The picture is faded, overexposed and poorly fixed, its blacks washed out around the edges, the bright summer light hanging in the air like a luminous white fog. It is a group shot, tightly arranged: here is a blond GI who can't be more than eighteen; he still has a boy's smile, and the telling sword-emblem patch is absent from his left shoulder. He has not yet been to Vietnam, because if he had been, he would be wearing that campaign patch with a patriotic pride or a disillusioned resentment; he would have lost the quickness of his smile, and his eyes would have been empty with that prematurely ancient look they call “the thousand yard stare.” His name patch says, “McConnell” and he is crouching in front of a concrete bridge railing, holding a small, dark-skinned Korean boy in each arm as if they were bundles of wildflowers. Two other boys are standing behind him, only their dark, smiling faces and grimy necks visible, their shoulders bleached into the air because they are wearing white T-shirts. Standing in front of the GI are two boys who have their heads turned towards the camera, but their eyes are watching him. The boy on the left looks like he might be the GI's cousin—his hair is dirty blond and he grins with the same crooked teeth—but the subtle angles of his face mark him as an Amerasian. The other boy is also Amerasian, black-haired and darker skinned, but not as dark as the Koreans. He is a few years younger than the blond boy, and his hesitant smile looks worried. I know why he is worried. He is thinking of the two other figures who are visible in the distant background in the shadow of a tin-roofed shack. The figures are only unfocused specks in the photograph, but I know that they are two teenagers waiting for the action to begin. I know, because the boy with the worried smile is me.