They had lost some of their friends and most of their old convictions about the reasons for the war. Oh, if, someone had asked them, “Do you think you did the right thing?” they would have answered yes. But if you pointed to the casualty list and asked them why their friends had died, they would not have replied with some abstract speech about preserving democracy and stopping Communism. Their answer would have been simple and concrete: “Well, Jack was killed by a sniper and a mortar got Bill and Jim stepped on a mine.” Captain Peterson summed up Charley Company’s collective feelings one night
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