Day Five

Dear Journal,

Today, for the first time since I was recruited into the revolutionary army, we got out of the camp to take a patrol with Captain Mendoza and a couple of others. I felt relieved to get out of the little prison of the HQ, but it was hard nonetheless seeing what was happening outside the fortress. We entered a village that the loyalists just left and saw the mess they abandoned. There was blood and dead bodies everywhere, Old men and women, younger women that could have been the same age as my mother, and a little boy. I was scared of looking at the boy, somehow he reminded me of my younger brothers. The real high-point of the day, though, was when Captain Mendoza sent me to get leaves or flowers to put on the graves. I was looking around when I saw a girl, about the age of ten or twelve, wounded, and clutching a bundle of clothes. Inside them was a baby. I called for the others, who helped pick her up and clean her wound. Captain Mendoza set me in the charge of the newborn baby boy. As I sat wondering about the revolution, I felt angry at the loyalists. Why did they have to come and kill the little boy in the village? Or the Old lady? What did they ever do to them? I made a silent agreement with myself to punish every last loyalist that I see, if its the last thing I do.