Put yourself into this photo. Your feet in wet boots on that heaving deck, your friends already in the water ahead of you, your ears ringing, stomach writhing, heart thudding, your brain slowing and speeding, your well-trained body moving automatically, your life spinning away from you. Terror. Memories. Adrenaline.
Nobody wants to lunge through bloody water, burdened with equipment, trying not to drown, seeking the shifting slices of air not riddled with bullets. Nobody wants to confront the choice of dying pinned down under fire on the beach and dying in the race across the beach to move inland.
It’s hard to run in the water. It’s hard to run on sand. It’s hot and loud and terrible. It looks and sounds and smells like hell. Home is gone forever. Even if you survive, you will never be the same.
When people say that love is an action, not a feeling, think of this. Think of the work done for you, at enormous cost. Think of the simple, painful beauty, the incalculable horror and strength, of your fellow human beings, laying down their lives for one another and for you.
Melinda Johnson, Writing 