it would be as if he'd never been in that war.
The one who really was in the war was Bob. Since his arrival in Vietnam Rodney received frequent news from him and, every time Bob came to Saigon on leave, he went to great pains to receive him in style: he lavished black-market gifts on him, took him drinking to the terrace of the Continental, to dinner at Givral's, a small restaurant with air conditioning on the corner of Le Toi and Tu Do, and then to exclusive places in the city centre — including, as Bob incomprehensibly took it upon himself to specify in several of his letters, the Hung Dao Hotel, a famous and popular three-storey brothel located on Tu Do street, not far from Givral's — places where the drinks and conversation would often go on into the blazing dawns of Lam Son Square. Rodney devoted himself entirely to his brother during those visits, but, when the two of them said goodbye after a week of daily binges, he was never left feeling satisfied that he'd helped Bob forget for a time the harshness of the war; he was always overcome by a vague unease that left embers of sorrow in his stomach as if he'd passed those fraternal days of laughs, confidences, alcohol and staying up all night trying to make amends for a sin he hadn't committed or didn't remember having committed, but that stung him as if it were real. At the end of May the brothers saw each other in Hue, where Rodney had gone in an advisory capacity with a famous country singer and his troupe of go-go girls. By then Bob had only a month till his discharge; a while before he'd discarded the idea, which he'd nurtured for a time and even announced to his parents in a letter, of re-enlisting in the army, and at that moment he was elated, eager to return home. Back in Saigon, Rodney wrote a letter home telling of his encounter with Bob and describing his brother bursting with optimism, but two weeks later, when he arrived at the office one morning, the captain he served under called him into his office and, after a preamble as solemn as it was confusing, told him that during a routine reconnaissance mission, on a path that emerged from the jungle into a village near the Laos border, Bob or someone walking beside Bob had stepped on a 150pound mine, and the only thing that remained of his brother's body and those of the four of his comrades who had had the misfortune to be with him at that moment were the bloody tatters of uniforms they'd been able to collect from the area surrounding the 30-foot-wide crater the explosion had left. Bob's death changed everything. Or at least that's what Rodney's father thought; it's also borne out by events. Because, not long after his brother died, Rodney renounced in writing the possibility of considering his military service finished and going home — a possibility he could have been legally entitled to thanks to Bob's death — and submitted a request to join a combat unit. None of his letters give the reasons for this decision, and his father did not know the real motives that induced him to make it;undoubtedly they were linked to his brother's death, but it could also be that it was an unpremeditated or instinctive decision, and that Rodney himself did not know the reasons. In any case the fact is that his letters from that point on became more frequent, longer and darker. Thanks to them, Rodney's father began to understand or imagine (as perhaps anyone who had received them would have) that this was a different sort of war from the one he had fought in, and maybe from all other wars: he understood or he imagined that in this war there was an absolute lack of order or meaning or structure, that those who were fighting had no defined sense of purpose or direction and therefore never achieved objectives, or won or lost anything, nor was there any progress they could measure, nor even the slightest possibility, not even of glory, but of dignity for anyone fighting in it. 'A war in which all the pain of all wars prevailed,
The one who really was in the war was Bob. Since his arrival in Vietnam Rodney received frequent news from him and, every time Bob came to Saigon on leave, he went to great pains to receive him in style: he lavished black-market gifts on him, took him drinking to the terrace of the Continental, to dinner at Givral's, a small restaurant with air conditioning on the corner of Le Toi and Tu Do, and then to exclusive places in the city centre — including, as Bob incomprehensibly took it upon himself to specify in several of his letters, the Hung Dao Hotel, a famous and popular three-storey brothel located on Tu Do street, not far from Givral's — places where the drinks and conversation would often go on into the blazing dawns of Lam Son Square. Rodney devoted himself entirely to his brother during those visits, but, when the two of them said goodbye after a week of daily binges, he was never left feeling satisfied that he'd helped Bob forget for a time the harshness of the war; he was always overcome by a vague unease that left embers of sorrow in his stomach as if he'd passed those fraternal days of laughs, confidences, alcohol and staying up all night trying to make amends for a sin he hadn't committed or didn't remember having committed, but that stung him as if it were real. At the end of May the brothers saw each other in Hue, where Rodney had gone in an advisory capacity with a famous country singer and his troupe of go-go girls. By then Bob had only a month till his discharge; a while before he'd discarded the idea, which he'd nurtured for a time and even announced to his parents in a letter, of re-enlisting in the army, and at that moment he was elated, eager to return home. Back in Saigon, Rodney wrote a letter home telling of his encounter with Bob and describing his brother bursting with optimism, but two weeks later, when he arrived at the office one morning, the captain he served under called him into his office and, after a preamble as solemn as it was confusing, told him that during a routine reconnaissance mission, on a path that emerged from the jungle into a village near the Laos border, Bob or someone walking beside Bob had stepped on a 150pound mine, and the only thing that remained of his brother's body and those of the four of his comrades who had had the misfortune to be with him at that moment were the bloody tatters of uniforms they'd been able to collect from the area surrounding the 30-foot-wide crater the explosion had left. Bob's death changed everything. Or at least that's what Rodney's father thought; it's also borne out by events. Because, not long after his brother died, Rodney renounced in writing the possibility of considering his military service finished and going home — a possibility he could have been legally entitled to thanks to Bob's death — and submitted a request to join a combat unit. None of his letters give the reasons for this decision, and his father did not know the real motives that induced him to make it;undoubtedly they were linked to his brother's death, but it could also be that it was an unpremeditated or instinctive decision, and that Rodney himself did not know the reasons. In any case the fact is that his letters from that point on became more frequent, longer and darker. Thanks to them, Rodney's father began to understand or imagine (as perhaps anyone who had received them would have) that this was a different sort of war from the one he had fought in, and maybe from all other wars: he understood or he imagined that in this war there was an absolute lack of order or meaning or structure, that those who were fighting had no defined sense of purpose or direction and therefore never achieved objectives, or won or lost anything, nor was there any progress they could measure, nor even the slightest possibility, not even of glory, but of dignity for anyone fighting in it. 'A war in which all the pain of all wars prevailed,
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