In those days I talked a lot about weapons. There was SeDI, the lone soldier who lived with the old lady. It was unclear whether they were related. On Friday afternoons SeDI was always out on the balcony in boxer shorts and an undershirt, cleaning his short barrel M-16 in the sun, smoking weed and sweating for an hour or two, and I would watch him from our balcony and say, what a waste of manpower.

he wanted 6m but only got 271k