[Stingy Jack]

Okay. That explains my worst criticism... I was going to say that it reads like a movie (at best), or a video game (at worst.) Now, don't think that I am dissin' your writing style. Your writing is surprisingly good! Your descriptions are vivid and immediate, and you don't waste words bombarding the reader with unnecessary imagery. The narrative is told by a soldier, after all, and I believe you have chosen just the right about of description: we wouldn't expect such a narrator to be very poetic. But, we WOULD expect him to use a little more military language. I don't know if a soldier would call the aircraft he flown in on merely "the aircraft" or his weapon merely "a gun". I think he would be more apt to tell us exactly what type of aircraft or gun it was. "I secured the butt of my BFG-2000 in the pit of my arm, but my hand began to cramp on the stock. My grip was unnaturally tight, but it had to be to keep from slipping on the sweat my palm produced" -- that kind of thing.

What makes me say it reads like a video game is that you rush into the action. You eagerly want to take us to this world and begin to describe it and the horrors that inhabit it. This is well and good, it is great to be excited about a project and want to get to the meaty parts. But, you lose something in the storytelling by rushing like this. I know nothing about this soldier, what his background is, what sort of person he is. So far, he is just an undeveloped video game character walking about in this horrific place. As readers, we want to identify with the character if we are going to feel anything for him. If you are going to make us feel hopeless (which, I believe is your goal), then we have to be able to become the character, on some level. And for that, I think you need to start providing us with something about your protagonist that we can relate to. I will give you a chance to respond before I go on.