This is a piece I wrote for my ninth grade english class in response to the text provided below. The original "Soldier's Dilemma" text is not mine, and all credit goes to whomever originally constructed the scenario, however I felt it was important to include seeing as it was given to the class as a prompt. Thanks for reading! 

During the Vietnam War, an infantry squad is patrolling deep in enemy-controlled territory near the Cambodian border. A cameraman from a news crew is also following along. At one point in this operation, the squad leader, Sergeant Johnson, decides to scout along a trail that runs through a valley, leading toward a village a short distance away. Johnson tells one of his riflemen, a private named Dillon, to stay on a small hilltop as a lookout, while the rest of the squad follows along the trail in the valley below. Johnson expresses concern about a possible ambush on the trail and reminds Dillon that their platoon has been ambushed in this same area and has suffered a number of casualties prior to the present operation. “Don’t take any chances,” Johnson warns. “Better to kill a few of those murdering villagers than to let any more Americans die.” The cameraman is instructed to stay with Dillon, so he sets up his camera and decides to film the action from Dillon’s perspective in the hill. As Dillon watches the squad make its way along the trail, he sees a Vietnamese woman suddenly appear on the trail just ahead of the squad, but around the bend so that the squad can not see her. From Dillon’s vantage point, the woman appears to lean over the edge of the trail and then quickly moves back into the underbrush—out of sight of the squad but still visible to Dillon. Dillon is immediately suspicious. This is enemy-controlled territory, and the woman could easily be part of the local guerilla forces. On the other hand, many innocent peasants live in and around the villages. Is the woman a guerrilla soldier who might set off a mine or spring an ambush when the squad comes around the bend of the trail? Or is the woman simply a peasant who has perhaps dropped something on the trail in her haste to hide from the advancing American soldiers? Also, what about the things Johnson has told him? As a soldier, he has been taught to obey all orders of his superiors. To disobey is a crime. As these thoughts go through Dillon’s mind, the squad keeps moving and now is almost at the spot where the woman is hiding. The squad is too far away for Dillon to call out to them. Even a warning shot would probably not stop them from proceeding around the bend. Dillon raises his rifle and lines up his sights on the woman in the brush. But as his finger tightens on the trigger he hesitates. If he shoots the woman and there turns out not to be a mine or booby trap on the trail, he would have murdered an innocent person. But if he doesn’t shoot her, a number of his friends might be blown to bits if this woman detonates a mine. Whatever he chooses, it will all be captured on film.