TV’s nightly news gives us a window into wars being waged all over the world. We see reports about them in the papers and on the Internet. We know from what we read and hear that Iraq and Afghanistan are dangerous places, with so many of the stories about them punctuated with terms like “suicide bombers” and “improvised explosive devices (IEDs).” We know people are dying in these places; we know our soldiers are being wounded. We read compelling articles in newspapers and magazines about returning soldiers experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder, and about those who have lost limbs or have suffered brain injuries.

But the news reports keep war at bay—the war is there, not here. Most of us don’t know what it is like to live with extreme danger, or to lose people we care about in the blink of an eye, or the flash of a bomb.

Nothing quite brings it home like hearing about it firsthand from someone we know, someone who has lived it, someone who is recovering from it. Seeing the picture of Harvard native Jonathan Farwell in this week’s issue, hooked up to sundry tubes and hospital gadgets while recuperating from wounds he suffered in Afghanistan in December, was sobering. Learning about the attack that injured him and two others—one of whom lost both legs in the incident—brought that war here.

The purple heart Farwell wears in the picture, over the IV tubes, and the plaque he proudly displays from his hospital bed in Texas seem like small consolation for what he has given. Yet he said he can’t complain, and he expressed eagerness to rejoin his unit, as well as a responsibility to his mission.

We honor Farwell and those like him, whose deep sense of dedication and duty and whose courage go far beyond what most of us have to ask of ourselves as we go about our daily lives in a place where war is only seen on the nightly news.