Ive already seen many things and been through a lot no man of a right mind would want to see or go t

. . . Bill, Ive already seen many things and been through a lot no man of a right mind would want to see or go through. Over here, they play for keeps. And its either win or lose. Its not a pretty sight to see a buddy you live with and become so close to, to have him die beside you and you know it was for no good reason. And you realize how easily it could have been you.
I work for a Lieutenant Colonel. I am his bodyguard. . . . On the 21st of November we came to a place called Winchester. Our helicopter let us off and the Colonel, myself, and two other men started looking over the area . . . there were two NVAs [North Vietnamese Army soldiers] in a bunker, they opened up on us. . . . The Colonel got hit and the two others were hit. Bill, that day I prayed. Fortunately I got the two of them before they got me. I killed my first man that day. And Bill, its an awful feeling, to know you took another mans life. Its a sickening feeling. And then you realize how it could have been you just as easily.
The next day, January 13, I went to London for my draft exam. The doctor declared me, according to my fanciful diary notes, one of the healthiest specimens in the western world, suitable for display at medical schools, exhibitions, zoos, carnivals, and base training camps. On the fifteenth I saw Edward Albees A Delicate Balance, which was my second surrealistic experience in as many days. Albees characters forced the audience to wonder if some day near the end they wont wake up and find themselves hollow and afraid. I was already wondering that.
President Nixon was inaugurated on January 20. His speech was an attempt at reconciliation, but it left me pretty cold, the preaching of good old middle-class religion and virtues. They will supposedly solve our problems with the Asians, who do not come from the Judeo-Christian tradition; the Communists, who do not even believe in God; the blacks, who have been shafted so often by God-fearing white men that there is hardly any common ground left between them; and the kids, who have heard those same song-and-dance sermons sung false so many times they may prefer dope to the audacious self-delusion of their elders. Ironically, I believed in Christianity and middle-class virtues, too; they just didnt lead me to the same place. I thought living out our true religious and political principles would require us to reach deeper and go further than Mr. Nixon was prepared to go.
I decided to get back into my own life in England for whatever time I had left. I went to my first Oxford Union debateResolved: that man created God in his own image, a potentially fertile subject poorly ploughed. I went north to Manchester, and marveled at the beauty of the English countryside quilted by those ancient rock walls without mortar or mud or cement. There was a seminar on Pluralism as a Concept of Democratic Theory, which I found boring, just another attempt to explain in more complex (therefore, more meaningful, of course) terms what is going on before our own eyes. . . . It is only so much dog-dripping to me because I am at root not intellectual, not conceptual about the actual, just damn well not smart enough, I reckon, to run in this fast crowd.