A Tide in the Lighthearted Affairs of Men

" 'Like those old cowboy movies. One more redskin bites the dirt.' (pg 165)"

There is an old adage: You can't have enough of a good thing. This is the case with such things as chocolate, exercise, or comedies, but what about bad things? When is there enough of that? While reading this novel in its entirety, I got the feeling that the abundance of death that these soldiers lived through led them to have an unsettlingly dismal appreciation for it. Any normal person uses various terms for "dead". One might use "passed away" or "left us", but these soldiers are using terms like "bit the dirt". I suppose many of them did not find this as disrespectful as they did playful. I also understand that viewing the number of deaths that they had forces one to go into a protective state and try to make death a lighthearted affair as opposed to a depressing one, but I find it disconcerting that there is often no respect for the deaths of the "Charlie" in this novel. I suppose it is a reality that one can do nothing about.