Inquisition of a Mirror • frankly-mydear: Men unhit by shrapnel or...

frankly-mydear:

Men unhit by shrapnel or bullets were nevertheless casualties. There were no unwounded men at Bastogne. As Winters put it, “I’m not sure that anybody who lived through that one hasn’t carried with him, in some hidden ways, the scars. Perhaps that is the factor that helps keep Easy men bounded so unusually close together.”
They knew each other at a level only those who have fought together in a variety of tactical situations can achieve, as only those who endured together the extreme suffering of combined cold, not enough food, and little sleep while living in constant tension could attain.
They knew fear together. Not only the fear of death or wound, but the fear that all this was for nothing. Glenn Gray wrote, “The deepest fear of my war years, one still with me, is that these happenings had no real purpose…How often I wrote in my war journals that unless that day had some positive significance for my future life, it could not possibly be worth the pain it cost.”
They got through the Bulge because they had become a band of brothers.- Stephen E. Ambrose, Band of Brothers

Men unhit by shrapnel or bullets were nevertheless casualties. There were no unwounded men at Bastogne. As Winters put it, “I’m not sure that anybody who lived through that one hasn’t carried with him, in some hidden ways, the scars. Perhaps that is the factor that helps keep Easy men bounded so unusually close together.”

They knew each other at a level only those who have fought together in a variety of tactical situations can achieve, as only those who endured together the extreme suffering of combined cold, not enough food, and little sleep while living in constant tension could attain.

They knew fear together. Not only the fear of death or wound, but the fear that all this was for nothing. Glenn Gray wrote, “The deepest fear of my war years, one still with me, is that these happenings had no real purpose…How often I wrote in my war journals that unless that day had some positive significance for my future life, it could not possibly be worth the pain it cost.”

They got through the Bulge because they had become a band of brothers.

- Stephen E. Ambrose, Band of Brothers

Source: frankly-mydear