(OOC : A direct counter to all bios posted so far. And why the hell do recruits post their bios in the main board these days? Sheesh. Oh well. I'll follow the trend.)

Drill Instructor Minh was essentially a teacher, and his teaching methods were pretty much old-school.

He believed that the only way to indoctrinate a young man such as myself into the Imperial lifestyle was through tough love. Liberal amounts of tough love.

I remember, clear as day, the opening lines he had for me as a low-life greenhorn fresh out of the recruiting depot. I had not even unslung the duffel bag they had issued me when he began yelling incoherently into my face.

"You have a girlfriend, Recruit Shiyun?" Minh sneered into my face,

"Yes sir!" I screamed back, drowned in the terror oozing from the nasty man inches away from me.

"What's her name, dog-face."

"Sir, the Recruit's girlfriend has a name of Angie, sir!"

"Angie, huh. Sweet. I bet Angie darling is having a ride on your neighbour as we are speaking, son. Drop and give me twenty five!"

One. Two. Three. Four.

I. Love. The. Stormtrooper. Corps.

So the push-ups went on and on. A thousand a day.

It was shortly after encountering Drill Instructor (DI) Minh for the very first time in boot camp did I harboured a suspicion that joining the fabled Stormtrooper Corps was not going to be quite the glamorous adventure the recruiters promised me. Of course, besides the mandatory adventure, they had rattled off their usual rhetoric of me getting laid by exotic aliens from a plethora of worlds ranging from Corellia to Nal Hutta. Oh, they also briefly mentioned something about killing people. That, I shamefully admit, turned me on. The killing, not the whoring.

Whatever. I was dumb. Twenty years old, fresh out of university, and I was stupid enough to sign my life away on a contract. I wonder what insanity must have possessed me to pen the dotted line. I was an educated young man, armed with a degree in mass communications. My whole life was ahead of me. I had a beautiful girl, Angie, who adored, no, worshipped me. A job at my local news agency as a journalist awaited me. What did I do? Enlist for the damn Empire. I did not even have much faith in Imperialism. More of a left wing radical myself, really.

I found myself in a platoon of fellow recruits. What a sorry ass bunch we were. Some were similarly educated individuals such as myself ; cultured people who studied literature classics to pass exams and etcetera. Others were low-lifes who had nowhere else to go. At least the military promised them hot meals. We came from different backgrounds, scorning those who came not from our own social strata. Yet, in time, all learnt to bond under the unforgiving tutelage of the volatile Minh.

DI Minh would charge in on us while we were sleeping in our bunks and set off a smoke grenade, sending us into a wild panic as we scrambled out of bed to fall into formation. At times, he would butt-stroke us with his E-11 rifle for the smallest misdemeanors, such as for that speck of dust on our armor that never seemed to go away. It was rough training, and many of us cried ourselves to sleep when lights off finally came. Looking back, all those memories were relatively sweet and innocent. They sure made me question why I enlisted in the first place though.

Questions.

I laugh.

I soon found out that there was no place for questions in the lifestyle I had chosen for myself.

The only questions around were rhetoric ones such as those placed forth by DI Minh on a regular basis. He usually made his inquiries known during the morning roll-call, that wonderful man.

"Why the hell did you join my Stormtrooper Corps maggot?!"

"Sir! To kill, sir!"

Any other answer would have resulted in a choke-grab on our necks that was only released when he was dead sure that we would die of asphyxiation a second later.

I sure am thankful that I shipped out from Boot Camp alive with that devil of a DI as my mentor.

But really, I have to ask. Just why I did join?

Dad did not want me to enlist. He served in the Clone War, fought in a few large-scale conflicts but never talked about them. I guessed he must have been scarred by them. His eyes had this haunted gaze when I told him of my decision. Past ghosts perhaps. Mum? She was heartbroken that I was running away from the perfect life of shelter she had in mind for me. Now her little boy was growing up with aspirations of murder, rape and pillage. Where oh where had she failed as a mother, she must have tormented herself.

On a personal level, I was not too sure of why I undertook the decision myself at that time. I was at one of life's crossroads. My dream as a kid was always to be a writer. Writing was my only talent, so yeah, I wanted to be a print columnist or something. Publish a novel and stuff. A Stormtrooper seemed pretty way off from that line of work. I figured that joining up would at least give me something to write about.

In retrospect, how wrong I was. So very wrong.

The atrocities that unfolded me in battles to come, the crimes of war that stain my hands, they are not fit to be penned down in words. Nothing can describe them. Nor should there be any attempt to. I have seen horror, horror that no sentient being should ever bear witness to.

I had to leave behind Angie. Darling Angie. Was it worth it? Worth abandoning her? After years and years in the Stormtrooper Corps, the answer to that is still lost in my struggle. Only one thing is for sure.

My metamorphosis from a civilian nobody into a warrior in white armour began when I signed up for this world of shit.

I threw away a perfect life in suburbia. A perfect job. A perfect girl. A perfect family.

I threw that all away for a life where my face will forever be shielded behind a faceless mask that I call my helmet. Threw that all away to have the right to hold what I now deem as an extension of my arm ; my rifle. No warm beds for me. Just a rickety bunk. My officers and senior NCOs have replaced my parents. Nameless women with price tags are my only source of libidinous gratification.

Did I make the right choice?

I do not know.

Hell.

Maybe it does not matter.

The end of my personal odyssey is not yet in sight.