Poignant and poetic NYT magazine article about the experience of serving the military during times of conflict.

The latest captured Americans from a downed helicopter squat here on camera, and you see their inexperience in how they’re big-eyed scared as kids at their first horror flick. Boys hang their heads with a shame almost sexual. They’re blaming themselves for crashing, guilty at how sand can spoil the rotor blades of our most costly chopper. These kids mainly ”volunteered,” to get ahead. And now, this learning curve. They are prisoners because to start at Burger King, even for a go-getter like Larry here, would get him to only assistant manager in, say, three or four years, and you can’t do too darn much on 12 grand a year, can you? These are the ambitious kids, the ”good kids,” the ones who wanted to make something useful and shapely of their lives.