They did not submit to the obvious alternative, which was simply to close the eyes and fall. So easy, really. Go limp and tumble to the ground and let the muscles unwind and not speak and not budge until your buddies picked you up and lifted you into the chopper that would roar and dip its nose and carry you off to the world. A mere matter of falling, yet no one ever fell. It was not courage, exactly; the object was not valor. Rather, they were too frightened to be cowards.

Laughter does not deny pain. Laughter - like a wail - acknowledges and replies to pain.

There was the single abiding certainty that they would never be at a loss for things to carry.

It's not just the embarrassment of tears. That's part of it, no doubt, but what embarrasses me much more, and always will, is the paralysis that took my heart. A moral freeze: I couldn't decide, I couldn't act, I couldn't comport myself with even a pretense of modest human dignity.

My life is storytelling. I believe in stories, in their incredible power to keep people alive, to keep the living alive, and the dead.

Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories.

But in a story I can steal her soul.