People attempt to separate the good from the bad, however, that is like separating night from day, up from down, or in from out. The sun sets; it doesn't drop, it's a progression of connected events. It is so with us as we move from one feeling to another. The seeds that lie deep within us that are a part of our emotional transition are so far below the surface in many cases that we don't give them notice until they are in full bloom, but they are there long before we become aware just as the stars are there long before the night exposes them. Shadow Guard is in no way meant to be a chronology of the Vietnam War or the experiences of the people that served there. It is a story of one young man and what he went through to develop an understanding of himself. The experiences that life offers and how he finds his way back past the Shadow Guards that guarded his pain. "Fear, given its strength, deprives us of freedom to love, to live." J.D. Cole