I’m a veteran (peace time) and a teacher. I used to teach this along with Johnny Got His Gun in an American Lit class in the mid '00s. A lot of kids were shocked at the content, and others thought it sounded bad ass. A couple years later one of the kids who thought it seemed BA came back to visit after a tour in Afghanistan. He looked me in the eye and said, “I get it now.”

I went home and cried.

I went the other way and jumped right back into it. I felt like I missed so much the first time through.