After forty-seven Search & Destroy missions, fifteen Body Counts and one unrestful R & R, after a year-long contribution to the pacification of the militant and impervious peasantry of Quang Nghai province, with nothing to show for it but a thousand-yard stare, the Presidio of San Francisco was a sanitary Paradiso, a Switzerland for my soul. Every morning I awakened on crisp white sheets, in the basement of a quaint brick barrack built in the era of sailing ships, when the U.S. Army wore blue and rode around on horses. Sniffing sea fog and cypress trees out my window, I would leap up, do eleven minutes of Canadian Air Force exercises, and take a long hot shower. Then I’d slip into my starched fatigues and spit-shined combat boots, clamp my billed cap upon my head, and jog down Infantry Terrace to the mess hall with nothing more important on my…