No Breakfast

At one point in Barbara Sonneborn's 1998 documentary film, Regret to Inform, a Vietnamese woman recounts the day more than 20 years before when she lost nine members of her family, all killed by American troops.  She was stoic until she recalled " they hadn't even had breakfast." At that moment she broke down, I broke down, and thus endeth my viewing of the film. 

Earlier that  evening I had watched the silent parade of recently killed American soldiers posted at the end of PBS's News Hour. So perhaps I was primed to be especially touched. Whether they had had breakfast before they departed the scene I do not know.

(The documentary is Sonneborn's first film and it records her visit to Vietnam, 20 years after her husband was killed there by a mortar. She includes the tales of many widows and survivors, both American and Vietnamese.)