Because a soldier learns that you do not fire the first shot in a war you have not yet finished scouting — and I had a great deal of scouting left to do before this war was won.

I want to say something about that discipline, because I know how it can look from the outside — cold, calculating, almost unfeeling — and because it was in fact the exact opposite.

Standing in that yard, forcing a smile onto my face while every cell in my body screamed to do violence, was not a failure of feeling.

It was the hardest act of love I have ever performed.

The rage I was swallowing was not weakness held back; it was the fiercest protective fury I have ever known, and everything in me wanted to unleash it.

But I had learned, in four years of situations where a single reckless move could get people killed, that the strongest thing you can do for someone you are trying to protect is often to do nothing, visibly, while you do everything, invisibly.