When your afraid,reallyafraid, you see things you never saw before, you pay attention to the world.
What happened, and what might have happened?
Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories.
But the thing about remembering is that you don't forget.
Imagination, like reality, has its limits.
A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.