No Use Both of Us Getting Killed...You Go!

“While lying on the stretcher, waiting for the first examination by the nurse, to separate the really serious from the merely desperate; triage. I became filled with an overwhelming pride at being an American Soldier. I was sick. I knew my situation was not a matter of life or death in the next few minutes, but, as I watched, men with shredded arms would protest that the man with the puncturing shrapnel wound needed care first. This pattern repeated, over and over. Every man was concerned for the condition of the other man as being more important than himself. That was what it meant to be a soldier for our country.” “In many cases, these were the men who got medals; men who had not thought about where they were going or what their actions would create. Medals, in many cases, reflected the efforts of one to get themselves out of a position that their thoughtlessness, or thoughtless actions of another, had put them and others into.” “I remember the days on trucks moving up to the fighting area. Cool, rainy, country; smell of wood smoke, smell of rotting flesh. Green fields, green woods, color of dirt; fresh fields, fields torn by shells, woods torn by shells and bombs. Villages, color of dirt, villages torn by shells and bombs. Smell of night soil, smell of rotting flesh. “