as i was reading tonight; i ran across a wonderful excerpt that paralleled my lack of reasoning for a lack of posting; unfortunately, this was his reasoning [in part] to not promptly returning correspondence back to the United States, during his campaign from Market Garden through The Bulge. I have no such war to fight. But, I think, I have similar feelings of impersonality, and perfection driven days, filled with crap that shouldn't be left to me.


" I certainly didn't feel like writing anymore. I couldn't explain why, but the only emotion that I could arouse were feelings of anger and after staying mad all day and half the night, I was just plain tired. Mad at what? Just about everything for just about everything was done wrong or it wasn't done perfectly. Since nothing but perfection was acceptable, I stayed mad. What struck me most was how damn tired I became by the end of each day and how difficult it was to concentrate. I now had people asking me questions about weapons, targets, harassing fire, grazing fire, chow, transportation, and base of fire. It never ended. I had no time to consider a person's feelings or devotion to the point, or incidental matters. Combat required that my thoughts and feelings remain hard, cold, indifferent, and effective. As to any tender thoughts I might have possessed before the war, I had left them behind in the marshaling area in England. There was no room for trivialities. "

Maj. Richard Winters
Beyond Band of Brothers [2006]