This episode of the 513th PIR

described his experience in words that any member of E-company could have used.

The three of us, Jake, Joe, and I became an entity.

There were many entities in our close-knit organizations, groups of threes and fours.

Usually from the same squads or sections, core elements within the families that were the small units

were readily organized as entities. This sharing evolved never to be relinquished, never to be

repeated. Often three such entities would make up a squad with incredible results in combat.

They would literally insist on going hungry for one another, freezing for one another, dying for one another, and a squad would try to protect them or bail them out without the slightest regard to consequences, cussing them all the way for making it necessary.

Such a rifle squad, machine gun section, scout observer section, pathfinder section was a mystical concoction.

Philosopher Jay Glenn Gray, in his classic work, The Warriors, got it exactly right.

Organizations for a common and concrete goal in peacetime organizations does not evoke anything

like the degree of comradeship, commonly known in war.

At its height, this sense of comradeship is an ecstasy.

Men are true comrades only when each is ready to give up his life for the other,

without reflection and without thought of personal loss.

Stephen Ambrose, Band of Brothers, Chapter 1.

Selfless comradeship and brotherhood has been a distinct characteristic of Christian culture throughout its history. Going all the way back to David and

Jonathan, Christ and the disciples, Martin Luther, and Philip Melanchthon. Some of the most

influential men in church history have been marked by their close friendships.

In our day, apart from some military and first responder vocations, individualism and consumerism have left us with a void where close-knit male friendships used to be.

Largely gone are the days where the men of the church, village, or tribe, dependent on one another for food, security, and

trade. Today, we work our own jobs, often from home, live in our own separate neighborhoods,

...