I’m not saying I was looking for Lloyd’s name, or any other of those boys I taught. In fact, I wasn’t. When I visit the Wall, I never do that; I never read the book and I never have anyone I know in mind when I read the names. I’ve never come across a name I know, either. But of course they must be there, those boys, even if I never saw them on tv.

To this day, not one of my uncles or cousins has ever said a word about WWII or Korea – not a one of them, but one man told me about Vietnam. He told me about guys who openly disobeyed their officers, turned their backs when the lieutenant said, Thompson, check out that hut or Jefferson, Go ahead, scout the next hill. Or, You two – Gomez, Rosenbaum – go into that cave and check for VC. In 1972, when we lay on the mattress on the floor of his one-room apartment, that man told me about fragging, which had made big news at six and ten o’clock when he’d been over there. He said this wasn’t the first war when soldiers killed their officers, or even the first in which they simply disobeyed. But maybe it was the first when everybody knew about it and lots of them thought it might be all right.

So some of the men and boys I was copying into my notebook had refused to obey orders; some of them had given orders nobody would follow. Some of them died in jeep accidents or fell out of helicopters or drowned – things that could have happened to them in Oklahoma or Delaware.