I notice I am taking risks with my own security and losing my sensitivity to danger. I don't know it at the time, but the effects of war are reaching into me in unexpected ways, and I am being changed by them. I am surrounded by destruction and the randomness of death, which I cannot fathom. I have felt the closeness of death as tangibly as the whisper of a murderous seducer, and felt the richness, twinged by guilt, of having escaped its grasp. I have seen too often the numb lost look of men consumed by undiluted grief, and heard the howl of children as their mothers are pulled from the rubble of a rocket-blasted home, and I am coming to understand the long dark pain of those who silently endure what first seems unendurable. Jason Elliot
About This Quote

These words are written by Corporal David Bellavia who was in 2006, part of a United States Marine unit in Iraq. They are quoted in the book "The Last True Story I Tell" by Lee Wengert. Corporal Bellavia is writing about his experiences in the war against Al Qaeda in Iraq. He is trying to explain what he was feeling at that time, but also what he felt after it was all over.

Source: The Network

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  1. I notice I am taking risks with my own security and losing my sensitivity to danger. I don't know it at the time, but the effects of war are reaching into me in unexpected ways, and I am being changed by them. I am surrounded...
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