For fifteen months journalist Sebastian Junger followed a single platoon of U.S. soldiers stationed in a dangerous part of Afghanistan. Living and working in the midst of a warzone made Junger realize how much the soldiers had to rely on each other. What you do or don't do as a soldier affects everyone else in your platoon. Junger writes:

Margins were so small and errors potentially so catastrophic that every soldier had a kind of de facto authority to reprimand others—in some cases even officers. And because combat can hinge on [small] details, there was nothing in a soldier's daily routine that fell outside the group's purview. Whether you tied your shoes or cleaned your weapon or drank enough water or secured your night vision gear were all matters of public concern and so were open to public scrutiny.

Once I watched a private accost another private whose bootlaces were trailing on the ground. Not that he cared what it looked like, but if something happened out there—and out there, everything happened suddenly—the guy with the loose laces couldn't be counted on to keep his feet at a crucial moment. It was the other man's life he was risking, not just his own …. There was no such thing as personal safety out there; what happened to you happened to everyone.