Pool_1

It was two weeks later, after a massive ground effort, nonstop cavalry attacks, and more aerial shit falling from the 'big birds' than anyone had ever seen, that the area was cleared and this youngster and his cargo evacuated to medical carriers, en route home, whatever that was. But repose was lost to the young marine who was just lock jawed with agony burning on his head, face, back and legs, the marine felled by the swift archer, Apollo, whose arrow, aimed in pity, stopped him. This marine was trapped in an ever iterating recollection, a midwife's nightmare of endless parturition, bullets hissing around him, in stinging sprints to and from a burning chopper pregnant with wounded. The archer's kind shaft through his calf, downed him, saved him. Had he succeeded further the explosion of that bird would have delivered him to eternity. Besides, he was so self hypnotized in quest of a plan, any plan, he never counted. The only men left, the pilots, were already dead. He was a hero. A child who lied about his age. A hero. He didn't feel like one. He didn't want feeling at all. He just wanted the burning to stop. As he lay there in rigid pain, a young woman, the little girl bride for whom he had come to this agony, clung to him whispering again and again, "It's OK. It's over. I'll never leave you. I’ll NEVER leave you. Never." Never say never.