There is a line in the SciFi movie BLADERUNNER by this character who is dying that goes like this:

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... I watched sea beams glitter in the dark near the terhausen gate... All those moments will be lost in time like tears in the rain... Time to die."

"All those moments will be lost in time like tears in the rain."

The "big picture" stuff normally finds its way into the better books (fiction and non-fiction) but all the day-to-day experiences and minutia of each individual's military service will, for the most part, be "lost in time like tears in the rain".

Dex once wrote that - being a bottom feeding, low ranked, raghat and one who didn't know the big picture - he often thought about going to the phone booth at the head of the pier and just calling up old Arleigh Burke and asking, "what the hell is the big picture?"

Many of us try to save what we can on this will-of-the-wisp internet and most of our stories have zip to do with any "big pictures". But everyone of us who ever served in whatever capacity has stories.

It would be beyond anyone's capacity to share everyone's experiences. Fortunately there are a few of us that spin out our vignettes and save what is possible. 

The payoff is that some of these stories will strike a chord of familiarity in others - and elicit comments like, "Yeah I did that too - and until I read so and so's story I had forgotten those 'moments in time'. "

I reckon the best we can do is to assemble our own small jigsaw pieces so that perhaps the totality comes just a tad closer to forming that elusive "big picture".

Sid (2008)