infirmary

I recall one of my first realizations of my own innevitable death was while watching a film called Uncommon Valor, which starred Gene Hackman as the father of a Vietnam War POW. Somehow the experience blended with the many hours of MASH reruns. The images of American warriors attempting to rescue an American prisoner in what was a dirt chamber barred-up with bamboo. An organic subterranean jail cell. Crude, but resourceful were the Vietcong.
The cliche sequence that stays with me is one where one of the more haggard of the rescue team finds himself atop an "eagle's nest" tower, with machine gun and firing away, and subsequently is shot in the trachea, as if the enemy were his throat surgeon. It was a clever camera trick, splicing the frames with before and after pseudo-bullethole application. Clearly, that guy wasnt going to come back home. At this point, the prisoners had been retrieved, and the team was making its way to the helicopter, through swaying wheatfields. They carried the wounded and malnourished over their shoulders. Almost everyone makes it to the chopper, but one is wounded by enemy fire. A passenger attempts to reach him, but someone, maybe Hackman, pulls him back, probably saving his life.
The loneliness of a foreign land is bad enough. I can't imagine being an enemy as well.