How the joke , literally , died on their lips and they had never seen it coming .How those same young men were so carefree were then dying and injured soon after .None of the above choices .How the youngsters never knew how to fight seriously because joked too much .
What might Ratchet be trying to reconcile in the story ?
Youngsters who thought they could take on the whole army and win , the ones who laughed loudly , jocked around and looked sheepish when an officer came to complain about the noise . Ratchet had seen them start fighting seriously , he had seen some of them die on the battlefield and later in the Medbay because it was too late . He had seen them dying in the hallways because they had been deemed doomed by the people in charge of triage . Oh , how he hated that ... Those that survived ... he had seen their optics becoming harder , their faces becoming blank , he had seen the jokes die on their lips .