Better that way

“I no longer wanted any buddies. Afraid I’d lose them. If I liked someone, I believed he’d get killed. Who needed the additional trauma? I sure as hell didn’t. If you get killed, I don’t know you and I don’t care. You’re just another number, another rifle—who cares. New people: ‘What’s your name? How ya doin’?’ But nothing more. Don’t tell me your hopes and dreams. You’re going to get killed and I don’t want to know you, think about you, remember you.” – Private First Class Doug Michaud, Headquarters & Service Company, First Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment (quoted by Donald Knox in The Korean War: Pusan to Chosin – An Oral History)