Combat High

Response to “Combat High”
In the short story “Combat High”, Sebastian Junger depicts war as rewarding and nothing short of exciting but yet very costly at the same time. One way in which Junger describes war as rewarding is when he is talking about the relationships and bonds that the men form while gone at war. He drives home the point that these men don’t have their wives and children there with them, just the other men alongside them that are risking their lives day in and day out. Because of this separation from their families, they create bonds amongst one another with the same amount of passion as they would their loved ones. In Junger’s words, “Men form friendships that are not at all sexual but contain much of the devotion and intensity of a romance.”   Another way in which Sebastian Junger depicts war as rewarding is when he writes about the sense of purpose that combat gives the men. He tells us that combat is “the only game in town” meaning it’s all the men know; it’s their life. When something becomes your life, you’re going to take it pretty seriously. And that’s exactly what these men did with combat. Not only is war rewarding, but according to Junger war is “insanely exciting” as well. It may not seem exciting to civilians, but to the men who partake in it and hear the machinery and its sounds first hand, it’s the most exciting thing they will ever engage in. Junger talks about the excitement a young nineteen year old gets while operating a .50 cal during a firefight. To sum up how exciting war really is, Junger states “In some ways 20 minutes of combat is more life than you could scrape together in a lifetime of doing something else.” Despite war being both rewarding and exciting, it also comes with its consequences as well. Junger talks about the many psychological effects it has on the men. When it comes to returning to their normal lives back home, he tells us that they all “worry that they may have been ruined for anything else.” One situation...