First Edit: Why We Fight/Aging

[dukealien]

Why We Fight

The easy way is dying first before  can't help thinking this line could be improved, to imply it's a "would have been" - though that comes out soon enough, it doesn't connect with what's really going on.
you tell your only love to come to bed
because to see her fade was worse than war,  only now is the thought complete, almost an internal volta.
the final battle words you left unsaid.  except for introducing the concept of battle, this line is almost unnecessary - could the quatrain be re-balanced?

There isn't glory in becoming old
instead there's pity from the callow ones
who smirk at every story you have told,
too young to see you've handed them your guns.  Love the story in this quatrain.

You want to warn about the wasted days  see below about "the"
of how they'll never love a better friend
the minutes marching pass so many ways
and dying after her the cruelest end.  ditto previous comment

But all you'll do is sneer and ponder why  at first and second read the volta seems ugly and detached.  On third, however (below)
you fought so hard to only watch her die. 

This is excellent; I feel fully involved and sympathetic toward the viewpoint character.  As noted, not sure the growing realization in the first quatrain is as smooth or (pardon the guess) intentional as it might be.

Haven't made a lot of detail suggestions:  rhyme and meter are well done and as precise as necessary.  Only general suggestion is to go back and examine each use of "the" with suspicion:  could it be replaced by a more descriptive word, enhancing without breaking meter?  In S3 you use "the" three times; for example, its third line could begin "mute marching minutes" (not a real suggestion, much less a rewrite!)

Despite the emptiness expressed in S3, the volta in the couplet comes as a shock.  The quatrains all speak of caring while the couplet - "sneer" is the detonator - approaches cynical despair.  But having seen loved ones age in this mode, I connect the couplet with dementia's early or late rage/paranoia fork of forgetting:  truly tragic, resenting all his good and caring silence and advice.  In a way, he's like the smirking youth:  he no longer knows/remembers why he fought, or even that the fight availed in his then terms of reference.

Thank you for posting!