Bloodbath in Baghdad
By: Derek Lund
“It’s their time, kill them unless they tell us who the terrorist is in the next five minutes,” Our captain told us, as we stood there shaking. I can’t be the villain here, at home; I’m just nineteen-year-old Westly Neil. Here, in Iraq, I am Private Neil Second Class, Phantom Regiment.
I came from a small town, hoping to get the feeling of adventure, and danger from the army. Well the danger part sure as hell came true, but this isn’t the dream I wanted to live, killing innocent civilians.
Out of my entire graduating class I am the only one out of the 134 to go in to the army. The other 133 either went straight to working on their farm, or went to the local university. Instead of my innocent soft baby face, I am now war torn, unshaven, dirty, and scarred with the murder of other humans.
Now here, in Iraq, you never know who the real enemy is. It could be the young adults that you can connect to, they are the enemy, it could be the middle aged father of three, it could be the old woman you help across the street, hell, and it could even be that little baby laying in its carriage. That’s why we are stuck on this cross road of perdition. These twelve men, women, and children are all accused of being the terrorist.
“There has to be another way to find this out sir!” I said to my captain trying to settle this rationally instead of massacring the innocent.
“No, there isn’t any other way, these Muhammad looking people are savages, they feel neither guilt nor remorse, shoot the sons of b******,” he said in a soft disappointed tone. “You just want to go see Allah isn’t that right Muhammad?” he started screaming at the young Iraq man.
“Whose the terrorist!? Please tell us, we don’t want a massacre on our hands!” I screamed at the young male. They wouldn’t listen, nobody would.
“F***! Dallas, this is dumb, most of these people are completely innocent.” I said to the soldier next to me.
“Don’t question those orders, they have one minute, if they are willing to die to protect the terrorist, that makes them terrorists!” Dallas yelled back at me.
“They don’t even know what we are saying Dallas!” I argued.
“Too bad, its time fellas lock and load.” Captain ordered.
This was it; we aimed our guns at the innocent hostages. I breathed deep. As my body shook with the fear of what would happen to us next.
“Ready. Aim. Fire!” screamed the captain.All 15 of us pulled our own trigger simultaneously. I dropped to my knees then after knowing that I had just killed an innocent person, and even worse. It was a kid no older than myself. He, too, was unshaven, dirty, and scarred from the war. An innocent young man was killed here today with those hostages. His name, Westly Neil.
