While growing up, I always dreamed about one day joining the military and defending my freedom. This was quite peculiar for someone coming from a Cuban immigrant family living in Miami, Florida, but I did not care as it was what I had always wanted to do. In my senior year of high school my dream became a reality when an Army recruiter came to my High School and talked about the military life not even a week later, the contract was signed. I had enlisted as an Infantryman in the United States Army. The following story made me realize that at the end, it is just me against the world and in some point in our lives we all have to go.
High school graduation came quickly and two weeks later I was shipped out to Fort Benning, Georgia to begin military training. After four months of training, I graduated Infantry School and received my orders for my first duty station in Fort Bliss, Texas. There, I was assigned to Bravo Company 1-36th Infantry as a rifleman, and in no time, I was awarded a leadership position. As an Infantryman, all I would think about was deploying to war, especially when my leadership would talk about their experiences during deployments. A couple of years went by and still no deployment orders. I was getting anxious and bored with the same old training. Little did I know that a deployment was around the corner.
I decided to compete for a position in a Recon platoon where all the highly skilled soldiers would be placed. The competition was a walk in the park and I earned a position in this new platoon. Assign to Alpha Team, my team leader was Staff Sergeant Phillips, a very knowledgeable Ranger who demanded physical perfection. At first, I enjoyed this new group of guys, they challenged me to do better and try harder in just about everything. But their sort of mentality was not like mine, for they were sort of the cool kids in school and I was the guy who just kept to himself, so I did not fit in at all, my team leader decided that I was no good for his team and dismissed me.
