Nothing really prepares you for combat, and to anyone who has never experienced it, you can’t really begin to know what it is like. For all of the training, nothing prepares that young adult who sees his brother shot, or hears his brother scream after being hit by a sniper, just to later see the blood soaked arm of the Marine who applied first aid. Nothing prepares the machine gunner who is following orders, but takes out a bus full of people because he thought it was a vehicle borne IED. Nothing prepares you for the blank look on your face and the emotional numbness that you feel when you have another human in your sites, you pull the trigger, and they never get back up again. Nothing prepares you to see oil fields on fire, the fall of a city, or the sight and smell of death. Nothing prepares you for this, and more that is seen and done in combat.