I’ve always tried to keep a sense of humor about myself and about the big things that happen in life. While I can’t claim to be constantly successful--divorce, death, and the mean things people say about Mark Lanegan test me severely--I can tell you that I’ve been able to make people laugh about my upcoming unemployment, made really lame jokes from a hospital bed before emergency knee surgery, and even made the limo driver laugh after my grandfather’s funeral.

Which is my way of keeping life’s tougher bits in perspective.

And that brings me to Shawn, and, perhaps, one of the reasons that I continue to enjoy his writing.

It isn’t as if American soldiers are expecting sissy embedded journalists to be warrior souls, but one still imagines most fearless (okay, scared witless) correspondents must strive to acquit themselves with a bit more aplomb than I was able to muster on my first night raid of a suspected terrorist hideout last week in the heart of Sunni Mosul.

As we closed in on the target the call to disembark from the Stryker armored personnel carrier came a bit too suddenly for me. In my haste I first got caught on the vehicle’s fire extinguisher, tearing a mile wide hole in the back of my pants. I immediately followed this up by cracking my helmet festooned head into the steel lip of the Stryker’s door, like some giant stumbling around a McDonald’s play area.

After you let the smile play on your face and read the article, though, you realize that he’s seeing things that are effecting him deeply.

So, yeah, read the rest.