Robert

He is a Vietnam era veteran.

I guess he is a veteran of the Vietnam.

He's deployed to Vietnam, but he doesn't he's not a combat veteran.

Right.

Like he never actually fights and he will claim otherwise.

I'm only bringing that up because it's relevant.

That's most people.

Yeah.

Yeah, and the only – again, there's no shame in that, but he will lie about this, right?

And that's why that's really relevant.

Mark's service came late in the war and was in reality quite boring.

He doesn't actually get to do any of the stuff that – like you get the feeling he really wants to fight, right?

Like this is a kid who like –

As a lot of young men do, wants to prove himself in combat, like feels like he wants to, wants to have that experience, and he's not going to get it.

He gets trained as an MP and a machine gunner and rises to the rank of sergeant during his four years in the Corps.

He could have been deployed to combat, but it never quite happened.

That New York Times Review of Books article claims that, quote, "...the closest he got to the ground war was aboard a ship in the South China Sea."

The ship he's on is the USS New Orleans and it's an amphibious transport ships.

And Mark is basically like living there and like on call.

Like if we need to, you might get sent into combat at any point in time, but it never actually quite happens.