In the summer, I met a man who made his living by selling computer hardware he found discarded around London’s business districts. A Scorpion tank driver during the Gulf war, he told me how he had been wounded in a firefight and now found himself unequipped for ordinary employment. Soldiers who have seen action are not supposed to enjoy talking about their experiences, so I took him for a fantasist, until he pulled down the neck of his t-shirt and showed me his bullet wounds. The man may have risked his life for a cheap oil supply and the restoration of a despotic government, but he had come out of it with some good stories to tell – and this was recompense enough.
Not every combat veteran conforms to the popular image of quiet dignity.
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