Red Platoon

If there are soldiers who miss the fury of combat, who find themselves tortured by the desire to return to its flames, I cannot number myself in their company. I have no wish ever to return to Keating or to Afghanistan, and most of my men feel the same. However, the bond that kept us together as a unit, a team, is something that I long for and continue to cherish. It is also something that is very much alive.

As for the medal itself, when I got back home, a question arise for which I really didn't have an answer: What exactly do I do with this thing? I don't know what most of the other recipients do, although I've asked a handful of them. A few have ordered up replacements so that they have something to wear and to show folks when they ask to see it, while they store the original in a safe-deposit box. Others keep the medal in a sock drawer or on their nightstand. As for me, I never bothered to ge a duplicate and I eventually took to carrying the original around in my front pocket. As a result, it's taken several accidental trips through the washing machine, so the gilded surface is a bit tarnished, and the blue ribbon has begun to fade. But that doesn't bother me a bit. In fact, I kind of like it that way, perhaps- in part- because I don't truly regard it as mine.

Like it or not, there are eight other guys with whom I served to whom that medal rightly belongs, because heroes- true heroes, the men whose spirit the medal embodies- don't ever come home. By that definition, I'm not a true hero. Instead, I'm a custodian and a caretaker. I hold the medal, and everything it represents, on behalf of those who are its rightful owners. That, more than anything, is the truth that now sustains me- along with one other thing too, which is a belief I hold in my heart.

I know, without a shred of doubt, that I would instantly trade the medal and everything attached to it if it would bring back even one of my missing comrades in arms.