It was time to air out. The men sat down to remove their boots and socks. Their feet were wet. Their socks were wet. Their boots were wet.

It was 1961 and Dwight Eisenhower was still going back to that game in 1912—West Point v. Carlisle. West Point and Carlisle were winning teams. One featured two future generals—Eisenhower and Omar Bradley—and the other featured all-around athlete and gold-medal-winning Olympian Jim Thorpe and the now-legendary Coach Pop Warner.

They were “just boys” or “babies” or “young.” Often in war stories, it is the men who are at battle, but the boys who go to war. Those deciding and those fighting are men and boys, as are those leaving and those returning home. Lieutenant General Samuel Vaughan Wilson, retelling a Civil War story told to him as a child, by his “Auntie Mamie,” who spent much of the Battle of Saylers Creek “crouched on a pile of last fall’s potatoes there on the floor of the basement” in Lockett House, which was in the middle of the battle, and…

Wars—and the ways they are remembered and shared—are unique. There is no one experience—from the child watching it on the news to the service member fighting within it. “The war is what A.D. is elsewhere: they date from it.”

S+O+B=Three letters that appear in almost every war story, in the same order, but with dozens of different meanings. SOB=Love and Respect

War Stories is taking the day off and will be back next week. For now, here’s a re-run of a post that ran August 29th. One of these things is not like the others: