I wrote the other day about a memory of a friend of mine who was killed in Iraq earlier this year. It was about shared hardship and our friendship. Its hard to admit this but there were also a number of times when we disagreed bitterly and even got into a fist fight once. He was missing a clip of ammunition and b/c I was a machine gunner at the time I had two webbing vests – one for my M-4 and one for the SAW. The one for the M-4 just sat there (along with the M-4) b/c I never used it except to align the sites every few weeks just in case. I still had to maintain full readiness though. If I had been caught missing a clip where we were I would have been severely punished. I gave it to him anyway with the understanding that he\'d give it back as soon as he came off guard duty. So he comes off gaurd duty and I asked him for the clip and he snapped and took it out and smashed me in the face with it. We ended up fighting for probably just 20 or 30 seconds until we got pulled apart. We didn\'t talk to each other at all for a while after that. It was all forgotten a couple of weeks later but the memory of his face furious at me for being so selfish is just burned into my brain. That angry face is all that I see now. I never apologized for caring more about my stupid combat readiness than him. Anyway. I guess when people die we always remember shitty things we said or did. I had one friend die on me the day after I exploded on him and called him all kinds of terrible things.