Julie Rattinger asked Ryan Smithson:

Hello Ryan I read your book Ghosts of War and i just wanted to say i really enjoyed it Thank you for your service. A question i have is what was your best part of being a war? and do you still keep in touch with anyone from the war. Your story was very inspiring to me

Ryan Smithson Hi Julie, thanks for reading! I’d say the best part of my deployment were the people I met and the bonds formed through encountering that experience together. I do keep in touch with people from the platoon. Time and life has a way of creating some distance, but social media helps me stay up on what everyone is doing. I also get the occasional opportunity to get together with some of the soldiers I served with, and it’s always like we just picked up where we left off and we haven’t been apart for 16 years!.

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