One February Morning in Vietnam

To Leslie Nazereth.  Perhaps that feeling that you have read a work of fantasy might be tempered by having large calibre rounds go wizzing by your head so close that you could feel the heat?  State of perception?  With respect I would ask how did you miss the core element here? Read it less as an intellectual and more so as one who is lucky enough to have not experienced the horrors of war.  Mr. Hilderbrandt's perception is born of that instant when clarity is revealed in such a way as to prevent one from ever returning to that other perception colored by our enculteration.