I still see those boys, you know, my platoon, all of us barely out of high school really, laughing, smoking, swearing at the sand, and now... well, now I keep seeing this young fellow, 22 he said, just finished college, and he's so down about his old mates, scattered to the winds, not like it was, and it triggers something, a phantom limb ache, because it's not the war that rips you apart so much as the quiet after, the disengagement, a slow and agonizing decathexis of shared experience, and you just watch it happen, helpless, like trying to hold sand, or smoke from a C-ration cigarette, and the silence just stretches, longer and longer until it's a chasm... and then you're just alone.