Welcome once again to my blog page! For this weeks assignment, we were tasked with creating another emotional scene. However, this week we are to do so using dialogue and symbolism. So this week I will be talking about a night I spent on the DMZ in Korea. We are basing our blogs off of a story called Hills Like White Elephants (Ernest Hemingway), and using this as a reference. I encourage you to take a look at it! As for my post, once again, I hope you enjoy! It is the night of November 13th 2017. We are in South Korea on an operation to assist the South Korean ROK Marines man the DMZ (demilitarized zone). It is a cold windy night, roughly 17 degrees with a wind coming from the north at about 30 miles per hour. Myself and a fellow Marine named Forbey are stationed on the Mid-Eastern part of the DMZ along with a South Korean ROK Marine named Hancock. We are cold, we are hungry and we are tired.
“Why the hell do they gotta give us shit gear Bauer.” says Forbey, shivering in the unrelenting wind. “Man, I wish I could tell you, but one thing is for sure. This stuff is NOT warm enough.” “You guys cold?” said Hancock. “We are used to this weather, plus we get lots of warm gear.” “You don’t know the half of it Hancock. We have two layers and that’s it! I just want some food and sleep man.” uttered Forbey, clearly disgruntled as a gust of wind froze us to the core. “You know what may help?” I said. “A cigarette? please tell me it’s a cigarette.” “A cig. Come on over I’ve got plenty, just make sure someones keeping an eye across.” At this point Hancock made a gesture to me, letting me know that he would keep an eye out. I should explain briefly. While on the DMZ your sole job is to point your rifle across the border, ready to shoot at any time. If anything happens, the second you get the order you need to be ready to shoot. So we had to have at least one of us watching and pointing downrange. “Thanks man, this is definitely what I needed.” “You got it bud.” “Um. guys…..” “What is it Hancock?” I said. I could clearly hear the sound of distress in his voice. Something wasn’t right. “They are over there yelling.” he said. “They aren’t looking at us anymore, they are pointing their guns to the left.” Forbey and I promptly threw our cigarettes to the ground and grabbed our weapons and pointed across to see what we could. We could hear yelling in the distance and what sounded like a car engine. Then a call came over my radio. “All units load. Standby for clearance to engage.” the radio crackled. “Bauer what the fuck do they mean standby to engage?” “I don’t know what’s going on man, but it doesn’t sound good.” “Neubauer, do you see those lights? Off in the distance to our left.” said Hancock. Forbey and I look over and sure enough there were the headlights of a Humvee coming our way from the North Korean side. “Is… is somebody getting out and running?” “All units prepare to engage. Say again, all units prepare to engage.” crackled the radio. The unmistakeable sound of a bullet cracked over our heads to the left and we hit the ground. There was a slight pause and then. All hell broke loose. "All units, open fire."
3 Comments
TyJae
9/24/2019 05:22:46 am
This was very interesting because the way you described it, I felt like I was actually in the scene. This was actually a good blog post, I couldn't find something to write, but by looking at your blog it helped me understand the prompt more.
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Aislyn Benasutti
9/24/2019 05:26:37 am
This piece was very well written. I think you described it in a way that left a clear picture in my head. It gave me goosebumps just to think about being their myself. I couldn't imagine what you were thinking at that moment or what you have been through as a whole. This scene left me wanting to hear the rest of the story and more.
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Sabatino
9/26/2019 06:07:38 am
I echo the comments made by TyJae and Aislyn about the literary elements of this scene. I am also happy to read that this post helped TyJae with her own blog post writing. Good stuff, right?
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