Peters, waiting dejectedly for his fellow soldiers to return.
Sitting despondently in his bunk bed at his US military base in Baghdad, Private First Class Richard Peters confirmed to sources that he thinks his fellow soldiers didn’t invite him to the combat mission he assumes happened the previous night.
“Nobody’s telling me anything, but something obviously happened last night,” said Peters, who woke up around 1:00 a.m. to find that his entire squad was missing from the barracks. “Corporal Vickers has this haunted look in his eye, Private Major is bandaged up, and PFC Thompson didn’t come back at all.”
Added Peters, “I’m sure there are photos on Facebook, but I can’t see them because my Wi-Fi out here is shit.”
Despite assurances from his squadmates that the previous night’s events were routine, uneventful, and “classified,” Peters told reporters that he suspected these assurances were lies.
“This is the fifth time this has happened since I started my tour of duty,” said Peters. “My squad leaves me alone at base camp, sometimes for days at a time. When they finally come back, they won’t tell me what they were up to!”
“Frankly, the idea that those guys would risk life and limb in enemy territory without me really hurts,” continued Peters. “I wouldn’t have necessarily wanted to go, but it would have been nice to be asked.”
At press time, Peters was confessing his feelings of exclusion and betrayal to Corporal Connors, who, as of that morning, was missing a leg.