Last Man Standing

The final field exercise of our grueling training program was fast approaching. We’d been preparing for it for months, sharpening every skill we’d learned along the way and counting the days until it was over—until we’d finally earn the right to call ourselves real soldiers. This exercise was the culmination of everything we’d been training for.

Each team was assigned a hill to defend and a flag to protect. The objective was simple: capture the opposing team’s hill and take their flag.

A lot of time and money had gone into planning the exercise. The unit had purchased advanced laser-based combat simulation systems. A small laser transmitter was mounted on each of our rifles, firing a beam whenever the trigger was pulled. We also wore sensors on our vests that could detect when we’d been hit, allowing the whole thing to simulate real combat as closely as possible.

On the evening of the exercise, my team gathered for the briefing while the instructors assigned combat roles. I silently prayed for a good one. By that point, I’d had more than enough of running, crawling, and throwing myself onto rocks. I wanted a job that involved as much shooting and as little carrying as possible.

"Barry, you're team leader," one of the instructors said. I immediately crossed team leader off my list of possibilities. No big deal. There were still plenty of good jobs left.

"Rosilio, second-in-command," he continued, and that role disappeared from my list, too.

One by one, the remaining assignments were handed out. I watched in despair as every normal, reasonable job was snatched up by someone else. I was the last one left.

The instructor looked at me and smiled. "Stein," he said. "You're carrying the radio."

I was screwed. Out of all the assignments, I’d ended up with the absolute worst one. I had to lug that giant radio on my back, run back and forth to anyone who wanted to chatter over the net, and trail behind everyone else once the fighting started. Just my luck.

As the sun set, we made our final preparations and moved out under the cover of darkness. We planted our flag on the hill and gathered around Barry, our commander-for-the-weekend.

"Alright, here's the plan," he said with all the self-importance of a four-star general. "We'll spend the night here. Get organized, get ready, and defend the flag if they attack. At first light, we'll move out, take their hill, grab their flag, and finish this thing."

It sounded like a pretty simplistic—not to mention stupid—plan to me. After all, darkness was usually a soldier's best friend. But who was I to argue?

We spent the night taking turns on watch and grabbing whatever sleep we could. Nothing out of the ordinary happened, except that every hour Barry would drag me over so he could radio headquarters and report that everything was fine.

As dawn began to break, Barry ordered us to move out. We started making our way down the steep hillside. The radio on my back kept pulling me forward; with every step, I was convinced I was about to lose my footing and tumble all the way down the slope, me and that damned radio together.

We reached the valley and took cover. "Stein!" Barry shouted.

I jogged over to him in a crouch.

"Come on, hand me the radio. I need to check in." He flashed that self-important smile again. Apparently, he’d forgotten that during basic training we’d slept in bunks right next to each other, and he’d spent every night whining about how much he missed home. I muttered something under my breath.

He rose to one knee and shouted, "Stein, get your fat ass over here already!"

Those were the last words he ever said.

A second later, his vest started vibrating, which meant someone from the other team had tagged him. He was dead. Well, metaphorically dead. He wasn't actually dead, but for the purposes of the exercise, he might as well have been. His real last words were a long stream of profanity that continued uninterrupted as he limped his way back to base. I smiled to myself.

A moment later, Rosilio, the second-in-command, dropped down beside me. The promotion had been quick.

"Stein, give me the radio," he ordered.

Great. Another one, I thought.

He started talking and promptly forgot every basic fieldcraft rule we'd ever been taught. He rose a little too high, and boom—his vest started vibrating, too. Now he was dead and swearing. I moved away from him. Those two were clearly bad luck.

We continued toward the opposing team's hill without any commanders. I was walking alongside Boris and Moti. The three of us scanned the terrain around us, trying to spot an ambush before it spotted us. I was probably so busy looking around that I failed to notice the large rock directly in my path. I tripped, and the weight of the radio on my back threw me completely off balance. I went sprawling face-first into the dirt.

At that exact moment, both Boris and Moti’s vests started vibrating. They were dead.

I crawled away as fast as I could, not daring to raise my head, until I reached Udi, who was leading the column.

"Udi, I think they're all around us," I whispered. "It's an ambush."

Not that he needed me to tell him. Two more men went down right beside him. There weren't many of us left. Everyone scrambled for cover, but none of us knew where to return fire. Eventually, Udi worked up the courage to move forward, inching his way through the rocks on his stomach. The rest of us followed his lead.

By noon, we were exhausted. But we were also getting close to the hill. We began climbing it, staying as low as possible, trying to blend in among the boulders and sparse vegetation. It didn't help. Every few minutes, someone else got hit by a laser beam and "died."

And me? As usual, I was being dragged around by that radio. I stumbled into another dense patch of thorn bushes and passed out. Maybe it was the heat. Maybe I'd hit my head.

When I woke up, the sun was already sinking toward the horizon. I looked around and didn't see anyone. I let out a quiet whistle, but nobody answered. Maybe they're all dead, I thought.

But I was still alive.

I took a drink from my canteen and managed to crawl out of the thorn bushes, my uniform torn and covered in scratches. I looked up toward the top of the hill and saw the other team's flag fluttering in the wind. It wasn't much farther. And it was certainly closer than making my way all the way back to base.

I'll just go up there, raise my hands, and surrender, I told myself. That was the plan. I stopped crawling; after all, I was going to surrender anyway. I trudged uphill, already looking forward to the moment I could finally take that miserable radio off my back. I knew we'd lost the exercise, but what did it matter? The other team would get their weekend pass, we'd be stuck on base, but at least I'd get a shower and a few hours of sleep.

A cool breeze picked up as I climbed higher, easing the heat and bringing a little life back into my exhausted body. One more step. One more rock. The top of the hill was close now.

And then I was there.

I climbed over the last boulder and stood on top of the hill, right beside the other team's flag, waiting for the burst of laser fire that would finally put me out of my misery.

But there was nobody there. Nobody came to greet me. Nobody shot at me. Nobody accepted my surrender. I looked around. The hilltop was strangely quiet. The flag fluttered in the breeze.

Then the wind shifted, carrying sounds with it—voices, laughter, the clatter of forks against metal cans.

I moved toward the noise. A few steps later, I saw them, and I couldn't believe my eyes.

The entire opposing team was there, their backs turned to me. Some were sitting, others were stretched out on the ground. Their rifles lay beside them while they ate from ration cans, talked, joked, and laughed. A few were smoking.

They probably thought they'd wiped us all out. Maybe they'd even sent out a few men to look for survivors and come back empty-handed. After all, I’d been unconscious and buried in a thorn bush half the day. So now they were taking a break, celebrating their victory.

But I was still alive. And they hadn't seen me. Not yet.

I'd come up here to surrender. My entire team was dead. For all practical purposes, we'd already lost. So why should I care?

Then again, maybe we hadn't lost yet. They still hadn't taken our flag. They were probably having a meal before marching over to our hill to grab it. And as long as our flag was still standing, they hadn't won. And we—well, I—hadn't lost.

I looked down at my rifle, which had been completely useless all day. Then I looked at them. Without a moment's hesitation, I raised it and opened fire.

The looks on their faces belonged in a movie. They had no idea where it was coming from. I "killed" every last one of them before any of them could figure out what was happening or make a move for their rifles. They swore. But they were dead anyway.

I took the radio off my back, walked over to the flag, and picked it up.

What can I tell you? Sometimes history doesn't choose the most qualified person. Sometimes it chooses the last one left standing.

Or at least, the last one who managed not to die.