By: Andrés Duque
About eighteen years ago, I was serving in the Colombian army. One day, we were patrolling in the Chocó´s province. We left the military base by helicopter. It was a gunship Black Hawk. While we were traveling, the entire platoon was talking about our lives, about our families, about our future projects. We laughed a lot about the stories that everyone told about their projects, because some stories were very funny. I remember a lot that there was a colleague who wanted to be a bus driver but the story I remember the most was the one of a fellow soldier named Ruiz: he wanted to be a rapper and he was a kind of stutterer. After two hours of flight, we arrived at the military base in Chocó´s jungle. We walked for two days and the group divided into two squads. The one where I was, was headed east and reached back to the base three days after. The other platoon was headed west and we met after three days.
That day, the helicopter should have picked us up at the site that had been set for the meeting but the helicopter never arrived to pick us up. The platoon commander decided to come back to the base by walking and told us: "soldiers, we must walk to reach the military base" and we had to walk for several days. Time passed and we ran out of food and we only had water. I remember that in a very humble home the owners gave us a soup cooked with animal fat but we were so hungry that the soup tasted like the most delicious dish in the world. After a week of walking through the jungle, we arrived at the military base, and we didn't feel our feet because of the tiredness and we got two days off for resting.
Sometimes when I meet with some colleagues with whom I was in the military, we remember that experience a lot.
No comments:
Post a Comment