History is always written from the viewpoints of the leaders. And increasingly in our age, war leaders do not get shot at with any serious consistency. Leaders make momentous, world encompassing historical decisions. It is your average anonymous soldier or pilot or naval gun ary raiting who has to carry them out on the ground. There is often a vast difference between the grandiose logic and plans and what takes place on the terrain. He then talks about the sort of things that almost never may get into the history books,. where he talks about how the war it elf, and combat specifically, can turn a person into someone who lives simply for this moment.