Violent Young Men and Our Place in War

MEDIUM DIFFICULTY: War is the most horrific, sickening thing mankind can inflict upon itself, fought by and large by uneducated maniacs that have no other place in the world.
I am not an academic. I have no education past the age of 16, so my writing may be rough. What I do have is an entire adulthood of military service, which I terminated recently when I decided I wanted more money for doing the same job.  I am a private military contractor.
There’s a reason the new guy always gets put on point and nobody really cares when he gets blown up, that so many incidents of collateral damage go unreported, that failed missions are spun into something positive like gathering “valuable intel,” and why only roughly 20% of combat troops ever get PTSD – when if you think about it, it should affect everyone that ever sees combat.
It’s because the vast majority of us are straight up sociopaths.
Heroes are a myth. Every incident I can recall in war that created a hero was either an accident or ended up with said hero in a body bag.
Which makes the “hero” myth a fight of luck versus stupidity, a roll of the dice.
We all make calculated risks in war. Not one of us would make that risk if we genuinely thought it would get us killed.
I’ll say it again. Heroes in a frontline combat context do not exist.