In the middle of southern Afghanistan, in the Kandahar province, on a small combat outpost sits a combat-hardened infantryman; he has been fighting the Taliban for hours on end, all summer long. The days were long, and the fighting was some of the fiercest that Afghanistan had seen in many years. We were in the heart of the Taliban, surrounded by opium poppy fields and grape rows as far as the eye could see. Some might say that simply being there would be the greatest struggle they would ever face, but that wasn't the case for me. The grueling fighting that was taking place every day, months of going without a shower, and countless other things that I dealt with in the desert were certainly difficult, but even those things pale in comparison …show more content…
After a long few months of nonstop fighting, one day I finally received the phone call that I knew was coming for a while now as to whether I was going to decide to get out of the Army or at least stay in for a few more years. I knew this was going to be a very difficult decision for me, because when I joined the Army it was something I really didn't put a great deal of thought into. It was one of those things that I just did, and then I didn't look back. It was in the middle of a hot summer day, and one of my friends that I had grown up with since the 1st grade called and asked me to come talk to the Army recruiter. He had enlisted that day and figured it was something that I would be interested in as well. After work that same day, I went down and talked to the recruiter. Within two short weeks, I was on a bus to Fort Benning, Georgia. Needless to say, but there wasn't very much thought put into joining the Army. I knew that this time around, I needed to put more thought into