Thankfully, unlike many others around the world, my experiences of war are sanitised and indirect. Two of my mother’s brothers were conscripted into the Vietnam War. One uncle decided fighting in the steamy hot Vietnamese jungles was not his idea of a good way to spend a portion of his youth, and was imprisoned for not fighting. Another went, and when I asked him what it was like, he said he felt like two angels were there protecting him from getting maimed or killed by enemy fire. My father ...