I've known enough Marines to know they all love that saying, "Pain is just weakness leaving the body," or something like that.
Personally, that just sounds like something a particularly sadistic high school gym teacher or coach might have thought up, to help his students puking in the bushes after a particularly hard race or fight, to "reframe" what had really happened, so he wouldn't lose them on the team when they suddenly wanted to run away and quit.
I don't have any real expertise in the area, but my gut-level sense is, that's just a quote; not a truth. And a sufficiently-inspiring "quote," that those who hear it can hold onto their status among other people who learn to handle pretty outrageous amounts of pain, all in the guise of being warriors. (And the congregation said, "OoRah.")
Here's how Pat, our Marine from Vietnam who we've been excerpting material from in the "Eyewitness to Combat" series, and who was seriously wounded in combat, described his own experience with that. See if you "read" it as "weakness leaving the body," or else, as I do, as tremendous courage that someone could endure that level of outrage/assault and not lose their mind. If it still isn't shocking/impressive enough, maybe additionally picture that this is happening to someone still in his teens at the time, and functionally cut off from all possible love, support and comfort -- except his other warriors, and, erm, supposedly the hospital staff -- but they're seeming none too warm and fuzzy:
"When I was shot in the arm and leg they were both "through 'n through wounds": meaning they went completely through the limbs. I also had a head wound and therefore could not (would not) have any anesthesia or pain medications to reduce the intense, awful pain.
Each morning they would roll me into the cleaning room, put me onto a stainless steel table completely naked (no one had any clothes on except the bandages and a blanket in this field hospital -- a MASH unit in the Army). The corpsman would then take a stiff brush and dip it into iodine and run it through each wound to the other side to scrub out all dead and infected flesh. I would pass out from the pain.
On the first time, I started to cry, tears rolling down my cheek, and looked over to my side. There was another Marine about my age who almost had no flesh on one side of him. They were doing the same procedure on him and he just stared up and let the tears flow. He made no sound, no quiver, just laid there and stared at the ceiling. After that, I got calm and did the same from there on out.
I remember a general coming through the cleaning area on one of the occasions and the head of the medical doctors present, probably a colonel, was explaining how each of us "felt no pain" while this was going on, the general was pleased: BullFuckingShit. But we were MARINES. "Take pain and embrace it and make it your friend" kind of shit thing. Oh well, it gave me a perspective of how much physical pain I could endure and I have actually had to endure it several times since leaving Nam. It never bothered me after that because I knew I could "hack it". I did and I have..."
Really, what is even possible to add to that? Just about nothing, except certain and really involuntary respect for what it took to undergo that, and not just shatter into a million pieces, like the shards of a mirror. "Courage": the dictionary defines it as, "The quality of mind enabling one to face danger or hardship resolutely." I think that's what we have here, multiplied by every combat veteran who ever endured it, but maybe didn't have the ability of Pat to describe it for you, so you could if not relate, at least possibly understand and respect or admire it for what it is.
