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Yesterday, at 0900 I met 10 other people from my work for a private paintball expedition. I was wearing a pair of black sweat pants on top of a pair of shorts. I had a t-shirt on under a dark green polo type shirt. I had a paintball mask on with a camo net on top of that. Just after we got back from our third game in which my team stormed through a village arena with ATF precision, someone asked what time it was. Over the heavy breathing and the huffing and puffing of how hot it was outside I heard them say 1040. As I looked around "camp" everybody including me were just beat. Almost two hours in, around 90 degrees, in a little bit of gear we were all almost wiped out. Here I am, joined in a GAME of war, sweating my ass off, complaining about the heat but throughly enjoying myself and it hits me. What about World War I, World War II, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Desert Storm and Enduring Freedom! What about those brave men and women? In heat more than 120 degrees. Their backs weighed down with over 60 pounds of equipment. Haven't hugged their wife, kids, Moms and Dads in months. Eating MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) if they get a chance. Deprived of sleep for days at a time... All I could think about at the end of hour 4 was how I was going to go home in my A/C house peel my clothes off and slump on the couch for the rest of the day. How I would take a nice shower, eat some pizza, drink a beer and play a board game with my boy... But what about them? What do they think about? They are not playing a game, they don't get to come home in 4 hours and vegetate until they get more energy to pry themselves off the couch. They don't get to see their families, friends in the near future. The atrocities they have seen, the human life they had to take, witness to the last breath their brothers have taken in combat. What keeps them going? How do they do it day in and day out? It can't be our liberal media spewing only bad news from the war front. It can't be the protestors in the streets of New York... I know it is not some of our Senators or Representatives in DC who make treasonous/false allegations of our President and this war for political gain. Is it their families and friends? Is it honor and duty? Is it God and Country? No matter what time of day, what I am doing, I am utterly humbled when I think what our brave men and women do for our country, our freedom!

May God Bless them.