I don’t want to idolize war, the sheer horror of what war can truly be – when two or more groups of people are committed to killing each other. Terrible things – cruelty, torture, rape, even genocide – happen. In many ways, these can be worse than lives sacrificed, cut short quickly.  The Army was good to me, even though I was prepared to serve as an instrument of war. Yet I was a peacetime soldier.  Today, I have great respect for soldiers who fought in some of the big fights – Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Mogadishu. Of course, no less respect for those in the shorter conflicts.

Setting aside any turmoil these soldiers, these survivors of conflict may be dealing with (again, admittedly, this is fanciful) – and also any thoughts about whether or not our government was right in its involvement, and putting soldier’s in harm’s way – I have a firm, forceful admiration of them. It’s patriotism by example in its finest form.  I’m amazed at their courage. I’m drawn to their knowledge of the craft of war, quick and efficient self defense and a sense of confidence that comes from knowing that nothing today (no real or perceived threat, no risk taken, no challenge on the sunny horizon) compares to the real, life-threatening menace of war.So I must admit to an odd, imagined fascination with the act, brutality and the energy of combat, and the machinery of war.

For months now, I’ve been reading some of the best accounts of modern war: Porkchop Hill, Outlaw Platoon, Kill Bin Laden, In the Company of Heroes, Not a Good Day to Die. The list goes on.  In these accounts, how can any reader not come away with a sense of admiration for the soldiers who gave so much to fight the forces of evil?

Lately, I’ve been absorbed in the classic, Black Hawk Down, written by Mark Bowden. From it, I provide this excerpt, one I read through several times because it so poignantly captures the moment a soldier comes face to face with his mortality, and thankful realization that – surrounded by death – he achieves new awareness, a higher conscious state, or inexplicable clarity.

From Chapter 11: [To put this in context: The story and the characters are real; it’s an account of the battle lauded for its accuracy. American soldiers are pinned down in the slums of Mogadishu, many of them injured, some of them dead or dying. Three helicopters are down and, seemingly, the city’s entire population – people our soldiers were there to protect and serve – has assaulted them with raw ferocity]:

“. . . Nelson was so deaf he didn’t even hear the blast. His ears just rang constantly, ever since Twombly had fired his SAW right in his face. Nelson surveyed the carnage around him and felt wildly, implausibly, lucky. How could he not have been hit? It was hard to describe how he felt . . . it was like an epiphany.

Close to death, he had never felt so completely alive. There had been split seconds in his life when he’d felt death brush past, like when another fast-moving car veered from around a sharp curve and just missed hitting him head-on. On this day he had lived with that feeling, with death breathing right in his face like the hot wind from a grenade across the street, for moment after moment after moment, for three hours or more.

The only thing he could compare it to was the feeling he found sometimes when he surfed, when he was inside the tube of a big wave and everything around him was energy and motion and he was being carried along by some terrific force and all he could do was focus intently on holding his balance, riding it out. Surfers call it The Green Room. Combat was another door to that room. A state of complete mental and physical awareness.

In those hours on the street he had not been Shawn Nelson, he had no connection to the larger world, no bills to pay, no emotional ties, nothing. He had just been a human being staying alive from one nanosecond to the next, drawing one breath after another, fully aware that each one might be his last. He felt he would never be the same. He had always known he would die someday, the way anybody knows that they will die, but now its truth had branded him. And it wasn’t a frightening or morbid thing. It felt more like a comfort. It made him feel more alive. He felt no remorse about the people he had shot and killed on the street. They had been trying to kill him. He was glad he was alive and they were dead.”

In an earlier account (Chapter 10), another soldier whose last name is Kurth, was embroiled in an all night long defense of a home they occupied in Mogadishu. His crucible moment came at the oddest moment:

“ . . . Earlier, when they’d taken off on the mission, Kurth had felt like taking a leak but didn’t, figuring they’d be back [to base camp] inside of an hour or so. He had ended up laying on his side out in the road behind the tin shack, urinating while gunfire snapped and popped around him, thinking, This is what I get.

The whole terrifying experience was having an effect on Kurth that he didn’t fully understand. When he had been out in the street, crouched behind a rock that was nowhere near big enough to provide him cover, he’d thought about a lot of things. His first thought was to get the hell out of the army. Then, pondering it more as bullets snapped over his head and kicked up clods of dirt around him, he reconsidered. I can’t get out of the army. Where else am I going to get to do something like this? And right there, in that moment, he decided to reenlist for another four years.”

These books have had an incredible impact on me. For the past year or so, I’ve abandoned fiction entirely. If the real world – real accounts of passion, pleasure and pain – is so fascinating and instructive, why would I want to waste time with artifice?

I’m sure I’ll eventually come back around to a love of fictional literature. After all, I’ve yet to re-read:

• The Bear by William Faulkner

• Sophie’s Choice by William Styron

• Moby Dick by Herman Melville

• Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

• Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

• The Call of the Wild Jack London

• Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

• Lord of the Flies by William Golding

• Catch 22 by Joseph Heller (ah: Milo Minderbinder, the amoral conglomerate-builder!)

Gladly, there are no bullets flying overhead and the canteen is half full. God, grant me the time.