April 1st 2077
I don't know where I am at the moment, last thing I remember was returning home after debriefing. I might be dead by the time anyone reads this so I am going to break protocol by revealing classified information.
I had just returned from being embedded with the Mossad who were trying their best to gain back control of Israel after their armies had been totally crushed by the Syrian and Palestinian coalition.
My mission was to see if supporting the Mossad was a worthwhile investment for the Pentagon. Unfortunately they were not so I and my team were asked to clean house leaving the former nation of Israel to be divided by foreign powers.
After my debrief with my superiors I went home, took a shower and fell asleep on my bed which I had missed so much.
Now I find my self in this strange place, in a strange body and surrounded by strange men in medieval style armor.
At first I was thinking that I was in the midst of cosplayers at a comic festival but I was hit with reality when I looked closely at their weapons, it was not something that cosplayers would be carrying.
It seemed like I had transmigrated to a world still in its middle ages and in an era of cold weapons.
Within minutes I steeled myself to the fact that I was outside of my comfort zone and needed to blend in order to survive.
The group I was with according to a rough head count were about one hundred people, twenty knights, twenty five military age males and the rest were women and children.
We were camped close to a river close to an open field so I used the reflection of the water to check my new appearance.
I turned out to be around seventeen or sixteen years old with silvery blonde hair and green eyes. My height by rough estimate was between 5'11 and 6'1 .
From the information I had gathered by eavesdropping we were all refuges from the kingdom of Alfonse who had been displaced by the sudden invasion of the Blackthorn empire who quickly subjugated the kingdom and other neighboring kingdoms.
But subjugating isn't all that they did , their armies raped and pillaged their way through the kingdom before bringing them to heel.
The people who I was traveling with had escaped before their city was pillaged by Blackthorn.
Soon we heard sounds of hooves, the Blackthorn soldiers were in pursuit. We ran as the rogue knights with us stayed back to delay the approaching soldiers.
My common sense told me that for us to survive we needed to leave the plains and the fields and move into the forest so I shouted at the fleeing crowd to rush into the forest as horses were less effective in the Forrest as the would be in the field and soon many people followed into the forest as we ran for our lives . We didn't stop until the moon had made it's way out.
As we didn't make any preparations in covering our tracks the rogue knights found us quickly.
Soon I was brought before the leader of the knights, a grizzly looking man named Albert who was maybe early or late forties.
When I came to where he was, he was with some other knights who were talking with a grave expression and they quickly got silent as I got closer.
Alfred walked closer me , sizing me up as he came. Few inches from me he stopped and asked in a voice that made me think that maybe he had a fly caught in his throat.
" What is your name boy"
" Augustus Caesar" I replied, it was the first name that popped into my head and my training had conditioned me to be weary when revealing even as much as my name to a stranger more or less a stranger who also happened to be an armed combatant.
" Ceaser , what a strange name." He said, thinking out loud and then he continued his questions .
He asked me if I had ever served in the army , I replied that I had not then he asked how I knew that horses charge was not as effective in the Forrest as well as the field, I then replied that I thought that it was common sense but my answer was wrong, people who were not involved in military activity couldn't know that as horses were war machines and regular serfs or citizens couldn't know such " high military tactics".
I lied and claimed that I was a nobles bastard son but despite everything my father made sure to teach me somethings whenever he came to visit my mother which they seemed to believe. I pushed my luck further and told him that I could make sure that most of us survive as we escaped from the Blackthorns.
He accepted my help very quickly, almost as if I was taking off a burden from his shoulders. And of course I almost regret it as peoples now depended on me for survival which also means that my survival is tied to their survival.
The first course of action was to find a suitable campsite. According to the CIA manual on wilderness survival the first course of action is to find a location with a ready water supply, it could be a stream, spring or river, this is provide ready drinking water for the camp.
It is almost morning and I am running out of paper, whosoever is reading this, if you ever come across this letter, know that I am going to try my best to make sure we survive till the very end .
And if you find the letter and we have perished, it'll mean that all my efforts and training are irrelevant and that I had failed to protect one hundred souls..
If it came to that, please find a way in your heart to forgive me.
Yours faithfully
Joseph Vanderbilt.