Tests, Allies, and Enemies

I'm in Vietnam now. I'm getting used to the life here: get up, go on a mission, come back, dig a fox hole, go to sleep in it. The only thing that's hard to get used to is all the ...all the death around. It's awful. The soldiers around here used tactics to help themselves cope with it all. They tell stories as if the person is still alive, they use other names to refer to the dead citizen as though saying they are nonhuman. They even prop up the villagers and talk to them. I remember on my fourth day here, we were in a filthy little village where there was a fire. A lot was destroyed, and the town was deserted. The only person found who was killed was an elderly man. Dave Jensen, a fellow soldier walked over to the man and shook his hand. The others did the same. Jensen came over to me and told me to "Be polite now", and to go introduce myself. But I wouldn't. I refused. I didn't know how anyone could do that.
Later that night, a fellow soldier, Kiowa came over to me and talked to me. He told me I had done a good thing, brave, for not shaking the man's hand. He said he wished he would have done it himself. And I told him I was just scared. It had not been my first look at a dead body...
I got through it though, that sight of the man, with the help of Kiowa.