There was something in his voice, in the lines of his face that perfectly broadcast just how embarrassed he was by this part of his past. It just about broke her heart to see it, really. She turned on the bench to really face him, keeping a hand on his knee and moving the arm on the back of the bench a little closer so she could comb her fingers through his hair.

"Oh, sugar. No one over here knew what war was really like, it had been so long since we'd really been in one. And that war was... There were so many things that no one knew about until later." Things that she remembered. "Here in the US, we're so far away from everyone else that we forget to pay attention to anything beyond our own borders, even now with people all over like they are. I guess... What I'm trying to say, sugar, is that you shouldn't be embarrassed or ashamed by that. You were trying to help in any way you could, everyone was, and honestly I don't think most people could stand knowing what war's really like."

Her message had taken a darker turn than she'd intended starting out, but she believed everything she'd said. It was hard to know if it would have any impact on how he felt about things, but she couldn't have just let things sit like that.