The base was completely lost, or so I thought. I was in command of the regiment that destroyed the base. I thought myself a master strategist and fancied in my head all the medals and honors and parades that would be held in my honor. In all my smugness and confidence, I had underestimated my opponents.

As my men tore through the fort's walls, I felt that final thrill of victorious pride swelling wide in my chest. I ordered everyone into the base and commanded them to set up camp. We would sleep here, in our place of victory. I figured it was safe enough, the fires had burned themselves out hours ago, and the winds were kept out by the remaining sections of the wall.

Near one o'clock that morning, I awoke to the sound of machine-gun fire. They struck while we slept in our assumed safety and woke us with gunfire. I was on my feet in an insta

In my mind I fit everything together, even as I watched my men slaughtered. It had been so easy to take the fort because there had only been a few soldiers manning it. The rest had hid in the underground bunker and waited. Waited for me to make the mistake that they seemingly knew I would. I couldn't come to grips with the fact that I had truly been that predictable or that our enemy was that insightful and clever. I imagined fighting commanders with IQs in the teens but obviously they had outsmarted me. My men surrendered as I had ordered but we were to receive no mercy.

The order rang out. They all began to fire. Not just the big machine-guns, but every weapon they could muster was fired at my platoon. I took a slug to the right arm and another had embedded itself in my chest. Bullets whizzed passed my head on my descent to the earth. As I lay dying in the field of the hundreds of already dead, I heard the sound of the enemy exterminating anything that moved. They moved through my army's gruesome remains with remarkable efficiency. I would have liked to die that day along side the men I commanded but their sweep of the bodies were incomplete. For some reason I remained al

Some common words found in the essay are:
Geneva Convention, , five thousand,
Approximate Word count = 802
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)