On the morning of Jan. 26, while I rush my daughters through their bowls of cereal, brush their hair and get them ready for school, I learn that a CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter has crashed in western Iraq, killing 31 men. Twenty-six of them are part of my old unit: Company C, First Battalion, Third Marine Regiment, stationed at Marine Corps Base Hawaii, Kaneohe Bay.

Later, at work, I struggle to explain how surreal it is to learn that marines from the infantry company I served with in the Persian Gulf war have been killed in this one. I sit at my desk, processing insurance claims, surrounded by gray cubicle walls instead of sandbags and dirt, behind a computer instead of a machine gun, thinking about the business card from the recruiter tucked in my wallet. He says there's a slot for me in a reserve unit if I want it, and that I'd get a chance to go overseas again, to be part of something larger and greater than myself. To go to the war. I think about what my daughters would say if I told them that I'm leaving, and that I might not come back. I wonder how to justify it to myself if I don't go.