The man next to you

Black Hawk Down can be a very emotionally difficult movie to watch. The soldiers were so close to each other, and it made it more difficult when lives were lost. A lot of men did some very courageous things in the war, but why did the soldiers not consider themselves heroes?
    Soldiers in the war are just fighting to live another day. When they fight in this war, they actually have to shoot woman and children firing at them. As tragic as that is, this was the reality of the war in Somalia. When thinking about these things, the soldiers can feel more like murderers than heroes.
    In battle, its all about the men fighting by their side that keeps them going. When you spend as much time in war with the same men, you'll become very close and form a great relationship with them. In a battle they would do anything for each other. They make sacrifices for each other and sometimes those can result in death.
A lot of people didn't think that our soldiers should be out there anyway. People would ask them, "Do y'all think you're heroes or something." For many of them the answer would be no. As Eversman would say, "Nobody asked to be a hero, sometimes it just turns out that way."
The conversation Eversman and Hoot have sums this up pretty well. Hoot says, "Y'know what I think? Don't really matter what I think. Once that first bullet goes past your head, politics and all that shit just goes right out the window.
When I go home, people ask me, "Hey Hoot, why do you do it, man? Why? You some kind of war junkie?" I won't say a goddamn word. Why? They won't understand. They won't understand why we do it. They won't understand it's about the men next to you... and that's it. That's all it is."