"That was the phrase everyone used: the night life. A language trick. It made things seem tolerable. How's the Nam treating you? one guy would ask, and some other guy would say, Hey, one big party, just living the night life. It was a tense time for everybody..."(p. 208)
can you say understatement? "it was a tense time for everybody." really? tense? that's the best you've got. how about it was a living hell for everybody? somehow, I don't think that if you asked any one person who was involved in this they would simply say "Eh, it was tense." no. there's no way. I understand using "night life" as a euphemism for whatever it was they were going through. it's a war. it's probable that no one really wanted to talk about what was really happening. understood, but there's no avoiding the understatement.
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