is a rhythmic
sound,
but it is far away.
I’m drifting.
The sound changes pitch,
becomes higher,
sharper,
more of a whine and
less of a throb.
My eyes come open.It’s dark.I’m holding my weapon, barrel pointed downwards.I’m strapped in,
heavily armed, heavily armored.
Emphasis on the “heavy” part.
Strapped in.
Next to me, on either side and across from me, are the rest of us, strapped in, faceless in the dark.
In some ways, it’s like being on a bus.
Or like being in an airplane.
But it’s not.
The shape next to me leans in:
“TWO MINUTES! LOCK AND LOAD!”
I pass the message on, as I snap to full consciousness, my hands loading my M-4, checking the safety,checking my ‘203 rounds, releasing my five point safety harness.
“ONE MINUTE! HOT LZ!”
The pilots must have seen tracer fire.
The insurgents know the sounds our helicopters make.
The engine is screaming now, the pilots don’t like people shooting, they are coming in fast and hard,they aren’t going to land, they’re going to skip off the ground and we are going to get the fuckoff their helicopter as fast as we can so they can leave.
A helicopter, a CH-47 Chinook helicopter,a “shit-hook” helicopter, the fastest, highest flying, double-rotor helicopter, costs between eighteen and twenty five million dollars, plus crew and extras.
We must be the extras.
We don’t cost nearly as much.
The back door is open.
It’s a ramp, it folds down.
We are a couple hundred feet over the Afghan hills,
we aren’t buckled in,
we are travelling around a hundred miles an hour,
the door is open,
we are in a helicopter,
and someone down there is shooting at us.
If the bullets hit us, they’ll go right through the airframe.
Right through us.
They’ll make a movie about how brave we were, how we were like brothers to each other, about our grieving, yet strong wives and parents and their noble sacrifice, about our heroism.
They always leave out the screaming in the movies.
The screaming and the crying.
And the whimpering.
They  always leave out the screaming.
I even know guys who don’t seem to remember the screaming.
Who told me “wow, he didn’t scream at all! He just joked and laughed and was really brave!”
Really? Is that what you remember? Because I remember the screaming. I remember the screaming like someone shot a dog, and it was dying. Scared, and in pain. Dying, scared and in pain. When they bring you the news, and they tell you "it was quick, he didn't suffer" they lie. Its never quick. Even if it only takes a few hours, or a few minutes. Those are the longest, the worst minutes of your life. Every -  last - second of them.
It’s dark, nighttime, almost pitch black.
The dark velvet is relieved only by small red lights, by the lighter green of glow-in-the-dark patches on some of our equipment.
I check my weapon again, make sure the safety is on, again, make certain the magazine is secure in my weapon, again.
We hit, and are running out the door, streaming out the back of the aircraft, falling out of the back of the chopper, dust, dust everywhere.
Throwing ourselves down into the prone, the last few guys literally jumping off the bird as it leaves.
The pilots are not sticking around, a helicopter costs 18 to 25 million dollars.
Plus extras.
The chopper is gone.
We’re alone,
in the desert.
They put us down 3 kilometers from where we were supposed to be.
Time to go.