He had participated in the kind of close-quarters combat that kills not just bodies but something less easily named.

The marines around him in those thirty-six days had been reduced, sometimes literally, to components.

He had survived and they had not, and the question of why — why him, why not them — is one that combat survivors carry without being able to answer it, and the carrying of an unanswerable question does its own kind of damage.

He also carried a specific guilt that had a specific name: survivor’s guilt.

He had been pulled off the island while the battle was still ongoing.