In the middle of war, the mind and body either fused or fractured. I’d seen men fracture right before my eyes as some final horror—sometimes a delicate thing, like a wedding bangle trampled in waste, or sometimes a terrible thing, like a body at the mercy of carrion birds—broke them. I survived by forcing every emotion so far down that there were days afterward where I had to dig my nails into my palm and draw blood just to know I was there. In war, I knew only movement and stillness. Life and death.
