It's Memorial Day in America. Time to celebrate spring with barbecues and the first trip to the beach. Solemnity is essentially forbidden. Except among we "brave few," as Shakespeare famously put it in Henry V, "We band of brothers."
Ask a veteran what combat is like and you'll get as many different answers as there are vets. Still, the clichés hold true: "All your senses are heightened;" "It's a mixture of fear and excitement;" "It's the most alive you'll ever feel;" and yes, Winston Churchill's famous declaration that "nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result." After being the proverbial ducks in a shooting gallery in one particularly vicious ambush in Iraq, the men I was with and I began laughing hysterically upon reaching safety.