He sees beautiful lives, and in his eyes we see that he's decided to follow these people's emotional and spiritual ways. This scene establishes the juxtaposition in Malick's strange, allusive, characters - a juxtaposition that transcends the soldiers and can be seen in every facet of the film. No situation is more conspicuous in exposing how horrible and wonderful life can be than war - selflessness, torture, heroes, monsters, birds and guns all live together, under the same sky. Despite the mesmerizing natural intensity of the sun, it goes on to do only one thing - to make the upcoming mass deaths more visually vibrant, more real, more colorful. The battle between beauty and war is constant throughout the picture.
Love carries one character's mind and soul through the war.
Ultimately, his love is destroyed by the object of war - beauty destroyed by evil. While Staros has seen the beauty and realizes how ridiculous the madness is, the fascinating thing about Tall is that he realizes exactly what Staros does, though he chooses to ignore the beauty. Welsh explains that what he holds on to is a love he's never had, he imagines the gaze he's never shared with a lover he's never met. War has prevented so much of the beauty that life was supposed to offer Welsh. But as a result of Witt's lessons, he's learned that this nightmare he's living will lead to somewhere else, across the thin line that separates madness from beauty.