Sebastian Junger

If you shell a military base and happen to kill civilians, you have not committed a war crime; if you deliberately target cities and towns, you have.

The negative effects of combat were nightmares, and I'd get jumpy around certain noises and stuff, but you'd have that after a car accident or a bad divorce. Life's filled with trauma. You don't need to go to war to find it; it's going to find you. We all deal with it, and the effects go away after awhile. At least they did for me.

How do men act on a sinking ship? Do they hold each other? Do they pass around the whisky? Do they cry?

The coward__ fear of death stems in large part from his incapacity to love anything but his own body. The inability to participate in others_ lives stands in the way of his developing any inner resources sufficient to overcome the terror of death. _ J. Glenn Gary, The Warriors

An earthquake achieves what the law promises but does not in practice maintain," one of the survivors wrote. "The equality of all men".

Today's veterans often come home to find that, although they're willing to die for their country, they're not sure how to live for it.