As we flew back to Nui Dat, I considered how much different our fates were from that of our prisoner, still dripping blood on the cabin floor. He would be handed over to the ARVN and undoubtably shot unless he had some very good intelligence to offer them. We were going home.
    At Nui Dat, we had time only to scramble into civies and grab our overnight bags—our trunks had already been packed and despatched home by ship—everything else remained behind. A caribou waited to fly us to Saigon where a Qantas 707 waited to fly us directly to Sydney. There were arrived in the small hours and went through immigration, customs and got issued leave passes and instructions on where and when to report for final dishcarge procedures. By 6am, Snowy was off to WA and Greyman to Queensland and I was on an Ansett flight to Melbourne. When I landed, it was just twenty hours after Hookey’s tea break was so rudely interrupted.

In A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemmingway utilised his experiences as an ambulance driver in the Spanish War to create a love story between a nurse and a wounded soldier in World War I in Italy. Outside, in the distance, the war rages but this couple strive to grab what little happiness they can, which isn’t much. Regarded by some as his greatest novel (it isn’t, For Whom the Bell Tolls is, not to mention The Old Man and the Sea), I personally found the characterisation weak and unengaging, and the story rather plodding and soft. That the love is doomed is not tragic but disappointing, and the ending is almost a throwaway line.
    It is meant to be a metaphor for the futility of war, just as the ceaseless rain is, but the wench is a cardboard cut-out, beautiful and submissive, the way no woman worth chasing is, and you always want to get over the hill and into the battle where some real anti-war points are to be made, just by accurate description. Contrived – too poetic without any poetry – and just a bit dull. Not good enough, I would have thought. Others disagree. I hunted it for a memorable passage and found there were none. That is a judgement in itself. But then, I hate love stories.