Is It Always a Love Story?

On the day I came home from the war — a phrase still tossed around like iceberg lettuce in the cultural salad, in spite of its saturation — the shock was not unexpected. Both the country that sent me and a million others into battle across the Pacific and the warrior lucky enough to live through it had changed clothes. I'd been at least as dizzied when I tumbled head-last into boot camp and, again, when I struggled to get my bearings on the ground in Southeast Asia. This was 1970, a new decade in a country rubbed so raw by the last one you couldn't drag it in front of a mirror and expect to see the same image twice. What once was bright and sure scrambled into confused and angry...