Personal Narrative: My Experience As An Army Soldier

At times we find ourselves in situations we could never envision being in, I know For me this was at no time more of the case than when I deployed to Afghanistan in 2013. To better illustrate, I found myself in a platoon amongst a variety of individuals from varying places in America with an array of backgrounds. I personally was just a year removed from living at home with my parents when I enlisted into the Army to work with communications. Perhaps I was delusional, thinking war would not be a dilemma for me so early in my career. This changed, when I became a driver in personal security detachment for my unit’s commander for our upcoming deployment. I never legitimately contemplated the thought of being in combat when I initially enlisted, consequently …show more content…
So with us missing the majority of the pre-deployment process, it meant that everyone would be compelled to work even harder and learn at a rapid pace, in order to be primed for war. Furthermore, with expectations set for us, we trained for the upcoming mission and learned what our roles would be in the fight. Predominately, seasoned and battle hardened soldiers with combat experience incorporated with Non Commissioned Officers encompassed my platoon. Trained to do jobs that support soldiers on the front lines, the majority of the junior enlisted soldiers enlisted as support MOSs (Military Occupational Specialty). Additionally numerous amounts of these expertise included communications, medical, and maintenance. We would follow suit, to what our Non Commissioned Officers did and the examples they set, while filling our new specific roles in the mission. Even with the training we did receive, the expectations set for a platoon that was inexperienced and unripe was considerably low. In general, the goal was to bring the commander from destination to destination safely and without any