Day breaks in the afternoon, the spine is gone, we’re paralyzed. The evasions approach zero as a limit. What to talk about today, what to avoid? Nothing, I’m afraid. Remember the one of us who didn’t make it through boot camp because he didn’t want to, but shut-the-fuck-up-soldier for good? In a place like that he couldn’t sleep the twenty hours a day that let him stay awake at all, and had to get it some way. The camp commandant, one of those one-eyed men who charges through the world damn-well getting his duties done, wrote us a brisk letter about how anyone who didn’t want to bang a gun in ’Nam wasn’t a man anyway. I wasn’t convinced, and the funeral wasn’t fun. I myself am tired of late, and my 2-S runs out soon. I hope at least I get a different camp from his one.