Men build all kinds of worlds in order to defeat fear and loneliness. - Jack Cady

A lot of preachers will be glad this man is gone, and that’s one good thing you can say for him. He drove nice people crazy. This man was a hellion, pure and simple; but what folks don’t understand is, hellions have their place. They put everything on the line over nothing very much. Most guys worry so much about dying, they never do any living. Jesse was so alive with living, he never gave dying any thought.

No one recalls the names of dog soldiers who fought beside Leonidas at Thermopylae, or with Charles Martel at the battle of Tours; but how they fought, and what they fought for, lives through centuries. Without those forgotten men western civilization could not have come into being. They put it all on the line, because there are times in history when universal evil crawls from its cave of darkness.
When those battles happened, though, what did anyone know? The dog soldier only knew that some fool Persian had it in his head to whip the world, or a Moorish chieftain was on the prod.
And the dog soldier stood. He stood between the enemy and home, standing before a way of life that was particularly his. If in his home he was boss during peace, then during war he paid for the honor. The male of the species defends his land and home. It will always be that way. At least that is true of the Infantry.

I lay in darkness admitting even I had managed to conceal truth beneath a pile of crap. For old men, Hell comes in two versions, lesser and greater.
The lesser version happens when history is rewritten, their records expunged, no credit given for ideals or aspirations, nothing bequeathed, all tales revised as the Present, turning, points to a false record and accuses the past for Present suffering.
That’s a stern Hell, but the greater version is worse. Hell for old men arrives at that exact moment when we must admit we can no longer protect our kids, our families, our country, the shards and remnants of our love.