"No matter which images of battle and carnage came to haunt him, no matter which specific terror rose up through them, the lessons they rehearsed were always the same: There’s no such thing as certainty. Control is an illusion. Death and destruction descend the moment you forget to watch for them. That was what two years of intermittent war had taught him. And once you learned those lessons, you didn’t just remember them: you lived them, moment to moment."