Missing something as horrible as war is deeply confusing not just to the men themselves but to their wives, their families, their friends. There is a temptation to pathologize the whole thing and dismiss vets as adrenaline junkies who have somehow become “addicted” to war, but adrenaline is only part of the problem. The thing that existed at Restrepo but was virtually impossible to find back home wasn’t so much combat as brotherhood. As defined by soldiers, brotherhood is the willingness to sacrifice one’s life for the group. That’s a very different thing from friendship, which is entirely a
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