Some time ago ...
You swiftly drop to your hands and knees in the hot ground, sighting along the rifle at a whole lot of nothing. What seems like endless desert stretches along to the horizon. The Black Hawk's rotors blow sand into every crevice of your body as it lifts off. The rest of your squad faces outboard as well, your tan packs spread out.
As the minutes stretch into over an hour of walking, the team begins to chat quietly. Staff Sergeant Hsu walks with the other fire team. He is giving a status update over the radio, his other hand always holding his rifle. Unlike some others, he cut off the rifle straps immediately after receiving it, firmly believing that a soldier with a rifle slung over his shoulder is a defenseless soldier. His pockmarked face scans the area constantly, even when while talking. His most obvious eccentricity is a katana in a scabbard strapped to his back underneath his pack, the handle poking up over one shoulder. When asked about it, he says it was a gift from his father. Not the 'Family katana' or anything, but a treasured belonging he has trained with for over a decade.
Your own superior officer nods at you and grins tightly, not opening his mouth too wide to avoid the dry sand. Sergeant McKay is an odd duck, but competence buys you some leeway in Uncle Sam's Army. He walks around Camp with a big stick he jokingly refers to as genuine Ozark folk art, referencing the carvings he made in it. He's more than happy to make trinkets for anyone interested, and you yourself have a ball-in-a-cage made out of pine wood buried in your pack. He stays up nights studying books on mathematics or something, with diagrams and charts that don't make sense to your eye, or anyone else's. But he is a natural leader, and a top-notch CQC teacher. If it wasn't for his weirdness, and a few administrative punishment details here and there, he wouldn't still be just a Sergeant. But he seems happy where he is, and for some reason has taken a liking to you since you came into the squad. "Corporal King, how are you holding up? Isn't easy to deploy again after losing men under your command." Empathy and some pain show upon his face. "Trust me, I know."