Zooey wrote:
Maybe we should have enlisted him to fight in the Korean war lol.
If we’d done that, the Chinese would have taken him prisoner during one of their “human wave” attacks. He would have been conscripted to fight in the Chinese Army. The Chinese would have used him in their invasion of India of 1962. Once he’d been taken prisoner/added to the Indian Army, he would have been used to help fight the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965. Upon being captured and conscripted by the Pakistanis, he would have been sent to fight in the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971. After being captured by Bangladesh, he would have been forced to serve in the Bangladeshi Army, especially in the Chittagong Hills Tracts Conflict (which began in 1975). He would have been captured by the Shanti Bahini (Bangladesh’s opponent in that conflict). But once that conflict ended, he would have been allowed to retire; quietly living out the rest of his days in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of southeastern Bangladesh.
Imagine it’s the 1980s. An old man in the Chittagong Hill Tracts is cooking food by an outdoor fire. A child comes up to him and begins a conversation. “I served in the war,” the old man says. “Which war?” the child asks. “Now that is a complicated question!” answers the old man.