<< There're not showing the rivers of sweat that constantly seep into the eyes, stinging them and making it hard to see.  Nor do we see how not being able to bath but once a month creates a skin condition of plugged up sweat glands that causes severe itching at best, and sharp, needle-like pain in it's advanced stage. 

 

We aren't able to see how tedious hours are suddenly inturupted by moments of sheer terror, when you think you'll be killed and your friends around you are killed, where chaos abounds everwhere, where a grenade gets caught in your own gear; weapons jam; explosions kick the air out of lungs; the taste of cordite is everywhere; and the headaches from the sheer volume of weapons lasts sometimes for days. 

 

You can listen to the shouted voice of your buddy, and not understand a word he's saying; it's a struggle to breath; to remember how to breath; the terror is so palpable you cannot describe it.  The sound of bombs blasting is so powerful one feels as though one's body is being torn asunder. 

 

Then there's the aftermath, where the blood and the torn, burnt bodies have to be dealt with; when directions are given in macabe ways so that you're told to "take a right at headless Harry" or go left at "Legless Larry".  The populace is brutalized and smiles at you out of terror, not because they like you.  And the normally nice guy from the midwest, innured to the casual brutality and misery and violence becomes a menace to the civilians around you, and ends up planting captured weapons near their bodies so that they can be counted as "insurgents". 

 

And home is dreamt of as never before.  >>