All Pain Is The Same. Only The

I Think A Diversity Of Expression Can Only Be Good, So I Think The More That People Write About Their Experience, Use Their Imagination To Deal With Their Experience, You Know, I Think That's Going To Be Good For Not Only For Those Authors But Also For People Who Are Interested In Trying To Understand It.

It's Not Just: You Get Off The Plane, You're Back Home, Everything's Fine. Maybe The Physical Danger Ends, But Soldiers Are Still Deeply At Risk Of Being Injured In A Different Way.

I Wanted Something That I Could Look Back On And Say, Yes, You Were Fighting Too, You Burned To Be Alive, And Whatever Failure Or Accident Of Nature Caused You To Be Killed Could Be Explained By Something Other Than The Fact That I'd Missed Your Giving Up.

I Had The Feeling That If I Encountered Anyone They Would Intuit My Disgrace And Would Judge Me Instantly. Nothing Is More Isolating Than Having A Particular History. At Least That's What I Thought. Now I Know: All Pain Is The Same. Only The Details Are Different.

The Male Role Models I Had All Seemed To Have Been In The Military. My Father Served In The Army. My Uncle Was In The Marine Corps. Both Of My Grandfathers Served In Wwii. There Weren't Any Career Soldiers In My Family, But When I Was Young It Seemed Like A Way Of Arriving At Adulthood.