Many of you are familiar with the hero in Kurt Vonnegut’s famous novel, “Slaughterhouse Five.” An ex-prisoner of war, he was an eyewitness to one of history’s most devastating fire-bombings. Understandably, he cannot come to terms with the real memory of the enormous human suffering caused by the massive air-raid. And so he fantasizes. He envisions a similar episode as a movie-run backward. Bombers full of holes and corpses and wounded men take off backward toward the target area. Enemy fighter-planes appear on the scene-flying backward. Bullets begin to be sucked out of the crewmen and their planes. Finally, still flying backward, the bombers hover over the bombed area, which is a large city. The bomb-bay doors are opened and…
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