Juris’s sense of the absurdities and waste — on all sides — of the Viet Nam War wasn’t the result of later reflection and research — although God knows he did plenty of both. It was there from the start. In his diary, the 23-year-old Juri describes his last day on American soil: “Spent the day waiting for a plane at Travis AF Base, drinking coffee and watching the prophetic hot dog machine. It seems like another omen. Poetic. Tropic heat, sweltering row upon row, rising and falling, skewered in ranks.” Two days later he writes: “Viet villages make U.S. shanty slums look good. These poor people. God save those the U.S. sets out to save.”