...Dayum. Powerful stuff. I could see it coming from several pages away, but still. I've often thought that one of the tragedies of prolonged, intense war is that it frequently requires temporary liftings of the taboos and social boundaries that have built up over the years. Out of necessity, people fight together who would normally never even speak to each other - unlikely friendships are made, tolerances are formed for things previously thought intolerable. By banding together against a common enemy, people come close to achieving a genuine common purpose and understanding - and then the war ends, and they go back home to a country where things have NOT changed, where the old barriers and prejudices still hold sway, and that brief understanding either vanishes or is submerged in the struggle to fit back into society. It's very sad.