This one is one of my favorites. :)
Hawkeye stood, and a feeling almost like peace welled in his heart as he gazed out at his audience. It was a feeling he'd not known much this past year, but these friends, this family, brought it to him now.
"I don't know if there are words to summarize this last year for me. It was sounds and pictures and tastes and sensations - all of them wrapped together in a bundle of overstimulation. Some of them were the things I'd longed for three years to feel, and some of them I hope I never feel again.
"The year was characterized by longing. Not quite the sort that we experienced during the war, but longing just the same. For life the way it had been, the way it was before discovering I was too broken to fit back into it. Longing for a way to forget horror and terror even though it's lodged in my bones, and my head, and my heart. Longing for all of you."
He breathed in slowly and studied the faces that peered into his. Potter's eyes were watery with sympathetic understanding. B.J. forced an encouraging smile. Charles' inclined his head in a salute that said he knew the feeling all too well. Margaret reached up and squeezed his hand. Radar and Klinger and Father Mulcahy each gave him looks that told him he was heard and understood.
Hawkeye tried a smile and found that it came easier than expected. The year home had been a struggle, and there had been times when he wasn't sure if he hadn't come home just to fall apart. But the truth was, he didn't need to face it alone.
"When I came home, I thought it would be about remembering. How to digest actual food. How to sleep on a real bed. How to walk in the sunshine without the fear of snipers, or mines, or shelling.
"But in the process of trying to remember, I forgot a lot of things."
He waved a hand vaguely, searching for the words that would explain it. "I, uh, forgot how much a smile or a laugh can do, how needed they are for living. I forgot what phenomenal friends I have. I forgot how much good we actually did over there. It was wasteful, a nightmare. But it wasn't all loss.
"There are a thousand things I wish I'd never seen, and I wish I could forget them all. But not you. Not this," he said, gesturing to the invisible something between them. The thing that pulled their souls together whether a camp or a country apart. "I never want to forget you."
Hawkeye smiled. "And I know I never will."