Combat recollections
Chaplain (Major) Mitchell Lewis, a college classmate of mine, via email, on the differing accounts of what happened on March 13, 1969, when John Kerry pulled Army Lt. Jim Rassman from the Bay Hap river:

Don - Time distorts all memories, but there is something about the combat environment that really twists your recollection of events.

Shortly after we arrived at Baghdad airport in April 2003, the the staff began to write - after action reports, articles for professional journals, official histories, etc. One of my jobs was to edit this material prior to submission. (I guess my boss thought a Wake Forest grad knew how to spell.)

Of course, as a chaplain I also talked to a lot of soldiers during this time. I was amazed at how differently we ALL rembemberd the same events just a couple of weeks after they occurred. When I wrote my personal memories of OIF in April-May 2003, I concluded by saying, "Let me emphasize that these are my experiences and memories. I dare not speak for any other veteran. I have already learned that even those of us who went through the same war and rode in the same convoy remember things differently. Where I am mistaken in the details or another veteran remembers things differently, I apologize."

The Army also sent a team of data collectors into the AO to conduct interviews. The result of that process is "On Point: The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom." One of the anecdotal stories in "On Point" relates to a soldier who was wounded in a missile attack on the 2d Brigade TOC and who later died. There
are enough details in the anecdote for me to know that this was the soldier for whom I read a Psalm while a SF medic tried to put an IV in his leg. This official written record is different in many details than I remember, and I was there.