I am crying laughing at this all.

It's amazingly true, in a morbid Catch-22 way. My uncles went off to Viet-Nam and my dad was lucky and got stuck defending Kansas against the Viet-Cong. I got to take a peek at the letters they sent back to him during their deployment. Its a real case study in life, actually. My one uncle is fine, totally well adjusted man, but his time in the Mekong delta was a drunken opiated crazy time. My other uncle tried to make sense of the war, tried to understand it. He now lives outside of Stockholm and speaks no Swedish; the war drove him mad.

I remember trying to read the well-adjusted uncle's letters. They are the typical rantings of a drunk 20 year old in a war, its completely coherent for about half a page, and then the whiskey kicks in and it devolves into drawings of dicks and rants about the CO for 10 pages.

The now-crazy (NC) uncle did save my now-well-adjusted (NWA) uncle's life though. NWA had his papers misplaced and was just dumped into Viet-Nam without a name really. So, he was a pariah and they stuck him as lead gunner of a 50 cal. on the supply convoys. A death sentence, but try telling that to a 20 year old with a huge dick in his hands. The NC uncle actually appears out of the jungle ala Rambo 2, and knocks out the NWA uncle. He tells him later that he has to shoot at the water buffalo, not kill, as that WILL get him kicked off the convoys. The Vietnamese do not like it when you try to kill their expensive shitting tractors/fertilizers. So, NWA uncle shoots at the water buffalo, gets reprimanded (but still has no papers, so whatever), and a week later the whole convoy disappeared into the jungle (maybe died, who knows). That's when the drinking and OJs (opium joints) started invading the letters.

All in all, the letters taught me a good lesson about life. "Fuck 'em" is the best response usually. Get drunk, fuck 'em if they care, bastards prolly are just pissed their ugly asses can't get laid. The US army is trying to kill you? Fuck em, smoke opium. You brother is going insane? Fuck em, drink whisky. You job sucks? Fuck em, they're still paying you, so take a long lunch. I can post the letters a bit if there is interest.

TL;DR: Fuck 'em.