This is an amazing read. I have friends that are unable to wrap their minds around the concept of war, much less imagine themselves in the midst of it. Here's an excerpt that hit home with me:
"Perfectly sane, good men have been drawn back to combat over and over again, and anyone interested in the idea of world peace would do well to know what they're looking for. Not killing, necessarily - that couldn't have been clearer in my mind - but the other side of the equation: protecting. The defense of the tribe is an insanely compelling idea, and once you've been exposed to it, there's almost nothing else you'd rather do. The only reason anyone was alive at Restrepo - or at Aranas or at Ranch House or, later, at Wanat - was because every man up there was willing to die defending it."
I can say from personal experience that coming back from my Iraq deployment, I was completely unprepared for how incredibly difficult it was to transition from that reality to working in an office and being productive and having a sense of purpose that didn't involve life and death. I was so utterly bad at doing a normal job that I tried to quit twice and was talked out of it both times by people that were better friends than I deserved. I'm still to this day trying to figure out how I come back and live in a 9-to-5 daily commute weekends off mow the grass nobody's shooting at me world.
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