My First Engagement With the Enemy
Commentary
I don’t always know what will trigger a flashback of my deployment to Afghanistan, but today, it happened to be the song at the end of the 2020 Mulan movie titled, “Loyal Brave True” by Christina Aguilera. As cheesy as that might sound, hear me out.
FLASHBACK: When one of the grunts shouted out the five-minute mark, above the noise of the wind whipping past our humvee, as the convoy raced towards our first engagement with the enemy, the helmet and flak jacket that I was wearing suddenly began to feel overly constricting. At which point, I promptly closed my eyes….