What if I didn't shoot the old lady running away from our patrol?

Or the old man in the back of the head?

Or the boy in the marketplace?

Or what if the boy?

But he didn't have a grenade.

And the woman in Wei didn't lie in the rain in a mortar pit with seven Marines just for food.

Gaffney didn't get hit in the knee. Ames didn't die in the

river. Ski didn't die in a medevac chopper between Contien and Danang. In Vietnamese,

Contien means place of angels. What if it really was? Instead of the place of rotting sandbags, incoming heavy artillery, rats, and mud?

What if the angels were Ames and ski?

Were the lady, the man, and the boy, and they lifted Gaffney out of the mud and healed his shattered knee?

What if none of it happened the way I said?

Would it all be a lie?

Would the wreckage be suddenly beautiful?

Would the dead rise up and walk?

Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robertson. I'm the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs magazine.

We return now with part two of our interview with Dr. W.D. Earhart, Vietnam veteran, poet, scholar, and teacher.

I know very little about it over there, I'll tell you, and the less I know, the better off I'll be. It has not affected me a whole lot.

I mean, the American and the way of life is still here,

and if you work for it, it's there for you.

Once in a while I think about it, but I like to think about the things that are happening right now to me.

I don't think it's affected mine at all.

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