Once he told me about a time that he had been in a firefight with the Germans during WWII. The Nazi army had beaten into his company very deeply and there were many drops of blood across the hillside on which they fought. The shooting went on for many hours and then night fell. The darkness of the night was accompanied by a brief silence, followed by the sounds of death. There were many wounded American soldiers on the hillside opposite from his ear. They were out of reach in a way that one feels about lottery tickets and drug recovery. He spent the night listening to the the desperate, dying screams of friends that he had made, knowing that he was hearing their last words...it took me a long time to realize that the fear and despair that he felt that night was not for himself, or even for the men that laid on the hill, but for all of us and our wars.
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