What we had found gave to the enemy the humanity I wished to deny him. It was comforting to realize that the Viet Cong were flesh and blood instead of the mysterious wraiths I had thought them to be; but this same realization aroused an abiding sense of remorse. These were men we had helped to kill, men whose deaths would afflict other people with irrevocable loss. None of the others said anything, but later, back at base camp, PFC Lockhart expressed what may have been a collective emotion. “They’re young men,” he told me. “They’re just like us, lieutenant. It’s always the young men who die.”
