The Old Soldier's Love Story

The first thing you smelled when you got to Vietnam was death and shit. With the humidity, it felt one hundred and forty. Sweat poured off you as big as your fist when you were just sitting.

"If you had a weak stomach when you got off the plane in Vietnam, you'd throw up... I guarantee that country still smells of shit, because it was poor. They fertilized the fields with shit from water buffaloes and humans. The people shitted on the side of the road. The women didn't pull their pants down when they peed. They wore baggy pajama pants, so they rolled them up and peed through the legs of their pants. They didn't need no toilet paper, because guess what? No underwear."

After a blind date, a war protester and a soldier-planned marriage, conflict was unavoidable.