"Day 56: Still can't sleep. Coach keeps telling us to stay alert but the acid Vince gave me is starting to interfere with my grip on reality. I see Greg Jones everywhere now. Coach screams READ OPTION for what seems like the millionth time. My body is a bag of meat, he tells me, if you can't do it Tatey will. I look over at Tate. He's been here longer than I have. The sick, glossy, pleading look in his eyes shows me my future, but I grit my teeth and think of home.
We're on patrol through Da Lat and a small child comes up to me. I say hello, and she slams a rock into my knee, screaming something that sounds like GO BUCKS before detonating a nearby hot dog cart, sending shrapnel and relish into my many wounds.
Unconscious, I see the ghost of Martavious Odoms beckoning to me. Woolfolk is there behind him, dressed in white and smiling. I want to follow. Oh, so badly do I want to follow. But then I wake up. I was still there, in that horrible pit in the middle of God knows where, the incessant jingling of keys still pounding in my brain. 'Get up Dee-nard,' a rough voice growls at me. 'Yer takin point through Iowa.' I protest that I'm already broken, that maybe it's time to end this hell.
Rich looks at me square in the eye. 'No. Never.'
That's all he says. I get up. I look around at the unit. Then I realize. We are all already dead."
-Denard Robinson is a veteran of the Michigan Wolverines