As it turns out, he wasn't that big bad war hero at all who we had always taken for granted and was based on all those stories which were never told because they were just too painful to discuss. Even if as kids we kept begging him please please tell us more about what had happened, the time you landed on the beach and all those dead and blown-up bodies lying all over the place, what was it like? As far as we were concerned it never happened in the first place, but being part of the family wanting to believe that that was the way it had happened no matter what. Or were we the ones making things up, filling in the gaps and making things up in order to make sense of the way the soldier was or ended up being? In the end it turned out to be a sad case that lead us on, but led us on nonetheless. So it must have meant something in the end, we following as if nothing had ever happened in the first place.