He had witnessed the innocent kids piled up in a country far away where death was commonplace and no one baked cupcakes bearing the names of the slain, only keened like maternal sirens against the inevitable moment.
He took comfort that Back in the World the children roamed in safety and grew plump on promises far from land mines, shrieking Phantoms, dangerous strangers with barking weapons.
He did not, could not, foresee a time when those same weapons would turn their deadly mouths on babies, back in the world.
But the sins of the fathers circle back to the world and the bodies of children wear doomed grins like death heads at the karmic irony.
Now that illusion of a last, safe place is rent and torn and there is no longer a world to go back to.
mce
In Vietnam, "back in the world" meant back in the US.