It's the lingering scent of cigar smoke he misses most. Nights, when he lies awake staring into the dead night, Radar almost imagines he can smell the musky scent, floating in and around him. The nights when sleep evaded him with persisting resistance, he slips into the locked filing cabinet only he holds the key to, pulls the leftover cigar from it's case, and lights it for a few seconds, allowing the room to fill with the powerful smell. Those nights he sleeps as if he's dead, as if he too lies at the bottom of --

No.

They wonder, deep concern in their eyes, why he isn't more upset. Why his tears don't flow as freely as his paperwork, why grins and bears the tyrannical command of Major Burns, as if it's all he's known. He doesn't have the heart to tell them his tears were spent hours before the message was received, that he knew long before the phone rang, for fear of the pitiful look they will give him. Instead, Radar swears up and down that he too is grieving, just quietly.

He supposes he is, as the cigar smoke drifts in and out.

They ignore the nights he creeps into their tent, alone and frightened, muttering of a dream of waters and planes, claiming he saw -- he saw --

Together, they exchange a look they think he can't see, but even through the ever-present darkness of Korea, Radar can feel what it means. They ignore the young man as he slips into the empty cot, and toss a coin to decide who will spend the night in the office, guarding the phone.

A psychiatrist arrives, three days after the OR session. Radar placed the call himself, knew the man was expected, yet still feels a jolt of shock as the jeep slides into camp. He politely shakes hands, using every ounce of manners his mother drilled into him as a child, and darts away the moment the opportunity arises.

The smoke falls heavily now, the lone cigar merely an inch or two long. Briefly, Radar considers ordering more, asking them to bring some back from their next visit to Tokyo, but he knows it wouldn't be the same. The night the cigar is finish, burned away, he buries the remains near the flagpole, in a box that once held tongue depressors. Bitterly, he thinks of this as the funeral that will never occur.

He sneaks into their tent, while the Officer's Club rages in full swing, and takes the medical book from beneath a cot. There, in the darkness, he reads without looking, feeling the book, knowing it's print. It is there Radar learns the effects drowning has on the body -- bloating, shriveling, the works -- and he hurries to the bushes to toss his lunch. He leaves the book on the cot, open to the page, but when they return they have the decency to never mention it.

Men leave and men arrive. They become him become they, and slowly, the room fills with the scent of cigars once more. Radar endures the bittersweet smell, and ignores that they are not his brand, are not the cigars he once smoked. Instead, he welcomes it.

Nights, when blood swims before him so much he imagines it as water -- an ocean of blood -- he closes his eyes and pretends to be back in a time where things ran differently, smelled differently.

Slowly, one by one, they stop talking, stop mentioning what once was. Radar knows this is called acceptance, knows the grieving is done.

It's the cigar smoke he misses most, after the man himself.