Days were long and hard, in the US navy. Going out and fighting a War that didn’t belong to you. Going and risking your life for someone else's battle. As you sit there on the helicopter bring you to your battle. You think about your family at home, your children who don’t quite understand why you're gone, and why every time you have to leave mommy and daddy cries, and daddy tells you he loves you and will always be here even if I’m not really there. Sitting there thinking about my life my family, I still think about all the helpless people in Cuba, all the children who don’t understand why they are scared all the time, why there daddy’s are dying, and there mommy’s are weeping, and praying for a miracle. I think of the children consistently, I think about their lives how easily they can end and how I could be the one to take their lives, or their fathers life. These thoughts hunt me in my sleep, making the morning relief.
The jerking and shaking of the helicopter landing tore me from my thoughts, and brought me to my feet as all the other soldiers stood also, and are general shouts are orders at us. We are all directed to exit the helicopter with caution and quickly. These are the moments where my mind goes blank and it’s as if I was a robot, just following every command, never knowing what could happen. As I stepped off the helicopter the sun blinded me the heat shocked my body. What I saw made me sick. I had to stop myself from bursting into tears. There we children and adults bodies laying in row of a brutal war field. I wonder to myself how could anyone do this, what was I doing here this isn't who I am.

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The sun was hot on my back; the temperature was of almost 100F. Days were usually always hot in the Cuban dessert wear my base camp was. The base camp I was assigned was the training camp. I spent my days training people to fight and kill. I was teaching people how to become a weapon. These thoughts sickened me, but I was left with no choice my family was struggling before, we had no money we would have soon lost the house, so I joined the army, I only joined in hope this could help us, and solve all our problems. But the problems didn’t stop; they only changed to pain and heartbreak for the each of us. I worried about my wife and children, with me not being there to protect them. My wife worried if she would ever see me again, every time I leave to walk out that small broken door, after my short visits. She would hold my shoulders and look at me and say
“I love you. Now come home so I can say those words to you for the rest of ours lives.”
These thoughts would most of the time bring me to tears. Night was the only time I would cry, same with most of the men in my cabin room. At night in that small cramped room with ten bunk beds, the only thing you could here was the weeping and sorrow of broken hearted men thinking of their families at home, reading their letters and holding them close to their hearts. I never got much sleep when I was at the camp.
I spent my days mindlessly doing my everyday task, but during this time spent I would be thinking about my two boys at home and how they both would be twelve soon a recruited to join the war I so helplessly had to fight. Even though the odds were against it I hope my sons would be able to hide long enough till they could get out of this country and to America.
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I am a 10-year-old boy living in Cuba, there is a war going on I see it everyday I hear it every night. My mother never tells me much about the war except that my father is out there somewhere fighting for me. We get letters rarely because it is very difficult to even send a letter around here because we so easily will have to get up and move. My brother and me live only with my mom, my brother is 11 and will soon be 12, she says my brother is the men of the house in tell he is taken away then I will take his place. It would seem as if my life could be normal, I play in the streets, I go to school everyday, but my life is not normal I live in a country that is at war, my life will never be normal. Anyone who goes through these troubles will never grow up and leave it forgotten.