Maj. Johns and I had just returned from a three-day mission out to stay with a small company-sized element at its battle position. On the first night, intelligence sources revealed that a massive coordinated attack on the battle position by several hundred insurgents was being planned. The first sergeant informed me personally that he considered the source very reliable and the information very detailed. He considered the attack likely and went as far as giving me specific instructions to follow in the event that our position was likely to be overrun. The company medic, Spc. Bernardo, Maj. Johns and myself sat in the aid station and listened to Mozart from the Bernardo's iPod as we waited for the attack that first night. It was eerie and surreal and I wondered if this would be my last memory on Earth. When the attack didn't come, it was assumed that it might come the next night and all of the previous night's security measures were re-employed. I spent the three days wondering if we might be overrun and wishing we were back at our FOB.

When Maj. Johns and I finally arrived back at Mahmudiyah, we were both relieved. We unlocked the plywood doors to our rooms in the tent and began to shed our assault packs, Kevlars, and IBAs. As I looked down, I saw a small, gray metal object lying in the center of my bed.

"What the hell is this?" I thought, as I picked it up and looked it over. I had seen pieces of metal just like this one in the past. Though it was only about the size of a bullet, it was flat and its edges were razor sharp, and I knew immediately what it was, shrapnel.

"But where the hell did it come from?" I thought, as I looked around my room and at the tent canvas that made up the ceiling over my bed. And then I saw the hole. Just above the metal frame headboard of my bed a tiny hole was letting in a bright, thin band of daylight down onto my pillow. As I leaned down to look closer, I noticed the tear where it had grazed across my pillow before finally coming to rest almost perfectly centered on my bed, as if it had been placed there by someone for me to see. The rocket had hit nearby earlier that morning. No one had been hurt in the attack.

So now I lay in this bed, sleeping only lightly and waking up throughout the night, silently imagining the impact on my body, had I been laying in this bed when the rocket hit.

"What if I lay like this? Or this? Or this?"