Steve Mortillo thinks the world of the leaders of his platoon in Iraq. “They’re some of the most honorable people I think I’ll meet in my life,” he says. “I’ll never forget the camaraderie and the tough times we went through together.” So it hit him hard when he returned from r&r in the United States and was told that while he was gone, his platoon leader was critically wounded by an IED. “The first thing I said, the first thing everyone says, is, ‘Stop lying to me! I don’t want to hear that.’ There’s this feeling of guilt: while you’re living it up back in the States, one of your comrades got hit.” A few weeks later, he was awakened in the middle of the night to be told another comrade had been killed.