August 10, 2552 Blessings from Father Angus Roeper, Chaplin, Easy Company

"Lord, protector and watcher I call you to gaze upon your flock and see them through this day of bloodshed and demons. I call you to ride down with these boys as they plunge into the belly of Hell itself and to guide them and aid them in their times of great need. I beseech you to extend your sword and lead them through this day with honor and hope. I beg of you to use your shield to protect them from the ones who would wish to strike them down… We are a tool, an implement, a weapon to be used by you for the greater good of mankind. Lead us father and bring our boys home safe and sound. Amen."

August 10, 2550

It has been a little over 3 weeks and I have spent just about every day with AJ including some nights depending on how the two of us were feeling. For the most part however I would wake up early from Angus's house and then quickly making my way down the street in the truck towards her little ranch. It does not matter, however, how early I rise because she is already up, has fed the horses and is already cooking dinner. That is except for this day…

As I arrived to her house I noticed that the animals were all hugging the fence lines and begging for someone to come feed them. I wondered over to them giving Hero a pat on the nose and then entering the Barn to check to see if she was out there. To my surprise she was not and everything was exactly how it had been the previous day. It looked as if she had not even woken up to feed the animals today. Not wanting the poor things to starve anymore I decided to pitch a few flakes to the animals and started for the house to see if she was there.

To be honest I was a little worried about how this would go down. The last time I had to tell a girl good-bye it did not go very well. Meaning she basically called me some very bad names and hit me repeatedly and told me never to come back. So my nerves were getting the best of me and I was starting to contemplate on whether or not I should just leave without talking to her. I kicked myself for thinking of such a silly thought because she holds such an important a part of my heart. I remember an old saying that said that everyone is a half of a soul and how they would spend their whole life searching for the other half of their soul. I sighed and opened the door and walked in to the house. I found her still in bed with a mountain of used tissues spread around the room. I knocked on the door frame and she raised her self from her bed with the blanket around her shoulders and looked deep into my eyes tears streaming down her rosey cheek her eyes begging me not to leave…

July 26, 2552

I awoke the blaring sirens of imminent action and all hands on deck. With the loud obnoxious noise came the pulsating red warning lights, the sound of boots hitting the smooth metal floors of the hallways outside my door and random chatter over the ships com system relaying info to the crew man to man battle stations.

I rolled on to my back and sighed using my right hand to wipe my face clear of the morning grauginess and with my left hand looking at the time to see that it was just flipping over to 0234. I cursed as I pulled myself to a sitting position on the edge of my bed and looked around my quarters. It was small room, but one to myself which came with the perk of achieving a field accommodation during our latest jump. I was now the rank of 2nd Lieutenant, this gave me the perks of having my own room, command of the platoon that I was serving with. This group include squads, Baker, Charlie, Dog and Easy. All squads that I had served with while at camp Warsong. Alpha was exempt from my command due to the fact that they were a specialty unit that received their orders straight from the brass. So in general they had all the hush-hush operations and they were composed of the top troops of the company.

With our latest deployment we were stationed back above Reach on the UNSC Savannah, a Paris class heavy frigate that was scheduled to make a slip jump to a nearby insurrection colony to help terminate them and capture a high ranking General that would allow us to take one step closer to ensuring peace across the human controlled space. Our leave date was supposed to be that of July 30th at 0600 this was not the date and there for was cause of something more serious.

Upon this realization I quickly threw together my battle dress uniform(BDU's) and left my quarters behind in darkness. I quickly marched down the hallway to the briefing room just on the starboard side of the deck F two floors up from my room and 3 from that of the rest of my platoon. As I entered the elevator I Frank and Toothless were both there chatting with Jack Ball the Master Gunny of the Bread Bakers, and Gunny Bleathen who trotted the Easy boys they are all headed to meet up at the briefing room as to meet with the C.O. a man named Colonel Hutchetson. Kind of short sitting roughly 5'9" with a cleanly shaven head and very rough deep sunken eyes that made most want to avert gaze. He was a long term ODST who had made many jumps, he was the man we need to talk to about our jobs. Frank had moved his way up to be a Gunny and was my second in command of Charlie, and Toothless was now a Master Gunny. He still begrudged me a bit because it was between the two of us who got promoted to LT and I had beaten. However, that never got between us when we had a job to do and it never put our boy's lives in danger.

