This is my third month hunkered down in this god forsaken rock... I sit now in a damp cave surrounded by near thirty of the foulest smelling, hungry and half crazed soldiers our country has to offer. My platoon fights under the nickname of the chisel (if I were to name us we would be the suicidal half-wits). We are called the chisel because we are sent out ahead of the much larger main unit in order to infect our enemies with overconfidence and careless laziness. Then the hammer will swing in for a strike and break them away. That's the theory anyway... Of course the big wigs here have a much louder and charismatic way of romanticising it which borders near on psychotic if you ask me. But it seems to get all these other damned fools into a frenzy, ready to throw their lives away for a cause they've got no honest clue about. All it makes me want to do is get the hell back home to my folks and my girl... I do miss her... I wish I could at least just tell her the things I feel and how much I think about her out here. But any communication that exceeds the basic, I'm fine and I love you, is strictly forbidden. They're afraid if you write much more than that that its some sort of code giving intel to the enemy. And from what I hear the interrogations for that aren't exactly formal... Not sure even the wisdom of writing these here letters that I keep safely hidden in my pack, but it feels good to get these things off my chest. To tell the real truths about this cursed war, even if it is just to a piece of paper. I don't even know if another set of eyes will ever even get the chance to lay upon these letters... Maybe one day, after all this damn fighting is over they will turn up somehow, somewhere. Then my name and story will forever be preserved, no matter what fate I end up meeting out here...

Stephan Mercado
September 23rd