I am 80. I fought in Vietnam in 1968, which was a terrible year. I think of myself as a decent man. But I was 23 in that war, the old man in the platoon I led. We needed courage, so we put up a sign that said, “Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I fear no evil, for I am the meanest mother fucker in the valley.” Beneath the sign sat a human skull.

Was that me a year later? Is that me now? No. But unless you have been in the fight, you simply do not know.

War warps humanity.