Fatigue Makes Cowards of Us All." "It does indeed," said Marge. "I've heard it said that for a given amount of brain, the longer a person endures combat fatigue, the more quickly he reaches the point where all he can manage to do is just lie in bed. When that happens, the only thing to do is get out of there and go have lunch somewhere. And you can tell at a glance which side of the battle that person came from." They had a nice lunch. A very nice lunch, served by an attractive young Filipina who was clearly one of these new Filipina entrepreneurs who are going to make things run just fine in the United States of America. Marge kept making references to her "expert knowledge of the island foods, the customs, and the people here in Manila," but the rest of us could have cared less what it was like to be a Filipina. No doubt she was a nice person, and had a lot of good qualities as well, but she wasn't really all that attractive, and what really mattered was that she made a really fine lunch. We really appreciated it. A couple of the guys got so involved in their conversations with this young lady that they didn't notice that there was no food being passed around to the next table. But Marge finally noticed and told the guy sitting next to her that he wasn't contributing anything to the communal pot, and he responded by saying that his friend was helping, and the lunch really wasn't as expensive as he had implied, and by the way, his name was Fred and hers was Marge, and why did she keep trying to get in on his conversation? And Marge finally realized that her friends had been lying. There is no use trying to guess when this would have happened. It would have happened, one would assume, when he asked her if she was interested in the local customs. And the first words out of her mouth would have been something like, "Well, actually, they don't have customs of any kind that I am aware of. Or, for that matter, clothes or personal adornments or anything else." And it should have been clear to her right then that she was not dealing with a Filipina. A Filipina would have been the first to try to convert her by going to church and talking about the old religion and taking her off to a little place to eat. There is no use in being angry at these women. In the Philippines, a nice meal and a nice conversation with a beautiful woman is considered a gift from God. Of course, if you spend all day looking for a nice meal and a nice conversation with a beautiful woman, you might not be too happy with God. But it doesn't work that way in the United States. And when it is obvious that you're dealing with a non-Filipina, then it is only polite to have some idea of why you're dealing with them. And you really shouldn't just sit there and nod in agreement with everything they say, especially when it's something ridiculous. "Oh, yeah, that's the way it is here, all right. That's the way it is here all right." What one hears when they're dealing with these people, in addition to the lies, is a sort of fatalistic gloom, an utter lack of excitement about anything, ever. As though there were a total absence of passion about anything, ever. A total absence of energy. And it wasn't like this for the whole country. It was just these women who didn't seem to have anything else to live for. But if this really is the way it is, then it can't be all that bad, can it? You can't just sit around all the time going, "Well, that's the way it is all right." All right, at the risk of sounding like just another Pollyanna, there was a great deal of life in the Philippines. I don't know that I would want to live there, and it's not all that surprising that these women are the way they are. It's only natural, especially when they have a war on their hands every day. They do it to everybody. We do it to them. And the women are the ones who pay the price. And if it weren't for all these men who are willing to do anything and everything for these women, there wouldn't be any war. They seem to be good with the knife and the machete and maybe it would be a nice idea to round up a few of them and assign them some tasks in Vietnam. And let them just hold the whole place together until the war is over. They don't have to leave, just stay in Vietnam permanently. On the other hand, maybe a few of them could be useful as hostages. Or we could just get some of them drunk and have them kill each other. Anyway, when you're dealing with one of these women who spend their lives sitting on verandas drinking coffee and watching people who are just passing through, one has to be careful not to offend them, because it is only at such times that their life expectancy is quite short. I mean, how often do you hear about some guy turning to another guy and saying, "You know, I'm getting out of this country as soon as I can." And all of a sudden that man gets hit by a car, or that bus he was getting on runs right off the road, and they can't even bother to bury him properly, because this is what happens to the men who are most eager to leave. I would never tell any of them that they should stay in the Philippines, that all they would have to do is come over and work here. That would be too demeaning for a Filipino, and it might be demeaning for anybody, even an American. The life she leads would leave any woman demoralized and confused, and how could a woman be expected to contribute anything toward the well-being of the country when she lives a life of such confusion? The poor guys they end up with are not going to do anything but sit there and drink coffee and play cards and kill the time until they're free to go back to the Philippines. This is a life that offers no challenge, no thrill, no excitement. The problem is that these guys are just dying to get home, especially the ones who are sitting around with their toes sticking out of their sandals in some bar out in town, listening to some guy who says he served in Korea. And the women really love that guy, even though he's only a Filipino who's had the luck to escape by boat to some nearby island before the Japanese found out he was there. And that guy's just living off a few dollars a day, trying to go back to Korea to visit his family, and he's probably only been away a year or so, but he's living his life through the eyes of the people who are stuck in Manila, and he may be saying it has taken him a whole year to make the trip back to Korea, but in the women's minds, it has taken him a year to get back to Manila. And then, when he finally gets there, he talks about how terrible the food is and how nobody talks to him because they don't understand him. And he says how the language they speak is so different from what the Japanese used to speak, and even though they were taught English, they couldn't really understand it. The women will laugh out loud at this. How can he say that? How can he be so insensitive to these women? I am afraid I have wasted my time. At this point, I should probably just give them the benefit of the doubt. And I guess, once you've gone through all this, you would rather not be told what a fool you were for being led into a trap. After all, you've got to be the only one who knows what happened. After the war, when it is over and they are all free, it would probably be worthwhile trying to talk to the Filipinos who were in the war. They might know more than I do. But it would be difficult to find out who all the ones who might be willing to talk are. And they are probably going to be so busy. They have so much to do. I mean, there are so many things to take care of. And I don't think they want me there in Manila. If they are taking care of their business, I should just leave them alone. But then again, some of the people who might be willing to talk about things were probably among those who could be found playing cards and drinking coffee, and they were the ones I spent so much time talking to, because they didn't say anything, but they would just sit there. They seemed to be doing nothing but sit around and get into the discussion and enjoy it. And the women were out in front because they were always the ones who did the talking. They would say things like "I know it sounds crazy, but I really don't understand it at all," and "I don't care what he said, but I've never had an American friend before, so I'm not sure what he wants with me." But they were wrong. There was something wrong with them. The whole experience just depressed me. It just seemed so pointless and ridiculous. Why fight a war? What was the point of all that destruction? A lot of the Americans have a lot of misconceptions about why we are fighting this war. We may have lost the first one, but nobody wants to see us