:::the old movies

were best, the French F. Legion
every man with a bitch and the Arabs charging down
on white parade ponies, and the Sarge't holding the
fort by propping up dead men until re'forcements arriv'l.
And the ones with the boys flying around in the Spads
full of wire and one plat. blonde who seemed to symbolize
everything. Maybe it was just because I was a kid
or maybe it isn't the same any more. All the angles,
the cautious patriots, the air-raid wardens, cigarettes
for sex, and even the enemy seeming to play a game.
Or the time they found the Jap nurse in the shell-hole
who had been hit in the breast and wanted some sulfa
and one of the boys said, "Hey, you think we can fuck
her before she dies?"

Charles Bukowski, in The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over The Hills, Ecco/HarperCollins, 1969