LT McDonough encounters several people throughout Chapters 1-4. The two people that stood out the most were the soldier that had the 173rd Airborne Brigade unit patch (pp.21-23) and Tom Rolfe (pp. 31-32)

The soldier with the 173rd unit patch was very desensitized to what he experienced, to the point that he was describing gory situations such as a maggot eating a dead body to McDonough nonchalantly. “Nothing like it in the world. You’ll get more than your share of killing. The bodies are everywhere, and in no time at all you’ll have a collection of ears that will make those rear echelon mother f*****s green with envy.” (pp. 22) There are a few human emotions that veterans of war use when talking about traumatic experiences. Some veterans act very reserved and choose not to talk about their experience of war. Others are very open and sometimes share grim details of combat, details that aren’t for the faint of heart. In this case, he didn’t care about the bloody details of all the dead bodies he saw.

Tom Rolfe was the officer who talked about how difficult his job was and how he wanted to be back home with his wife and child. What bothered me the most was when Tom Rolfe said “I could have been a hero. Sometimes I even wanted to be. But I had to think of my family. You see, don’t you? Most of these men don’t have any family. They’re just boys.” Tom Rolfe isn’t the only one with a family, those other “boys” have families too. Just because they don’t have a wife or kid doesn’t mean they are worth less than him. He obviously doesn’t care about anyone else and doesn’t embody the Army core values. As an Army soldier, we must embody and live the Army core values: Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity, and Personal Courage.

The key takeaway from LT McDonough’s experience was that he saw two different spectrums of how a soldier deals with war. One soldier is selfish and doesn’t put the mission or his soldiers before his needs. The other soldier is desensitized about seeing so many dead bodies. A leader can prepare by anticipating uncertainty. Uncertainty is a factor in everything military forces must do as the executors of national will. The effects of uncertainty—fear, confusion, and friction— are particularly evident in combat.