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What a Hellu'va Way to Die
Only blackness and silence filled the mind of Private Jonathan. It seemed like all time had stopped, that all had frozen in but a moment. As the shrapnel flew past his ear, reality begun to lose its meaning. It seemed like death had come to take him from this nightmarish hell-scape.
The thumping of artillery pounding the ground woke him up in an instant. The sounds of gunfire and the screams of the injured filled the air as he regained his senses. His uniform was soaked in blood as he rested on his fallen commander. His chest was filled with pieces of shrapnel and his expression frozen in time, with a look of fear and shock in his wide open eyes.
He grabbed the sholder of the driver, his dead body limp upon the seat. The first to receive the initial blow, the young driver had lost his jaw from the AT round blowing right through him. The constant buzzing in the ears of Private Jonathan became louder and louder with every breath, with each of his breaths and a new dead comrade. Only one more remained, the machine gunner.
Slowly looking above him, he found no one. The top hatch laid open and the Private sat alone in his vehicle.
Nothing but a buzzing could be heard. Nothing but a hellish scene could be seen through his open front hatch. As the sun had begun to set, the sky had turned to red. The smell of gunpowder and burning flesh stabbed at the nose of the private. In front of him, a few American soldiers were running away, one young soldier trying to crawl his way to safety as his dismembered leg left a trail of blood behind him on the sand.
As he climbed through the top hatch, he saw a sea. Not the Pacific sea, but instead a sea of soldiers. A charging ocean of soldiers, holding the torn Imperial banner of Japan.
Jonathan took one last look around him before hastily closing the top hatch. His breathing became quick and sharp. His hands trembled and his eyes watered up. He knew it was truly his final moments. As the thumper of hundreds of boots became stronger and stronger, Jonathan closed the eyes of his fellow soldiers. With an unheard whimper, he took in his hands the .50 machine gun and looking through the hatch, his finger pressed the trigger.
A tear went down his cheek as the first bullet shot through the chest of a Japanese soldier. A loud cry sounded as his finger kept on the trigger with no mercy, firing hails of bullets upon the Japanese soldiers. It was the final stand of Private Jonathan. One simple sentence passed through his mind.
"Mama, I don't want to die!"
The barrel of his machine gun went quiet as the last bullet in the belt was spent. The click of the empty chamber was but the last sound Private Jonathan would hear.
The explosion of the Japanese anti-tank mine blew through his tank and him. The steel armour of the tank opened up like a tin can while the machine gun turned into pieces. The empty bullet casings flew as Jonathan's last breath left his body.
The last men of the 23rd Cavalry Division and the last M1 Tank had finally joined their comrades.