This is not a vent board or any other kind of therapy. Before you hit the POST button, ask yourself if your contribution will add to the level of discussion going on.

Important notes on articles:

• Please do not copy entire articles into your post; rather, provide links to them.. We are now links-only for ALL Internet publications. If only a small portion of the article pertains to your post, Fair Use allows you to copy those one or two paragraphs, provided you cite the author's name and the publication for which he writes. Otherwise, put a link in the HTTP Link box.
• Even if you're copying a reference to an article, provide a link to the page from which the article came. We're trying to cut down on duplicate topics, and the posting process will check the link to your article to see if it's already being discussed on this board. At the very least, you'll save yourself some grief on the boards.
• If your first reaction after reading the article you're going to share is the author is uninformed / stupid / a jerk / all of the above, it's not worth sharing with anyone. Not every article needs to be discussed. The more the hair-pulling articles are discussed (e.g. ESPN Page 2), the more the authors will write hair-pulling articles.

Post being replied to

Your sixth and seventh paragraphs by WilfordBrimley

ring particularly true for me.

I can so vividly remember certain sets and sequences that they might as well have happened yesterday. Yet I can barely remember at all what was probably the worst three or four days of our entire deployment. Complete exhaustion and a bad eye infection will do that, I guess.

I do think back a lot about what I did and what I could have done differently: "If I had done Y instead of X...". We were pretty fortunate with our own guys (with some very notable exceptions - you don't soon forget what a ball-bearing through someone's neck looks like), but not so much with the locals. I'm not sure it mattered all that much in the long run. I keep in touch with my old interpreter, and he told me that most of the locals I knew from the area are dead now, anyway. The Islamic State swept through the area in late 2014 and pretty much cleaned house.

One of the things that struck me then and that I still think about was the lack of music. Growing up, every movie and TV show that I ever saw showing combat had some dramatic music or something in the background. In real life, it just sort of happens. No dramatic music. No build up, climax, and ending. Just crack/boom/echo/incessant radio chatter/lots of screaming over the noise. Again, a very odd thing to think about, but it's noticeable if your mind is conditioned a certain way.

Most of all I remember the heat. The motherfucking heat. And the smell of the place.