moment be telling about how his life suddenly stopped in Hué, and then adding, without even smiling, ‘I had to laugh like hell.’ That was the thing: Patton would tell about some supposedly serious or beautiful or dangerous or holy event during which he had had to laugh like hell, but he hadn’t really laughed. He kept a straight face, too, when he told about it afterward. In all his life, I don’t think anybody ever heard him do what he said he had to do all the time, which was laugh like hell.