The lift stopped and we all took a brisk walk to a large auditorium with about 100 other squad and platoon leaders crammed in to see what the situation was. We were the last ones to enter and there for had to stand in the back. The news that we were about to receive was one that not a single man in the tightly packed room would have ever thought we would have heard.

Col. Hutchetson Cleared his throat and then proceeded to speak in a booming voice

"Word is out boys the war has finally come to this humble rock and it's not gonna be a pretty piece of work." We all thought he was going to say something about the innies starting to pick a fight with us and so I could hear a few jokes here and there.

"The Winter Contingency has officially hit Reach." As the words were almost spat out in disgust the whole room became vacantly quiet. "We have reports flooding in that multiple small communities have been hit and at least one com relay has been destroyed by the bastards. All original plans for making the jump out of orbit have been changed and we are now to focus all efforts on extracting top priority personnel and strategic sabotage and counteroffensive missions." Another ODST piped up from somewhere in the middle abruptly. He was probably from Reach

"Sir. What about civie evacuations?" he had a pang of concern and fear in his voice it made me feel concerned as well, but I refused to let that cloud my mind.

"That will be taken care of by the main forces corporal, we have our orders. Now I have sent each platoon their assignments. I'd suggest getting prepared for duty ASAP. We know what these bustards do to planets and if we don't move quickly and precisely we may just give those alien bastards this planet on a silver platter. You have your jobs, brief your men of the situation and prepare to drop. Dismissed." Everyone got up and scattered to their respective sections to read the dossiers of their missions and to brief their men on the intense missions that they had coming up. This was no normal fight that took place in some far off land. This was a fight on what is to many people home. We were not about to take this threat of a glassed planet lightly and we were not gonna let those bastards just traipse on in and take what was our home.

"Damn" Frank whispered "this is some pretty fucked up shit, huh Dick." We had started down the hall, stopped at the lift doors and waited.

"I can't believe those sonsofbitches have the balls to come to Reach. This is our powerhouse of the Human race. There's is no way that Reach will ever fall to Shits!" Jack literally spat onto the floor at this. Jack was not one to take any threat lightly and he never backed down from a fight. Unfortunately, Jack had lost two of his men on his first drop from his hot headed behavior and because of this fact that He refused to have his squad take on any job that he wasn't actively apart of. He was the opitamy of Lead for the Front. The lift finally landed on our level and we all got on board and headed down my two levels.

"Alright boys, check over your dossiers and meet up at 0500. We will brief the whole platoon on our mission and make preparation on the plan of action." I said as we came to a stop.

I dismounted and they continued down to their bunks. They each shared one room and each squad had a room to themselves. God bless the chain of command I get my own room. I enjoyed having the two extra minds to work with in my platoon. Jack had the rash, quick gureilla tactics down paten, and was able to pull them off smoothly, with maximum damage and minimal casualties. As for Bleathon he was more tactical in thinking. He enjoys sitting down and reading through old manifestos of generals, and understanding how they won their respective wars. His favorite commanders were that of the Great Hannibal of the Carthaginians who gave Rome a great fright, and Major Richard Winters of the Great Second World War of planet earth. He had successfully used tactics from these military professionals to defeat much larger groups then his own during combat. Bleathen was actually quiet and quite resolved in his personality. He didn't drink, or smoke, and refused to partake in most of the normal activities that soldiers on leave do. Due to this fact he has been portrayed as somewhat of a prude, or a goody tooshoos to some of the men. I have even heard some of the men call him Bleached Bleathen due to his sparkling clean reputation. God awful name, even worse than Dick.