The blood spilled at the end of life, and the blood spilled at its beginning

I'm currently reading Dispatches, by Michael Herr. Of all the hundreds or maybe even thousands of books written about the Vietnam War, it is one of the most celebrated. 

The book's reputation is well-deserved. I'm admittedly not terribly far into my Vietnam War research, but of all the books I've read so far (and also including Burns's and Novick's documentary series The Vietnam War), Dispatches is the first and so far the only account that has haunted me at night. It is riveting, horrifying, beautiful, sad, funny, gruesome, and insightful. In loving, sketchbook fashion, Herr fills even the most briefly encountered grunt with a luminous humanity. He owns up to his own bullshit, and helps us understand.

Reading this afternoon, on page 210 out of 260, I suddenly imagine the rivers of ink spent accounting for all those rivers of blood spilled in that misbegotten war. And then I remember how, when I was writing my (unpublished) first novel (The Bear Wife), I determined to imbue its birth scene with just as much suspense and violence, as much glory and dignity and prominence, as its scenes of Viking battles.

Because those nasty old pragmatic pagans recognized, even if we don't, that you can't spill blood at the end of life unless you've spilled some at its beginning.