The Assault | BANDERA FELLA

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I’ve stopped wondering whether I’ll survive or not. That kind of thinking—it’ll rot you from the inside out, gnawing at your mind until you’re paralyzed by it. I used to let those thoughts creep in, used to wrestle with the idea of my own death. Every time I did, it brought pain, a sadness that sank deep into my bones. The fear of not coming back, of being nothing more than another body left in the dirt.

But then, something shifted. I accepted it. I accepted that death is inevitable out here, that it’s not about if it comes, but when. Once I made peace with that, once I stared my mortality in the face and stopped flinching, it all became clear. The fear, the hesitation—they disappeared. Now, there’s just silence. A calm, cold silence where death no longer holds any power over me.

In the assault, there’s no time for second-guessing. There’s no space for fear. You don’t know what’s coming in the next moment. Hell, you don’t even know if you’ll make it to the next breath. But that’s exactly why your mind has to be clear. Empty of anything that isn’t about survival. Thoughts of dying, thoughts of what might happen—they’ll only slow you down, and in this hell, a second’s hesitation is a lifetime lost.

It’s not about glory. It’s not about bravery. It’s not about anything they tell you it is. It’s just you, your weapon, and the enemy standing in your way. That’s all that matters. There’s nothing beyond that moment—the roar of gunfire, the blast of explosions, the pounding of your heart in your ears. The world narrows down to that single thread of existence: kill or be killed.

I grip my weapon tight, feeling its weight, knowing that it’s the only thing that stands between me and the darkness waiting to swallow me whole. Around me, the others—my brothers—they feel it too. You can see it in their eyes, that blank, focused stare. We’ve all learned the same truth: nothing else matters out here. No past, no future. Just the enemy, just the battle.

I hear the order go out, and there’s no hesitation. We move. Fast, silent, lethal. The world around us erupts into chaos, but inside, there’s only calm. It’s like stepping into a storm, but in the eye of it, everything is still. The only sound I hear is the rapid beat of my pulse and the rhythmic crack of gunfire as I unleash hell on the bastards in front of me.

There’s no room for thought, no time to wonder who’s next, no space for doubt. You just move, react, kill. Bullets whiz by, dirt and shrapnel explode around us, but none of it matters. There’s only the mission. The objective. And that primal drive to take another breath, to live through another second.

I’ve learned not to look too closely at the faces of the men I’m killing. They’re just shadows now. Targets. You can’t afford to see them as anything else. If you let yourself think, even for a moment, that they’re human too, that they’ve got lives and families waiting for them somewhere—you’ll hesitate. And that’s a death sentence. Out here, hesitation is weakness. And weakness gets you killed.

So I don’t hesitate. I squeeze the trigger, and another body hits the ground. Another obstacle removed. Another breath taken. It’s that simple. It has to be.

The assault pushes forward, a relentless wave of violence. My brothers beside me, their faces as blank as mine, moving through the haze of smoke and blood. We don’t speak, we don’t think. We just kill. Because out here, in the middle of this storm, there’s no room for anything else. No fear, no doubt, no regret.

There’s only the weapon in my hands, the men at my side, and the enemy in my sights.

The rest is just noise.