What might O'Brian be trying to illustrate in this passage?

For the most part they carried themselves with poise, a kind of dignity.

Now and then, however, there were times of panic, when they squealed

or wanted to squeal but couldn't, when they twitched and made moaning

sounds and covered their heads and said Dear Jesus and flopped around

on the earth and fired their weapons blindly and cringed and sobbed and

begged for the noise to stop and went wild and made stupid promises to

themselves and to God and to their mothers and fathers, hoping not to

die. In different ways, it happened to all of them. Afterward, when the

firing ended, they would blink and peek up. They would touch their

bodies, feeling shame, then quickly hiding it. They would force

themselves to stand. As if in slow motion, frame by frame, the world

would take on the old logic—absolute silence, then the wind, then

sunlight, then voices. It was the burden of being alive. Awkwardly, the

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men would reassemble themselves, first in private, then in groups,

becoming soldiers again. They would repair the leaks in their eyes. They

would check for casualties, call in dust-offs, light cigarettes, try to smile,

clear their throats and spit and begin cleaning their weapons. After a

time someone would shake his head and say, “No lie, I almost shit my

pants,” and someone else would laugh, which meant it was bad, yes, but

the guy had obviously not shit his pants, it wasn't that bad, and in any

case nobody would ever do such a thing and then go ahead and talk

about it. They would squint into the dense, oppressive sunlight. For a few

moments, perhaps, they would fall silent, lighting a joint and tracking its

passage from man to man, inhaling, holding in the humiliation. “Scary

stuff,” one of them might say. But then someone else would grin or flick

his eyebrows and say, “Roger-dodger, almost cut me a new asshole,

almost.”