And then she turned her head, slowly, and she saw me.

And this is the part I will never forget, the part that frightened me more than anything I had faced overseas: she did not run to me.

She did not cry out my name.

She took a small, shaking step backward into the mud, and her hands flew up to cover her head, and she looked at me — her own husband, home at last — with an expression of pure, animal terror.

She was not overjoyed to see me.

She was ashamed, and afraid, of what I would see.